AWS is How: Iconic Australian Business ‘Jim’s Group’ Modernised its Processes - and its People
Migrating to the AWS cloud, and developing a solution capable of handling a rapidly growing user base and modern technologies, helped Jim's Group future proof themselves for ongoing success.
Founded in 1989, Jim’s Group has grown from a lawn mowing business to Australia’s largest franchise, with more than 4,650 franchisees offering a range of services to customers nationwide as well as in New Zealand, United Kingdom and Canada. Over the past two years, Jim’s Group has had its biggest growth period due to a rapidly increasing volume of work and more people wanting to start their own business.
Jim’s Group currently serves over 500,000 customers annually, via the web and phone enquiries for various services, which are then allocated to the relevant franchisee in their area. For over 20 years, all business operations and data storage ran on an internal monolithic server stack within the organisation – which often led to issues with reliability and regular downtime. For a 24/7 customer-focused business, this could be extremely costly.
Innovating to deliver greater efficiencies and profitable solutions for franchisees has always been at the heart of Jim’s Group. Around 60 percent of employees within the business are in IT-related roles. The migration has allowed Jim's team to explore new ways to better support franchisees via the Jim’s Jobs app. These include better route optimisation for shorter travel times between jobs, customer-implemented site visit times, real-time access to customer information, and on-selling of opportunities from one franchisee to another in a nearby location.
Ultimately, any improvements to the business makes life better and more profitable for franchisees, which in turn helps Jim’s Group attract more franchisees and provide better, more reliable customer service to a rapidly growing market.