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Transforming managed- printing with digital & IoT

How we helped FlexTG(R) improve customer services and automate processes?

  • STRATEGY
  • IOT
  • TRANSFORMATION
  • ENGINEERING
  • INNOVATION
Unlocking the ‘Digital’ Opportunity

Our client is one of the largest managed print services providers in the United States, with thousands of business customers and 500 million+ in revenue across the country. With their thousands of IoT devices in the field, they had a massive opportunity to automate processes, improve customer experiences, and launch new digital products and services.

The Challenge

FlexTG's entire business was heavily dependent on legacy ERP systems, and replacing them was not an option. Without any documentation, it was a daunting task to build on top of this beast.

The company has deployed thousands of printer devices at customer sites. Their service and management were very manual, unpredictable and labor-intensive. While each device could emit millions of logs and the logs could be used to automate the manual processes, it would require a massively scalable digital platform to collect, analyze, and monetize this Internet of Things (IoT) opportunity.

TheChallenge

ERP INTEGRATION & MODERNIZATION

Removing legacy roadblocks

Flexprint's majority of business processes are managed with a legacy desktop-based ERP system. In order to build any digital system, we first had to figure out a way to interact with the ERP. The system did not offer any APIs or integration points, and there was no documentation.

Drawing on our years of experience with legacy and ERP systems, with two weeks and ad-hoc analysis, our team figured out the data model, services, and ins-and-outs of the client's legacy ERP system. It came up with a solid strategy to orchestrate it for building new digital services. It paved the way to shape Flexprint's digital future.

LEGACY DESKTOP BASE ERP THAT DID NOT OFFER ANY APIS OR INTEGRATIONS

TECHNOLOGY BACKBONE FOR GROWTH

The Internet of Printers (Things)

The client wanted to explore opportunities to automate support and service using the printers' machine data. After a series of discussions and explorations, we found that printer devices generate millions of unstructured email logs. In addition, based on the model and make, each device generates logs in a completely different format and content. We needed to create a platform that can provide unfettered access to comprehensive and enriched log data in real-time for powering analytical apps and business insights.

We built a machine data platform that can collect, curate, and enrich the machine logs and then analyze them to generate actionable insights for each machine and customer. The platform collects logs in real-time, parses them, analyzes the alerts, and generates requests for the client support teams.

Printers Printers

The easiest way to sum up my relationship with the Rapidops team is that they make me and my team look good. They can become an extension of our internal team and translate our concepts and ideas into high-functioning software.

author

Chase Cabanillas

CIO, Flexprint

CLOUD & DEVOPS AUTOMATION

Building & scaling on cloud

We designed and developed a cloud-first platform on Amazon AWS that was able to generate machine intelligence in real-time and linearly scale to support the massive volumes. The platform architecture was designed to be fully distributed to scale up and down on-demand.

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DEVOPS AUTOMATION

We implemented automated DevOps that offers reliability & reduce overhead.

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DISTRIBUTED DESIGN

Architecture is designed to scale up & down
horizontally and handle failures gracefully.

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TECH BACKBONE

The use of a next-generation approach and agile methodology makes it a better and faster solution.

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ENTERPRISE INTEGRATIONS

We integrated the IoT platform with existing apps such as SSO, ERP, and CRMs.

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SECURE BY DESIGN

Security patterns implemented for enforcing the necessary authentication, confidentiality, and data integrity.

SUPPLY AUTOMATION APP

Automated Supply Re-orders

Every time a printer runs out of ink, the customers had to re-order it manually. The client’s team had to manually operate the fulfillment process - from sales order to purchase order to delivery and installation. The process was error-prone, inefficient, and did not allow predictable supply management.

Together with the client team, we came up with an idea to develop a supply automation engine that would automatically re-order ink and toners, generate supply orders, purchase orders, and ship the supplies to customers - no human input required.

Re-orders

360 VIEW OF EACH PRINTER FROM LOGS & ANALYTICS

Automated replenishments delivered the right sized supplies at the right time to the right customers - reducing costs and increasing efficiencies.

DEAL DASH APP

Closing More Sales, Faster

The client wanted to streamline its manually operated sales process to ensure the faster deal closure while improving productivity. We took an interactive approach with a long term vision and designed an automated platform to be modular, extendable, and intuitive that align with the client’s expected business outcomes. Rapidops team developed an intuitive dashboard for deal automation by taking advantage of smart functionality and workflows.

More-Sales

DEAL AUTOMATION APP SCREEN SHOT

The Result

The platform is the foundation to monetize IoT and enable digital transformation. The client is able to automate processes and improve customer experiences - which were not possible until now.

We’re excited to see it evolve and allow our clients to use the power of digital and data to reduce costs, improve efficiencies, and grow their business.