WHO ARE PEACHY MONDAYS?
Peachy Mondays is a leading employee feedback platform, helping organisations driving positive change across their teams. Operating globally their client list boasts a diverse range of leading names, including VodafoneZiggo, Brussels Airlines, and BT Pension Scheme (to name a few). Their service is designed to help businesses evolve, without necessarily having to disregard prior investments and methodologies. They pride themselves on their ability to deliver innovative, actionable insights in real time, rather than weeks or months.
THE CHALLENGE
Following an RBS Accelerator Programme, Peachy Mondays felt optimistic that there were digital tools they could take advantage of to further their customer experience. Technical Director Craig Bartholomew explained, “We wanted to know what technology we could leverage to make better use of our data? And, what outputs can we get from it?”
THE DECISION MAKING PROCESS & SOLUTIONS
Working alongside TORCH Senior Solutions Architect, Iain Henderson, it was apparent they had a clear view of their target architecture and what they wanted to migrate towards. They wanted to validate that this build could scale to meet their business growth aspirations and, with this in mind, it was agreed that TORCH would:
- Introduce and arrange for Peachy Mondays to have a ‘Well Architected Review’ conducted on their target system by Cirrus HQ. A member of the TORCH Supplier Network, Cirrus are a lead in this area for Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the UK. This review would assess whether planned changes would lead to (what AWS regard as) a well-designed system across 5 key pillars:
- Performance Efficiency – ensures your workload is running optimally.
- Reliability – minimises business impact from failures and enables rapid recovery from incidents.
- Security – protects critical systems and ensure data integrity.
- Cost Optimisation – controls and analyses costs so you can scale your business whilst having full transparency of your AWS spend.
- Operational Excellence – confirms your platform complies with best practice & AWS design principles and that the right monitoring is in place to allow for continuous improvement.
- Enrol Peachy Mondays on the AWS Activate scheme. The Data Lab/ TORCH team are an AWS partner and, therefore, have the ability to enrol appropriate organisations.
- Support the implementation of the outputs from the Well Architected Review; the process itself includes AWS funded remediation of any high priority issues uncovered.
- Highlight any other ‘data platform’ related items that emerge in the engagement that Peachy Mondays should be aware of (people solutions, skills, resourcing options).
Stephen Croke, Head Of Business Development for Cirrus HQ told us, “We are delighted to support Peachy Mondays, by ensuring they developed stable systems and to realise the full economic benefits of Amazon Web Services (AWS) on a continuous basis.
By applying a Well-Architected Review, a systematic approach to evaluating AWS architectures, it helped identify and fix potential issues within their environment. This ensured their Cloud was best aligned to support their business objectives.”
MSc STUDENT PLACEMENTS AND JOB OFFERS
In parallel to the work with Iain, TORCH Business Development Executive, Lauren Spark, had also introduced Peachy Mondays to The Data Lab’s MSc Placement Programme. Collaborating with 12 Scottish Universities, the solution allows businesses to partner with Masters Students, allowing them a paid 3-month industrial placement for their dissertation project.
Since working with TORCH, Peachy Mondays have made student Rob Stone a job offer, which he has accepted.
THE FINAL RESULTS (AND WHAT’S NEXT?)
In total, the Well Architected Review process took around 4-6 weeks to complete. As is the norm, it uncovered 20 or so areas where some remediation work would improve and optimise the Peachy Mondays platform (and its use of AWS).
As part of that review process, Cirrus HQ worked directly with the Peachy Mondays’ IT Team to implement the priority recommendations. AWS credits were issued to allow Peachy Mondays to innovate/trial a new module around conversion of free text to structured input.
Alongside the Well Architected Review, the TORCH Team also worked with Peachy Mondays to review and make recommendations on resourcing and team structure. Their team are already looking to implement changes, and are now in discussion with Cirrus HQ to discuss a longer-term arrangement to assist in these.
“We’re building an ecosystem of complementary businesses that work together” – Iain Henderson, TORCH Senior Solutions Architect
TORCH FEEDBACK
“The TORCH assessment report has been really useful, and Iain has been brilliant in terms of being clear, pragmatic, and getting that external perspective ... Reports and diagrams that Iain put together that had a really succinct way of classifying all the different touch points of our data” said James Anderson, Peachy Mondays CEO & Founder
Think you could be using your existing business insights to enhance your customer’s journey? Get in touch with our TORCH team for an informal chat about whether the service could help validate your ideas.