Partner Success with AWS / Software & Internet / The Netherlands
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Improvement-IT Uses TechNative to Migrate to AWS, Speeds Customer Onboarding, and Reduces Support Calls by 15%
Learn how TechNative’s proactive approach helped Improvement-IT reduce onboarding time and improve its customer service by migrating to AWS.
50%
reduction in customer onboarding time
2x
faster detection of issues
15%
decrease in customer service support calls
Overview
Improvement-IT, based in the Netherlands, provides IoT solutions to a variety of organizations with an emphasis on tracking, tracing, and monitoring the status of assets. Together with its other companies Port Pay and Alltrack Medical, it offers these innovative solutions to help customers track assets in the field, manage warehouses, and optimize supply chains. However, it was being hampered by its own managed services provider, which was running both Amazon Web Services (AWS) and on-premises assets for it. It wanted a proactive partner with deep expertise to help optimize its systems, improve client onboarding times, and better detect problems before they affected customers. AWS Partner TechNative has helped it to achieve those goals, reducing customer support calls by 15 percent and cutting onboarding time by 50 percent.
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Opportunity | Improvement-IT Wanted Improved Performance and Business Focus
As a provider of IoT solutions to companies across many industries, Improvement-IT knew that responsiveness and reliability were key to a good customer experience. But as a customer of a managed services provider that was supporting its IT infrastructure, it was dissatisfied with the support it was receiving. Some of its systems were running on AWS and others were using on-premises technology. The company depended on these systems to provide its customers with accurate and current data about their operational processes, especially for managing and tracking assets. Whether those assets were display racks for a greeting card company or supply containers for an oil drilling platform or assets for showing status and location in healthcare, its clients depended on Improvement-IT so they could track and manage how assets were distributed.
Improvement-IT wanted to better serve its existing customers and continue to grow the business. To achieve that, it was looking for a new company to support it. “Our customers range from healthcare providers tracking wheelchairs and the location of available hospital assets, to oil companies managing supply containers going to oil drilling platforms, to greeting card companies keeping track of retail display racks, to application and enforcement of vignettes for transit and mooring, to field service apps for sewer maintenance,” says Rick Zwart, chief technology officer (CTO) of Improvement-IT. “Regardless of their business, responsiveness and accuracy are important to our customers. Our previous hosting provider couldn’t support us as we tried to improve and grow our services.”
There were no dramatic incidents that motivated Improvement-IT to look for another partner. It was more that it had outgrown its provider’s capabilities. The company wanted deeper knowledge of AWS and a more proactive approach to managing its services. Instead of spending time managing the relationship with its service provider, it wanted to focus on developing and rolling out improvements to its customers. It asked AWS to introduce it to potential partners and found what it was looking for in AWS Partner TechNative, a Netherlands-based cloud consultancy.
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Thanks to TechNative, we are operating fully on AWS and able to focus on innovating and improving our product.”
Rick Zwart
Chief Technology Officer, Improvement-IT
Solution | Well-Architected Review Leads Migration and Optimization
TechNative began its relationship with Improvement-IT by conducting an AWS Well-Architected review. AWS Well-Architected helps cloud architects build secure, high-performing, resilient, and efficient infrastructure for a variety of applications and workloads. Built around six pillars—operational excellence, security, reliability, performance efficiency, cost optimization, and sustainability—AWS Well-Architected provides a consistent approach for customers and partners to evaluate architectures and implement scalable designs. “We see a Well-Architected review as the first step when working with a new client,” says Bas Anneveld, founder of TechNative. “It helped us and Improvement-IT to understand how to best commit resources for the greatest outcome.”
The revamp started with TechNative rebuilding Improvement-IT’s AWS presence and migrating it to a more efficient architecture. This was followed by migrating its on-premises workloads to AWS, creating a cloud-native solution for the company. The solution uses Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), which provides secure, resizable compute capacity in the cloud, to provide flexible compute power as needed. Improvement-IT is also developing its understanding of Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS)—which can remove inefficient and time-consuming database administrative tasks without needing to provision infrastructure or maintain software—to optimize development and deployment of innovations in its service. AWS Control Tower enables users to automate the creation of AWS accounts with built-in governance and to enforce best practices, standards, and regulatory requirements with preconfigured controls. And by rebuilding the platform to use infrastructure as code (IaC), response times for many operations have been reduced. By being built for the cloud, Improvement-IT has eliminated hardware acquisition costs.
It was important to Improvement-IT that TechNative would run and maintain the company’s AWS environment so that Improvement-IT could focus on its services to customers. “TechNative had the AWS expertise to get our systems fully migrated and took the time to learn our business,” says Zwart. “This meant they could make suggestions about how to use AWS services to improve our business. We were working with advisors, not simply technicians.”
Outcome | Improved Customer Experience Using New AWS Solution
Since the full migration to AWS and revamp of its architecture, Improvement-IT has seen meaningful improvements in how it can serve customers. Using IaC has resulted in a 50 percent reduction in customer onboarding time, improving customer experience and enabling the company to look after more customers without having to increase resources. There has also been a 15 percent reduction in performance issues, reducing calls to customer support and improving customer confidence. This reduction in support requests is the result of TechNative being able to identify potential issues 2 times faster than was previously possible, which helps the company to resolve issues before they affect customers.
Working with TechNative has changed the way Improvement-IT works. “The move to TechNative has created opportunities for us to do more,” says Zwart. “We were providing security and quality service to our customers before, but we were having to spend too much time managing our systems and managing our relationship with our provider. Thanks to TechNative, we are operating fully on AWS and able to focus on innovating and improving our product. Having a partner we can trust is a huge benefit to the business.”
About Improvement-IT
Improvement-IT is based in the Netherlands and provides asset-tracking services to its customers. Together with its other companies Port Pay and Alltrack Medical, it uses a mix of technologies, including RFID, Bluetooth, GPS, UWB, and barcodes to improve logistical processes of customers. Its expertise in automatic identification with a focus on IoT systems enables it to design, supply, build, implement, and maintain complete solutions for logistics optimization projects.
About AWS Partner TechNative
TechNative is a Netherlands-based consultancy with experience running high-traffic and high-availability platforms. The company works with organizations to help them build, optimize, and manage their tech stacks. Its team of consultants, hands-on engineers, and FinOps specialists focuses on bridging the gaps between business, finance, and technology. Specialties include AWS Well-Architected reviews, 24/7 managed cloud support, and FinOps training and certification.
AWS Services Used
Amazon EC2
Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) offers the broadest and deepest compute platform, with over 750 instances and choice of the latest processor, storage, networking, operating system, and purchase model to help you best match the needs of your workload.
AWS Control Tower
Set up and govern a secure, multi-account AWS environment with AWS Control Tower.
Amazon RDS
Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) is an easy-to-manage relational database service optimized for total cost of ownership.
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