EK Retail – All applications and news updates in one central location

Leveraging the benefits of the Azure Cloud environment

EK Netherlands is the largest retail services provider in the Netherlands. From its offices in Hoevelaken, it works with and supports 1,500 retail partners with back-office services ranging from group purchasing and marketing to knowledge development.

To improve the support it provides for retailers, EK is now developing a portal so all applications and news updates will be available in one central location with single sign-on (SSO). EK Retail’s ‘Microsoft first’ policy made Azure Cloud the obvious choice as a development environment.

Focus on use cases

An intensive process that gets to the core issues

Sounds great! But how do you build such a portal? And how do you keep it affordable? The EK Retail digital landscape includes some EK applications but 90% of the applications were chosen by its retail partners. These applications needed to be connected. Existing SSO options were very expensive but by using the features of Microsoft Azure, we were able to build an efficient and affordable SSO solution. “We were quickly put in touch with the right people and Luminis made a point of focusing on individual use cases and how to connect them. They inquired in detail about what we wanted and why.”

They really know what they’re talking about. Other potential partners were keen to push their own product. But Luminis was more interested in supporting our use cases.

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Ruben Schmetz
Product Owner EK Retail

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Azure DevOps: from concept to application

Fast response capability that is ready for the future

Luminis developed a cloud-based solution that will allow EK Retail to add more applications to the portal in the future. With smart use of DevOps and short sprints, it was possible to increase ease of use for the retailers. “DevOps turned out to be a great tool to work with. We may also be able to use it more widely in the future. And the people at Luminis are great to work with. They gave us expert guidance at every step.”