90% fewer bugs across a global car sales platform
Mercedes-Benz (via T7Lab) · Global Sales Platform · 2015 – 2021
The Situation
Mercedes-Benz, building a global car sales platform spanning China, DACH, and South Africa. The platform needed to work across iOS, Android, and Web, each with their own development team. Cross-platform bugs were constant, localization was painful, and every market had different regulatory and business requirements that created a combinatorial explosion of edge cases.
The Real Problem
Three platforms, three codebases, three teams implementing the same business logic independently. When a rule changed (pricing, financing options, regulatory compliance) it had to be updated in three places. Bugs were inevitable, and they were. The real problem wasn't the developers. It was the architecture. Business logic was embedded in UI code across every platform, making consistency impossible to maintain at scale.
Key Decisions
- Introduced a JSON-based configuration system that separated business logic from platform-specific rendering. The sales flow (what fields to show, what validation rules to apply, what financing options were available) was defined once in a shared data model. Each platform rendered the same configuration, eliminating the "implement it three times" problem.
- Built a data-model-driven rendering architecture. Instead of each platform team writing bespoke UI logic, the frontends became interpreters of a shared schema. This meant a new market could be launched by configuring the data model rather than writing new platform code. China's requirements were radically different from Germany's, but the architecture handled both.
- Designed the localization layer into the data model. Rather than bolting translations onto finished UI, every configurable element carried its localization context. This eliminated an entire category of bugs where UI elements showed the wrong language or formatting for a given market.
Cross-platform bugs dropped by 90%. New markets could be onboarded through configuration rather than development. The platform successfully served China, DACH, and South Africa with localized experiences built from a single source of truth. Each region could customize their sales flow without forking the codebase.
The Exit
Six-year engagement through T7Lab, spanning 2015 to 2021. The configuration-driven architecture and data model were fully documented and transitioned to Mercedes-Benz's internal platform teams. The patterns established here enabled continued expansion into additional markets.
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