StayinFront

They offer a range of field sales force automation and customer relationship management tools to FMCG and life sciences companies.

From 2013, software delivery models for companies seeking mobile CRM software and selling tools for their field workers shifted to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions that would run on any smartphone or tablet.

Established market leader StayinFront was quick to adapt to the changing environment, transforming the business from an on-premise and hosted, enterprise software solutions provider running its own data centres to an all-platform, cloud-based SaaS partner.

“Companies that didn’t make those adjustments may be at a disadvantage in many cases,” explains Senior EVP and Chief Technology Officer Tony Bullen. “When we made the commitment to delivering a flexible, scalable, cloud-based solution to the market, we chose Amazon Web Services (AWS) to help us get there.”

How AWS helped StayinFront to become a global business

Already a market leader, the move helped drive significant growth, as demonstrated by StayinFront’s rapid expansion in more than 50 countries. That kind of coverage, made possible with AWS, makes StayinFront a best in breed provider for global companies.

“We operate across six continents offering multi-tenant and private cloud environments. Having a provider like AWS allows us to rapidly deploy across challenging and varied geographies in a secure environment,” says Bullen.

He continues, “Four of the ten largest consumer food companies the Fortune 500 have chosen StayinFront to optimize and grow their business. AWS provides a cost effective, flexible global infrastructure that scales quickly.”

A recent customer deployment involved fifteen thousand users working across 30 countries, and one customer plans to scale to 40,000 global users. “You can’t do that without a platform like AWS,” Bullen adds.

Consumer Goods companies can leverage StayinFront’s guided selling tools to support their own sales processes and best practices, tailored to each specific store visit, drawing from the latest store data.

StayinFront ran its own data centres but there were limitations, says Bullen, “previously, if we wanted to add additional capacity to a system, it was a project. It’s almost instant on AWS. We have the agility and flexibility to enable customers to handle new and growing business needs on-demand.

Innovative technology alongside AWS

StayinFront solutions are evolving all the time. Recent product enhancements include using augmented reality to show how products or promotional displays will look in store and image recognition to quickly identify what product is on shelves.

The company is now looking to leverage latest AWS’ developments to continue delivering innovative technology to the market.

“We constantly strive to develop tools that help our customers optimize their business performance, and we include varied AWS services in our research and development streams. We see AWS not just as a SaaS platform but also a strategic technology provider,” Bullen adds.

“It’s the nature of software companies to develop some kind of hybrid between the innovation they do themselves and the innovation they look for partners to provide. We view AWS innovations as a way to extend the advantages we provide to our own customers.”