challenge
As a global leader in transportation, manufacturing and freight services, our client’s railcar management and leasing services division had grown 800% over the last five years and had outpaced their current technology suite’s capabilities. They had multiple monolithic applications built in different technologies and wanted to build a connected enterprise suite. They needed to modernize so they could add certain self-service capabilities for customers and decrease the number of full-time staff required to service them. They’d be able to realize revenue sooner through accelerated new customer on-boarding while reducing investment in operating expenditures. They also needed help with the backlog of customer maintenance and repair information in their scheduling system to improve customer confidence. They knew Sparq was the right partner for them as they also wanted technical subject matter experts who could provide leadership in newer, more modern technologies and introduction to Agile development practices.
solution
Sparq reengineered and refactored three monolithic applications and over 100 smaller fat-client-server applications. We adopted a “shift left” approach in defining new product needs while re-organizing the railcar management and leasing services division’s IT into their corporate IT functions. Through our approach, the business needs and customer experience became part of the front-end design. Improving security of the new technology suite was also an important factor, which drove our team toward using the cloud and Azure services. By leading Agile scrum rituals and ceremonies with our client’s IT team, our teams provided robust Agile leadership and best-practice sharing.
results
Our teams delivered three major business releases and supported one key application, exceeding our client’s expectations throughout the entire engagement. Sparq successfully moved our client to the Azure cloud, where they implemented disciplined Agile principles and strong embedded teams. We helped our client identify, define, build and deploy cloud services that allow them to be more responsive and scale their systems more efficiently. This significantly brought down operating costs and allowed them to introduce self-service mechanisms to their customers. Our teams also drove down on our client’s scheduling maintenance system backlog, which is an integral part of how they interact with customers. Within 90 days we made a huge impact on the key aspects of that backlog while continuing to drive it down to a manageable level, thereby improving customer service for our client’s customers.
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