App Support and Management for Case Studies Archives - Arrk Group

Transforming NUS Extra to TOTUM

Drashya Kuruwa — Fri, 29 Jan 2021 07:19:03 +0000

Transforming NUS Extra to TOTUM

Arrk Group has partnered with OneVoice to Transform, Enrich, and Maintain digital platform called TOTUM for students and professionals. Before September 2018, this was only one student discount product called NUS Extra, owned by the NUS – National Union of Students, a not-for-profit organisation.

OneVoice, who was already providing digital support to NUS for the UnionCloud membership engagement platform, took over NUS Extra and transformed the ageing product with a new energetic look and named it TOTUM – a single digital platform for Student Discounts, Proof of Age ID and Student Life.

Arrk Group played a crucial role in the transformation and enhancement of the platform right from its inception through to live deployment and continues its association with OneVoice to provide more innovative features.

Customer

OneVoice is a vibrant collaboration between the National Union of Students (NUS) and Arrk Group, bringing together the best talents of each organisation to build and engage communities of common interest. With a heritage stretching back to 1922, OneVoice passionately understands what it means to collaborate and work together for the common good. OneVoice believes in the positive impact communities, and associations have on society and the collective strength when people come together for the benefit of all. The challenge is to harness and unlock this positive power, amplify engagement and release a community’s potential – to make a lasting difference.

Much more than an award-winning and versatile membership platform, OneVoice provides a suite of additional services, all wrapped around the central tenet of putting people at the heart of all we do.

Vibrant Collaboration

Award-Winning

Not-for-profit organisation

Situation

The NUS Extra card was losing market share in the student discount world due to an ageing app and outdated offers catalogue. NUS Extra faced competition from other players who offered better alternatives in the form of digital services and usage. Furthermore, these competitors had better reach and penetration and provided best-in-class student discounts. These issues directly impacted the revenues and resulted in users shifting their allegiance to the competitors.

Following a detailed review, OneVoice and Arrk Group decided to build a dedicated student discount platform called TOTUM, in which user retention, revenue generation and ease of use would be the key drivers behind the long-term vision of the product. Key components included:

A brand-new front-end website
An offer management system
Digital apps for iOS and Android devices

These features had to be supported with innovative marketing campaigns to announce TOTUM’s arrival and begin the quest to become UK’s number 1 student discount platform.

Strong Competition

Android Mobile App

iOS Mobile App

Solution

The solution/services delivered the following:

We evaluated a complete product strategy in terms of matching current consumer expectations and looking at beating the existing competition by providing a little more, like Proof of Age products
Help the creative and marketing teams to go to market with a rebranded youth-oriented brand
A diverse yet flexible digital ecosystem, including:
- Brand new native apps to allow better reach and connect in the digital age
- A brand-new website for advertising the product, posting blogs, and consuming content
- A streamlined sales web application capable of catering to the sale of existing and new discount card products
- A new slick discount authoring system that helped source and add discounts that would need to be consumed by the end users eventually
- A future-proof micro-services stack that supported all functions from card sales, discounts, user management, student verification frameworks, and many more
A best-of-breed open-source technology stack is powering all products. This includes the use of:
- AWS cloud infrastructure
- Java microservices
- Web applications built in AngularJs, ReactJs and VueJs
- Native apps in Android and iOS built using the best frameworks
- Use of the latest CaaS services like Contentful for easier and more powerful CMS
- Continuous integration and deployment via DevOps tools like Bitbucket, Jenkins, CircleCI, AWS DataDog
- Comprehensive reporting using RedShift DW, PowerBI, Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics and VWO for conversion rate optimisation
Integrations with 3rd party email and messaging services like SendinBlue and OneSignal
Dedicated product development and support teams, including engineers, architects, product owners, and data analysts with a DevOps culture
Support the legacy infrastructure in the transitory phase, including ASP.NET applications and integrations with print partners

With a product mindset and hybrid Agile methods, a team of 30+ at Arrk delivered this in under a year, with the first big launch in less than six months.

Hybrid Agile Delivery

Flexible Digital Ecosystem

Best of Breed Technology

3rd Party integrations

Outcomes

The above services and solutions were crucial to keeping the business innovating with new product offerings and consistently improving the core discount platform to stay competitive in a notoriously crowded discount and loyalty landscape. Important outcomes include:

An active million-plus user base
The increasing average daily active user count on apps is currently at 10K, including both apps
100,000 unique site visitors every week accessing the latest discounts on offer
Increase in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) by creating compelling higher-value product offerings and targeting them appropriately at the user base
Improved B2B product and high-impact media offerings for brand partners
Increased revenues are invested back into product development and foster future potential for innovation in the student market

Million+ User Base

Improved Business

Increased Revenues

Futuristic Vision

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Transforming ASM capabilities of Business

Drashya Kuruwa — Wed, 13 Jan 2021 13:10:06 +0000

Transforming ASM capabilities of Business

Our Customer urgently needed to outsource their Application Support and Management (ASM) capabilities to achieve digital growth. They also required expertise in shaping and delivering IT projects for all services and applications.

By providing cost-efficient, best-in-class services, Arrk Group assisted our Customer in managing their ASM capabilities effectively.

Customer

Our Customer started as a not-for-profit organisation in 2009 to support sponsorship for charity & fundraising events and now wanted to create an online platform for fundraisers and charities to raise money online and offline.

They partnered with Arrk Group to design and develop their website in an aggressive nine-month window to coincide with their business commitments.

Customised Delivery Model

Charities

Fund Raising

Statement

After successfully launching the web platform, the Customer decided to maintain and enhance their in-house IT capacity and continued with that for a few years. However, as the business expanded and the demand grew, they realised they did not have enough capacity. They acknowledged the need to engage with the right-sized vendor who can understand their needs and provide them with the best ASM capabilities in a cost-efficient way. They wanted a team that was self-driven, self-organised and could provide the best development services and consultation whenever required. And who better than their original partner to turn to?

That is when Arrk stepped in and provided Customer with the much-desired extension to their IT Team, who, over the course of the next few years, was responsible for web support, maintenance, and future developments.

Cost Efficient

Self-Organised Team

Software Development

Professional Consultation

Objective

To better support their business goals and priorities, the Customer needed a team structure aligned with their business segments, namely Retention, Distribution and GDPR. A flexible delivery model with cross-functional scrum teams: Basically, a scrum of scrums wherein the delivery was jointly supervised by the team lead from both sides, but a single product manager and a single technical architect.

Customised Delivery Model

Flexible Team

Scrum of Scrums

Single POC

Solution

After careful consideration, it was agreed to have three scrum teams, one each for a business segment. Whilst each team consisted of designated programming and test resources, a few roles, such as the scrum master, product owner, tech lead and UX designer, were shared to ensure functional, technical, and user experience implementation consistency. As anticipated, the first couple of Sprints were a little chaotic while the team members were acquiring knowledge and getting to know each other. And as expected yet again, it was only a matter of time before the team dynamics kicked in, and the dust started settling down.

Experienced Team

Thorough Knowledge Acquisition

Organised Sprints

Team Dynamics

Outcomes

Excellent collaboration between Arrk & Customer’s IT teams resulted in several projects and tasks of varied size and duration. The list included not just functional development work such as Custom Codes, Corporates, Printable Reports, and Bulk Donations; there were tasks important from a technical improvement perspective too, such as properties internalisation, move from old frameworks (e.g. Struts) to contemporary ones (Spring), and investigation and recommendations towards underlying technology stack upgrade.

Excellent Team Collaboration

Technical Improvements

Transforming Framework

Technology

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Application Support and Management for global customer

Drashya Kuruwa — Thu, 10 Dec 2020 11:06:35 +0000

Application Support and Management for Global Customer

Arrk is successfully delivering turnkey Application Support and Management (ASM) services for a global leader in high-performance polymer solutions.

To diversify their digital presence and develop new platforms, the Customer needed to outsource Application Support & Maintenance of their legacy applications to a vendor who understood their needs and could cost-effectively provide them with best-in class ASM capabilities. Arrk has been successfully provisioning ASM for the Customer for several years.

Customer

The Customer is a global high-performance polymer solutions provider serving more than 40+geographies worldwide across various strategic markets of automotive, aerospace, energy (including manufacturing & engineering), electronics and medical.

They are also listed on the London Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of over £2 billion. As a leader in polymer solutions, they help manufacturers overcome complex design and engineering challenges. For the last 40 years, this Customer has served a diversified range of markets and offered proven solutions backed by unparalleled expertise and deftness.

Application support and management

Complex design and engineering challenges

Situation

The Customer sought the right vendor to outsource their legacy applications for support, maintenance, and future developments to expand their business scope.

The Customer was looking for a vendor who could deliver an Application Support and Maintenance service and that had proven experience in delivering complex and comprehensive SLAs (Service Level Agreements). They wanted a self-driven, self-managed, and proactive team to handle support tickets and provide best-in-class technical and managerial services cost-effectively. They also wanted to be able to leverage expert technical consultations whenever required.

Solving Complex Problems

Self Organizing Team

Objective

The Customer was committed to outsourcing their ASM activities to a vendor who could take full responsibility for maintaining and managing their legacy applications.

Arrk understood the Customer’s needs & challenges and that they are looking for a reliable partner with the following selection criteria:

A partner they could trust to manage their critical legacy applications, which were used by several different Business teams and their own customers
A Partner who can quickly learn and understand their systems and help them enhance and fix their existing issues
A Partner who understands the rapidly changing market domain and business scope
A Partner who can analyse their current system and help them design more efficient and effective customer support services catering for their wide range of 1000+ users
A Partner who can provide expert technical support and business-friendly solutions in a cost-effective manner

Responsible Outsourcing Partner

Cater for a Rapidly Changing Market

Efficient and Effective Customer Support

Expert Technical Support

Solution

The Arrk team initiated this journey with our EmbArrk™ onboarding process where the Customer team shared their application knowledge and technical assets with Arrk’s IT team. Arrk IT team, consisting of a BA, Technical Architect and Test Leader, interviewed several business Stakeholders, SMEs, end-users, and Customer IT teams to gather technical and functional understanding about their legacy applications.

The Arrk team prepared detailed documentation from knowledge gathered during the EmbArrk process, and reverse KT (Knowledge Transfer) sessions were conducted for the Customer to give them confidence in Arrk’s team understanding.

The Arrk team then analysed the Customer’s needs and their diverse set of technologies and modelled an ASM service to meet their business system’s Support needs. This was followed by ASM development and testing services to provide the Arrk team with a Maintenance capability.

Arrk provided seamless Application Support by adopting best practice ITIL-aligned processes, professional & responsive service delivery and joint governance. Arrk has gone on the exceed its original remit by providing shared resources as per customer time zone to resolve issues across a varied set of applications with stringent SLAs.

Focused Team

Interview Workshops

Seamless Application Support

Outcomes

Careful joint planning facilitated by outstanding collaboration between Arrk & the Customer’s IT teams ensured knowledge/technical and service transitions ran smoothly with minimum risk of service disruption. With such an exemplary collaboration, both teams were able to:

Meet 100% of their Joint SLA Targets
Enhance legacy applications with many Value-added features
Introduce automated and increased efficiency in the way of handling support tickets with the help of Arrk’s CRM solution
Effectively manage and implement Change Requests to help business users in their day-to-day work
Develop more accurate reporting of ASM activities and performance

This successful partnership is going from strength to strength, and we look forward to growing our mutually rewarding relationship in the years to come.

Team Collaboration

100% SLAs

Accurate Reporting

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Application support management success, for RAC

Drashya Kuruwa — Thu, 09 Aug 2018 15:02:10 +0000

Arrk Group drives application support and management success for RAC

The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) were in desperate need of a cost effective, scalable application support and management (ASM) capability with the added ability to successfully shape and deliver future IT project across the full set of RAC services and supporting applications.

Customer

The Royal Automobile Club (RAC) is one of the UK’s most progressive motoring organisations, providing services for both private and business motorists. Ever since its foundation in 1897, the RAC has been consistently at the forefront of developing motoring services – from introducing uniformed patrols in 1901 and roadside emergency telephone boxes in 1912 right through to the present day when they boast what they believe to be the world’s most advanced computer systems to deal with calls for roadside assistance.

One of UK's most progressive motoring organisations

Founded in 1897

One of the world's most advanced computer systems dealing with roadside assistance

Situation

The drive for increased customer satisfaction and cross-selling throughout RAC’s services led to a major transformation project that included the implementation of Siebel (CRM), Agresso (Finance) and an Oracle data warehouse. Due to limited capability within the internal IT team, RAC approached Arrk Group to support and manage their core application.

A drive to increase customer satisfaction and cross-selling

Desire to introduce a CRM and a Finance system, as well as, an Oracle data warehouse

In need of a major transformation project

Limited capacity within the internal IT team

“Above all, Arrk’s commitment to RAC’s success via open, responsive and sensitive handling of the transaction confirmed our correct choice of IT partner. Transition went to plan and our RAC team expanded to include some outstanding and technically excellent Arrk colleagues and a best practice set of ASM processes that together set a new benchmark for quality of IT service at RAC and even taught me a thing or two”

RAC Business Systems Director

Solution

RAC implemented a joint RAC-Arrk IT team, with ASM being performed by Arrk Group’s off-shore development centre in Mumbai.

The radical transformation required a significant number of RAC IT staff redundancies, removal of IT contractors, and needed a sensitive and carefully orchestrated knowledge transfer activity to Arrk Indian staff brought on-shore and then transferred bank to Mumbai in waves.

The newly implemented ASM services followed Arrk Group’s best practice, ITIL aligned processes were put into effect to ensure a proactive, professional, responsive service was delivered in-line with agreed Service Level Agreements, demonstrated through regular reports and service reviews.

A joint RAC-Arrk IT team was implemented

Arrk's off-shore development centre in Mumbai performed ASM

ITIL aligned processes ensure proactive, professional and responsive service

Project was delivered in-line with agreed SLAs

Outcomes

The RAC-Arrk Group partnership successfully reduced IT costs by 30%, enabling redirection into value-adding enhancements and business projects that brought additional benefits to RAC quicker than ever before. Arrk Group’s ASM service drove up RAC user satisfaction due to faster, quality issue resolution and a higher throughput of critical enhancements. Arrk’s rapid knowledge take-on enabled removal of risk and cost associated with the previous contract staff.

All-in-all this led to a vastly improved RAC IT and business department relationship which encouraged RAC to extend Arrk Group into project delivery.

IT cost reductions of 30%

RAC system user satisfaction increase

Business and IT risk reduction

Vastly improved RAC IT and business department relationship

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