Modernizing a $1B global commerce platform

Groupon is a >$1B NASDAQ-listed company that connects millions of customers with local businesses worldwide. With globally distributed development teams spanning multiple time zones and markets, the company operates one of the world's largest local commerce platforms.

But as a company with legacy infrastructure and complex development workflows, Groupon faced a challenge familiar to many enterprises: how to accelerate innovation without being dragged down by infrastructure complexity and lengthy development cycles.

Quantifying the impact

Encore's roll-out at Groupon delivered immediate results for their new development initiatives.

• 3x increase in development speed — Teams could build and iterate on new features significantly faster
• 90% shorter project lead times — What used to take weeks now happens in days or hours
• Minutes instead of days — Infrastructure tasks that previously required extensive coordination between teams are now automated
• Zero infrastructure bottlenecks — Development teams can focus entirely on building business value
• Foundation for future growth — Encore became their standard platform for all new development projects

From infrastructure friction to streamlined development

As a large enterprise with complex legacy systems, Groupon's development process involved significant coordination overhead. Infrastructure provisioning, environment setup, and deployment workflows required extensive back-and-forth between development and infrastructure teams, creating bottlenecks that slowed innovation.

This transformation didn't happen overnight, but the results were immediately apparent. By eliminating the traditional friction between development and operations, Groupon's teams could focus entirely on building features that drive business value.

An initial pilot program demonstrated that enterprise-scale development could be both fast and reliable. Encore's built-in guardrails ensured that while development velocity increased dramatically, security and compliance standards remained intact.

Enterprise-grade development without enterprise complexity

The success of Groupon's Encore adoption stems from the platform's ability to provide enterprise-grade capabilities without the traditional complexity. For a company operating at Groupon's scale, this balance is crucial.

Development teams can now provision environments, deploy applications, and manage resources without needing deep infrastructure expertise or waiting on lengthy approval processes. With built-in standards and guardrails in place, this streamlined approach has unlocked significant productivity gains across the organization while ensuring consistency and control.

The automatic observability, built-in security features, and compliance guardrails ensure that increased development velocity doesn't come at the cost of operational excellence. Teams can move fast while maintaining the reliability standards expected of a publicly traded company.

Scaling globally distributed teams

With development teams spanning multiple continents and time zones, Groupon needed a platform that could support truly global development workflows. Encore's cloud-native architecture and automated deployment capabilities proved essential for coordinating work across distributed teams.

The platform's ability to provide consistent development environments regardless of geographic location has streamlined collaboration and reduced the complexity typically associated with managing globally distributed engineering organizations. Teams can work independently while maintaining alignment through shared tooling and automated processes.

Looking ahead: Product-first development with Leap

Groupon's success with Encore has opened up exciting possibilities for the future. The company is now exploring how Encore's AI-powered Leap platform can further accelerate innovation by enabling non-technical team members to participate directly in the development process.

This vision represents a fundamental shift in how large enterprises can approach software development, breaking down traditional silos between technical and business teams while maintaining the governance and security standards required at enterprise scale.

Results at a glance

• 3x increase in development speed
• 90% shorter project lead times
• Minutes instead of days for infrastructure tasks
• Zero infrastructure bottlenecks for development teams
• Foundation for enterprise-wide development standardization

Encore enabled Groupon to modernize their development workflow, eliminate infrastructure friction, and establish a foundation for future innovation. All while maintaining the security and compliance standards required of a publicly traded company.