Based in Dublin, Ireland, ESW unlocks cross-border ecommerce success for the world’s best-loved brands. It provides localized checkouts that boost conversion rates, solutions that simplify complex logistics, duties and taxes, and a dedicated client-partner approach that provides data-driven strategies to ensure profitable growth. As part of its work, the company is looking to empower more than 150 of its developers with AI. After a two-stage trial period, the organization deployed GitHub Copilot, and successfully promoted its adoption through a training program.
“Developers have embraced AI with a tremendous amount of enthusiasm. Once we made it clear to coders that GitHub Copilot could help them even if they felt their tasks were not particularly repetitive, they were very keen to sign up right away.”
Director of Engineering at ESW, Bruno Quintella, describes the company’s AI journey and how ESW empowers software developers. “Our work is all about developing great software that our customers need in order to connect with their customers and sell their products. It’s crucial that we create code as fast and efficiently as possible,” he says. “By embracing GitHub Copilot, we’ve been able to make that process quicker than ever, while helping our people feel more empowered, productive – and ultimately more fulfilled.”
Embracing innovation with AI
ESW unlocks cross-border ecommerce success for the world’s best-loved brands. It provides localized checkouts that boost conversion rates, solutions that simplify complex logistics, duties and taxes, and a dedicated client-partner approach that provides data-driven strategies to ensure profitable growth.
The company operates in various domains, each focusing on different aspects of the ESW solution – from checkouts to payments and more. One of these is the platform domain, run by Quintella, which is tasked with making sure that every coder has the right tools for the job and is empowered to develop their skills.
Staying ahead in technology and innovation is crucial to these crucial tasks, which is why ESW has been increasingly interested in the possibilities offered by GitHub Copilot.
Making the case for Copilot
Although embracing innovation was the primary motivation for deployment, ESW knew that adopting GitHub Copilot could be key in boosting productivity and enabling developers to concentrate on the higher-level components of their code – ultimately freeing them from the burden of handling routine and standard implementations.
In addition, the adoption of the AI-powered tool aimed to elevate the overall code quality by providing insightful suggestions aligned with established coding patterns and best practices with contextual examples and explanations.
“The adoption of Copilot was a strategic move to not only expedite development processes but also to cultivate a culture of excellence and continual learning within the development team,” Quintella says. “But in order to secure backing from the business, we first needed to demonstrate its practical benefits to the bottom line.
“It was the company’s first AI tool, so there was a real onus on a solid proof of concept.”
Obtaining a proof of concept was extremely straight-forward, Quintella says. ESW then spent 30 days testing the new tool.
“During the trial, the teams put Copilot through its paces in order to build a convincing business case for its company-wide rollout.”
“We focused on quality, so we did a lot of unit, integration, and performance tests. At the end of it, the teams were unanimous: no one wanted to give up this new tool.”
One of the key findings from this first trial was the effect on productivity. “There are tasks that AI can help us to achieve much faster than before,” says Quintella.
A second trial was held across the entire organization, and the uptake was carefully monitored. It rose slowly but steadily over several weeks, as staff explored the exciting possibilities of the AI solution. Advocacy and training played a key role in cementing regular usage, explains Quintella.
“We had a 90-minute training session, which is really all it takes to become familiar with the technology,” he says. “That allowed us to be more agile and faster. Prior to that, some developers were not sure if it was relevant to their needs, often because they didn’t feel their jobs were particularly repetitive. After seeing the demo from GitHub and understanding the best way to use it and the benefits it could offer them, they wanted to try it.”
AI-powered benefits from day one
The trial period more than made the case for the AI solution and ESW adopted Copilot. The organization felt the benefits from day one.
“It’s now a lot easier to build boilerplate or repetitive code,” says Quintella. “In particular, when we do pair programming – which is when two people code together for speed and mutual learning – the tool is very helpful and highly interactive. We have an AI bot – made possible by GitHub Copilot Chat – that you can ask to explain what a piece of code is doing. Or why the code works or doesn’t.”
The developers’ enthusiasm for using the tool has had remarkable results on both productivity and employee satisfaction – resulting in better services for ESW’s customers too. “We have seen a 25 percent boost in productivity", Quintella says. “This tool helps ensure we can meet those very tight deadlines – and guarantee quality.”
Happier coders experiment with the new tech
As Director of Engineering, Quintella has set up an internal channel for the development team to exchange their experiences and learnings, and to solve any challenges that arise from adopting Copilot, such as generating a unit test or how to get a more accurate answer from the tool. As he explains, the tool is helping to create a profound cultural shift in the ecommerce company, with constant experimentation becoming the norm.
“In addition to using the tool for coding purposes we now employ it to support solution designs before we start coding, so we have an idea of what’s being built,” he says. “Developers actually ask Copilot questions and use it as an onscreen expert, and not just for coding.”
“One of the reasons developers are engaging so enthusiastically with the technology is the role it plays in making them feel more fulfilled in their jobs. This is a significant cultural shift for us, and very welcome news as we set out to attract the brightest and best developers to remain competitive,” he comments.
As experimentation with Microsoft Copilot continues apace at ESW, the company is already eager to investigate the possibilities of new Microsoft AI-based tools. “There’s a discussion now to try out more Copilot features with around 15 people in the business. And we’re exploring the possibility of adopting M365 Copilot, which will further help us to make the most of Excel,” says Quintella.
“That’s because we simply need to embrace AI. Everybody else is going to use it, and if you don’t, you’ll be left behind. Even some developers that initially were not interested, become interested when they saw the potential of it, so it’s something we need to grasp with both hands – and always with Microsoft’s help.”
“By adopting GitHub Copilot, we’ve been able to embrace AI quicker than ever, while helping our people feel more empowered, productive – and ultimately more fulfilled.”
Bruno Quintella, Director of Engineering, ESW
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