Shutterfly Production Platform Transforms Performance

Since its inception in 1999, Shutterfly has grown into the photography products industry leader, with their cloud service storing around 15 billion photos for customization and inclusion in items such as gifts, books, and cards. However, an aging, disparate workflow engine with scaling issues was making it difficult to onboard new products with the velocity necessary to keep pace with digital trends and customer expectations.

To address these challenges, CapTech brought in a large team of management, user experience, and development consultants to provide a single, consistent system that would enable Shutterfly to streamline and increase production efficiency, reduce training times and lost time dealing with inconsistencies, support ever-evolving product lines, and improve the work experience for both seasonal and full-time employees.

As we near the end of our engagement, the CapTech team has now delivered a flexible framework configurable for current and future product lines.​ The interface is easy to use with embedded training to facilitate faster ramp up of employees and improve cross-training opportunities.

The unified platform is WCAG/ADA Accessible to the level of conformance needed for employees to work efficiently. Standardized and reusable assets improve design development efficiency via a design system with reusable components and easy to follow design standards.

CapTech was able to not only deliver a cross-product platform, but to coach Shutterfly developers and leaders on a better scaled Agile approach through standard KPIs and increased predictability from Scrum teams. This has led to a longer lasting impact than simply handing off design and development alone. As opposed to the previous platform, which required step-by-step training, the new platform, as characterized by Shutterfly leadership, “is as easy to learn as an online banking app.”