Seamless Enterprise Search Transformation

Prasanath led a strategic transformation of HD Supply’s internal enterprise search platform, migrating from a legacy Oracle Endeca system to the more cost-efficient, natively integrated IBM Commerce Search solution enhanced with Bloomreach Discovery capabilities. This business-critical initiative simplified infrastructure, reduced licensing costs, and improved search performance and manageability.

The project required comprehensive planning to maintain search relevance and merchandising logic across platforms. Prasanath architected a custom ETL solution, enabling seamless data movement from Oracle Endeca into IBM’s Solr-based engine. He meticulously replicated and even enhanced the former platform’s advanced search functionalities, including guided navigation, dynamic merchandising, and keyword promotions, through tailored configurations.

One of the most notable achievements was the successful integration of Bloomreach Discovery with IBM Commerce Search to power critical customer-facing features including Product Recommendations, Autosuggest functionality, and enhanced search relevance algorithms. This integration ensured the new platform provided equal or better user experience. He took a structured approach to A/B testing, validating that search accuracy, performance, and user satisfaction remained high throughout the transition. His hands-on customization and performance tuning led to a search engine finely optimized for HD Supply’s diverse catalog.

By eliminating the dependency on a third-party search tool and leveraging Bloomreach's specialized discovery features, the project yielded considerable cost savings and introduced a streamlined search architecture tightly coupled with the IBM WebSphere Commerce stack. This made future enhancements more agile and scalable, further empowering development teams.

Equally important was the post-launch phase, where Prasanath implemented robust monitoring and analytics systems. This ensured search excellence through real-time data analysis and continuous optimization. With the ability to add products directly to cart from search results—a feature that contributed to a 16% increase in revenue from search and a 4% increase in add-to-cart rate and end users experienced no service disruptions during the switch and immediately benefited from more accurate, relevant, and faster search results.

Prasanath’s efforts culminated in a stable, modernized search ecosystem that met strategic business goals while elevating customer experience. His ability to execute such a critical migration without user impact demonstrated a unique blend of technical mastery, strategic planning, and customer-centric innovation.