Amazon
2013-2014 as a full time employee working on Category Configuration Manager (CCM)
As more users became aware of the tool we saw a need in adding a step by step tutorial to CCM in order to shorten the learning curve
Context
To test if a category (AKA business) is worth opening, Amazon will add a few product to an existing category (e.g. coffee tables inside the Office category).
If those product are selling in high volume, it means there might be a potential in 'splitting' the Office Category in that region, and to name it e.g. Home & Kitchen.
This large scale system, that let Amazon Business people setting up new stores called Category Configuration Manager.
The challenge
This process usually takes 12 weeks from inception to launch.
The CCM team was aiming to reduce that to 6 weeks (50% reduce).
The are 120+ services that needed to be integrated inside the tool e.g.: forecasting, shipping, pricing, site's navigation, detail page configuration, legal, etc.
Many services have dependencies on other services.
<5% of those services had an API that could communicate with CCM.
The tool was divided to sections that has dependencies on one another. Some steps must be accomplished in order to unlocks the next step
Key contributions
Revamped the permissions process to allow new users easier and faster approval process.
Worked closely with 4 TPMs adding more services to CCM.
Collaborated with various team owners to align on MVP vs ideal integrations.
Impact
Launching a category has been reduced by 25% from 12 weeks to 9 weeks on average.
Clearer requirements to team owners we were integrating with.
Permission process got 23% faster.
