The challenge: Bridging the aftermarket gap
Traditional Industrial OEMs often suffer from fragmented commerce: a patchwork of legacy ERPs, manual dealer-entry systems and siloed data that makes the simple act of buying a part a friction-heavy ordeal. Our client faced a common industry inflection point: their business was world-class, but their digital aftermarket was trapped in a manual, dealer-centric past.
To capture the full customer lifetime value (CLV), the OEM needed to move beyond a basic web-store. They required a scalable digital revenue engine capable of:
Unifying the spares ecosystem: Consolidating disparate data streams into a single, seamless transactional layer for both B2B dealers and end-users.
- Global scalability: Deploying a multi-tenant architecture that could handle regional tax, language and logistics complexities across diverse markets.
- Intelligent upselling posture: Moving from reactive part-searching to proactive, AI-driven predictive commerce.
Our approach: Engineering for evolutionary scale
Thoughtworks partnered with the Industrial OEM to shift from a project mindset to a product-led platform strategy.
We stripped away, one slice at a time, the complexity of legacy architecture and replaced it with a modern and resilient foundation using:
Domain-driven design (DDD)
We mapped the business’s core functions (inventory, logistics and pricing) into independent microservices. This ensures that a change in the promotions module doesn't break the checkout flow.
Modernizing the tech stack
We implemented a headless commerce architecture, decoupling the front-end experience from back-end logic. This allows for rapid UI updates without risking core transactional stability.
Data-driven intelligence
We integrated an AI recommendation engine directly into the search path. By analyzing machine telemetry and historical purchase patterns, the platform now predicts what a customer needs before the machine even goes down.
Strategic enhancements
We didn't just build a cart; we built an operational hub. Recent sprints have delivered:
Visual parts Identification: Diagram-based search (hotspotting) that allows users to click on an exploded view of a machine to find the exact SKU.
Dealer back-office orchestration: A centralized portal that empowers dealers to manage high-volume orders with real-time traceability.
Personalized promotion engines: Dynamic voucher systems that target specific customer segments based on their fleet age and maintenance history.
- Rigorous engineering standards: Through continuous delivery (CD) and automated testing, we enabled the OEM to deploy updates daily rather than quarterly, drastically reducing time-to-value.
The impact: Turning parts into profit
By treating their digital platform as a high-performance machine, the OEM achieved explosive growth in their highest-margin business unit: the aftermarket.
Metric |
Growth / Value |
Digital aftermarket revenue |
85% YoY Increase |
Platform traffic |
49% Increase in monthly active users |
Conversion rate |
13% Improvement through UX optimization |
Average Order Value (AOV) |
12% Increase via intelligent cross-selling |
AI-Driven Uplift |
$10M Projected annual revenue from recommendations |
The partnership: Built to last
The journey doesn't end with a launch. Thoughtworks continues to provide the architectural north star for the OEM, ensuring their technology foundation remains resilient in the face of shifting market demands.
We are currently moving toward software-defined services, helping the client prepare for a future where digital features are sold and delivered as seamlessly as physical bolts.