Select Science
The Situation
A trusted source for laboratory scientists
SelectScience is an established authority for information about the best scientific equipment, digital tools, and innovations. Among scientific equipment makers, it is highly respected for its award-winning digital marketing campaigns which are delivered by scientific, editorial and marketing experts.
The Problem
The SelectScience website and wider tech ecosystem needed a digital transformation
Since SelectScience was founded in 1998, the website has been the cornerstone of the business. Scientists consider it a trusted information source for researching new equipment and technology, and, as a result, it is one of the top ecommerce platforms for the scientific community.
In 2023, SelectScience embarked on a year-long restructuring and modernisation plan, with optimising the efficiency and performance of the website a central goal. Because of the website’s age and size, they decided to seek help from an external agency with digital transformation expertise.
The Task
Digital transformation as part of a year long support contract
SelectScience had previously commissioned Rocketmakers to create a client-facing sales dashboard and had been impressed by the quality and speed of their work. They asked Rocketmakers to support their internal team during the one year restructuring project, starting with a thorough audit of the current website, and leading the digital transformation project that followed.
Additionally, Rocketmakers provided SelectScience with access to their software architects, developers, and designers during the year, providing support as needed and acting as an extension to the SelectScience tech team.
Our Analysis & Digital Transformation
Identifying key challenges and migrating to a new cloud-based server
After over two decades of successful operations, the SelectScience website had grown in complexity and become time-consuming to administer.
Rocketmakers software architects started their work with a thorough audit, identifying ways to improve efficiency, stability, and optimise administrative tasks. Using this audit, Rocketmakers drew up a digital transformation plan to fully modernise the website’s performance and reduce operating costs.
Central to this digital transformation plan was the decision to migrate the website’s servers from on-premise facilities to the cloud. To avoid the risk of outages during this transition, parts of the old website were replaced with new cloud-based versions one by one, until finally the old website was entirely replaced (known in digital transformation as the “strangulation method”). Strangulation makes the transition process smoother, but requires methodical planning because of increased complexity: as new cloud-based databases are brought online they need to be fully tested to ensure they operate both with the new system and with the old system as it was phased out.
Alongside this, the software architect team also conducted a thorough review of all accounts, the security protocol, and set up a system for performance reporting. This process identified several significant ways to improve efficiency and security, including a way to reduce the costs of data storage SelectScience was paying by £8,000 pounds a month.
Our Ongoing Work
Creating a pathway to success
While Rocketmakers’ software architects were busy modernising the SelectScience website, Rocketmakers’ developers were providing SelectScience with extra capacity during its restructuring and modernisation process.
Much of this work was routine support and ensuring SelectScience’s tech team was fully trained for using the new, modernised website. Members of the Rocketmakers team regularly went beyond the call of duty, however. On several occasions they acted as trusted advisors for SelectScience, negotiating directly with suppliers for better contractual terms.
The Result
Equipped for another 25 years of success!
SelectScience’s website is now running on a state-of-the-art cloud server that has significantly reduced running costs while easing the daily administrative burden on SelectScience’ tech team.
That team is also now fully trained, and ready to ensure SelectScience’s modernised website retains its central position in the scientific technology community.