Bibhas Bhattacharya
Former Intelligent Cloud Business Group Lead
Belfast-based IRP offers a cloud-based eCommerce platform to growth-focused businesses, covering every stage of the customer journey from awareness through to conversion. It harnesses the power of Azure to enable data-driven growth for merchants by using AI to identify profit opportunities.
Azure is absolutely at the core of our business strategy,
says Philip Macartney, IRP’s Chief Commercial Officer.
“It is a brilliant, safe, secure platform on which to build. It enables us to go after our ‘why’, which is that trading, in real-time, is the future of eCommerce. It means we can deliver a full eCommerce solution, with data, insights and understanding, designed to give super-fast growth and profitability to future eCommerce unicorns.”
Enabling flexibility and scale for retailers
IRP has been advised by its expert Microsoft partner ActionPoint since 2016. When it wanted to ramp up its Azure implementation and invest in a new multi-million pound version of its platform, it turned to ActionPoint.
“Up to now, if one of IRP’s clients wanted to run a big flash sale, they would have to plan for it, with extra resources and more compute power on the backend,” explains Gerard McCann, Business Development Manager at ActionPoint. “With its new v8 platform, the IRP infrastructure can flex and accommodate all its global customers without any need for that forward planning.”
The v8 platform does this by using machine learning and AI to make vast amounts of data consumable and actionable for retailers, while also automating many operational tasks.
The capacity to auto-scale is critical for ambitious retailers in the new era of eCommerce, says Macartney. With the sustained increase in buying online since the pandemic and with the radically different shopping habits of younger people, online retailers now need to be able to service a fast-moving, 24/7 marketplace.
“That societal shift means merchants need to adjust, rethink staffing, promotions, customer service and so on,” he explains. “IRP is a conversion engine. We are all about upping traffic, driving a higher order value and customer lifetime value. Retailers get full control over their profit margin and know what makes for profitable trades.”
Copper-fastening compliance
Not only can the new system handle vast amounts of complex data, meaning IRP’s customers can grow quickly and handle huge spikes in traffic if needed, but the fact that it runs on Azure also gives them security and regulatory compliance.
“Older systems would have been server-based, meaning each server would have been a single point of weakness,” says McCann. “Now that it is platform-based, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) compliance applies to the platform.”
Collaborating to drive success
Macartney says the IRP team particularly appreciates how ActionPoint not only understands the possibilities of Azure but have taken the time to understand IRP’s business and the strategy behind it.
“If you are just a number on a ledger and trying to build something with someone who doesn’t understand the subtleties and nuances of your business, that can be very difficult,” he says.
Our business is complex and challenging, but the fact that ActionPoint understands what we are going for and can be our guide to the possibilities of Azure is absolutely the core of the partnership and what makes it work.
To learn more about ActionPoint and their Azure services, visit here.
