How Macrocom Accelerated MHK.net Extranet Development With Dedicated Pimcore Support
MHK Gruppe's extranet platform needed to evolve faster than their internal team could deliver alone. easy.bi embedded dedicated Pimcore developers directly into Macrocom's scrum team.
The Challenge: An Extranet That Needed to Move Faster
Macrocom GmbH is the technology company behind MHK Gruppe, one of Europe's largest buying groups for kitchen, home, and building supplies. Their MHK.net extranet platform serves as the central digital hub for thousands of MHK partner businesses - connecting retailers with suppliers, product data, marketing materials, and business tools.
The platform was built on Pimcore, a capable but specialized framework. Macrocom had their own Product Owner and scrum team managing the project, but the volume of feature requests, partner requirements, and platform improvements was growing faster than the internal team could deliver.
Finding experienced Pimcore PHP developers on the open market is difficult. Pimcore is a niche framework, and developers who understand both its capabilities and its limitations are scarce. Macrocom couldn't hire fast enough, and every month of delayed features meant partners were waiting for tools they needed to run their businesses.
The company needed experienced Pimcore developers who could integrate into their existing team immediately - no ramp-up period, no framework learning curve, no disruption to the established workflows.
“Finding Pimcore developers is hard. Finding Pimcore developers who can join a running scrum team and contribute from the first sprint - that's rare. easy.bi delivered exactly that.”
Why Macrocom Chose easy.bi
Macrocom's requirements were specific: Pimcore expertise, PHP depth, and the ability to embed into a running scrum team without slowing it down. They didn't need a new agency to take over the project - they needed skilled developers who could augment their existing team from day one.
easy.bi had built and maintained Pimcore platforms for multiple enterprise clients. The developers assigned to Macrocom arrived with production-level Pimcore knowledge, understood agile workflows, and were ready to pick up sprint work immediately. No onboarding period. No framework training.
“We didn't want an external team building features in isolation. We wanted developers who sat in our standups, understood our priorities, and shipped alongside our people. That's what we got.”
The Approach: Embed, Build, and Deliver
Team integration. easy.bi developers joined Macrocom's existing scrum team as full participants - attending standups, sprint planning, and retrospectives. They worked under Macrocom's Product Owner, following the team's existing processes and priorities. The goal was to add capacity without changing the team's dynamics.
Feature development in Pimcore. The developers focused on implementing new features and functionalities within the Pimcore framework. This included building new extranet modules, enhancing existing partner-facing tools, and extending the platform's data management capabilities. Every feature was built to Macrocom's coding standards and reviewed through their existing quality processes.
Platform enhancement. Beyond individual features, easy.bi's developers contributed to the overall health of the MHK.net platform. This included improving performance in areas where Pimcore's defaults were insufficient, optimizing database queries, and refactoring code that had accumulated technical debt over time.
Knowledge sharing. Working directly within the scrum team meant constant knowledge exchange. easy.bi's Pimcore specialists shared techniques and patterns with Macrocom's internal developers, raising the team's overall Pimcore proficiency.
“The backlog had been growing for months. Within the first sprint, easy.bi's developers were picking up tickets and delivering features. The impact on our partners was immediate.”
The Results: More Features, Faster Delivery
The additional development capacity immediately impacted delivery velocity. Feature requests that had been sitting in the backlog moved into active sprints. MHK partners received the tools and platform improvements they had been waiting for - on schedule rather than perpetually delayed.
The MHK.net extranet platform grew in functionality and reliability. New modules gave partners better access to product data, marketing resources, and business tools. Performance improvements made the platform faster for the thousands of users who depend on it daily.
Macrocom's internal team benefited from the knowledge transfer. Pimcore patterns and techniques that easy.bi's developers brought to the team became part of the internal knowledge base, making the whole team more effective even beyond the engagement.
“What surprised us was the knowledge sharing. Our internal developers learned Pimcore patterns from easy.bi's team that made them more productive even after the engagement.”
Key Takeaways
- Team augmentation works when skill alignment is exact. easy.bi's developers contributed from sprint one because they already knew Pimcore at a production level. Framework expertise eliminated the ramp-up period entirely.
- Embed into existing processes, don't replace them. Working under Macrocom's Product Owner and within their scrum framework meant the additional capacity accelerated the team rather than fragmenting it.
- Knowledge transfer compounds the investment. The Pimcore techniques and patterns shared during the engagement continued to benefit Macrocom's team after the project ended.
- Niche framework expertise is a strategic advantage. For Pimcore-based platforms, having developers who understand the framework's strengths and limitations is the difference between building workarounds and building the right solution.
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