Becoming Digital Without Losing Their Heart

The Client

The Details

Business & Operator Feedback & Testing →

TF AZP Multifamily Study Case.pdf

AZP Multifamily Case Study

The Challenge

The Results

The Solution

AZP Multifamily, a property management supply company, was the brilliant idea of Dave Schlecht back in 1987 which he started from his home garage with ony a few products. Known then as AZ Parts Master, serving area apartment owners, the company grew quickly and in only three years the company was ready to move to a five-thousand-square-foot warehouse in Glendale, AZ. Soon they expanded their customer base to cities and municipalities, and began providing custom fabrication to meet the customized needs these new customers required.

That kind of growth can mean only one thing – Dave had tapped into an industry that was being sorely underserved and was doing so in a way that inspired loyalty and referrals. This gave him an early, solid foothold in a big and growing industry (Acumen Research indicates the North America MRO (Maintenance, Repair & Operations) market is expected to reach $758.1 Billion by 2027. That rapid growth, with a number of strategic acquisitions has made AZP an important regional supplier to the MRO industry.

Always a customer service-driven company, AZP was also an early pioneer in the same-day delivery service. Today the family-owned company operates local warehouses in 9 states serving 13 major metropolitan communities, adding new markets every year. Some refer to the business as “Home Depot on Wheels.” Scaling an online counterpart would take some planning.

AZP’s North Star has always been to be a customer-service driven company but they also wanted to leverage cloud technology. Embracing modern technology could ensure they not only continued to meet the needs of their customers, but could also anticipate their needs – which in today’s supply-chain-challenged environment is a crucial advantage and an approach that serves to strengthen loyalty and increase referrals.

AZP understood that an opportunity for large gains in efficiency and customer satisfaction could be achieved by increasing online engagement and delivering the kind of personalization customers valued. They wanted to make things easier for the customer, allowing them the convenience of online ordering vs. engaging with a sales person. In the process, however, this family-owned company didn’t want to lose the uniqueness of their businesses – their reputation for superior customer service and expert support. They partnered with TechFabric to help them realize their digital transformation goals while preserving their personal touch.

Becoming Digital Without Loosing Their Heart

What AZP needed was a new data platform and business intelligence strategy to complement their ERP if data was going to optimize every facet of AZP Multifamily. In order for AZP to acquire, keep and leverage the kind of massive demographic and analytical information about their customers as well as their markets, they would need a hybrid model with Azure components around a Snowflake data warehouse for the task of executing frequent, complex queries, gaining deep analytical insights, utilizing machine learning, and augmenting their digital personalization capabilities. The first step for TechFabric was to build a working prototype to ingest all of the analytical data.

One of the most obvious upgrades needed was a partial website redesign that included the homepage so that it would be obvious to an MRO customer upon arrival what AZP did and confirm they were in the right place. More importantly, customers were having problems with simple things like placing an order, and if your goal is to be more like Amazon in your targeting and personalization, you need top notch algorithm development. That’s where the real work began.

Website: Reimagining the AZP Digital Experience

Data - storing it, quickly accessing it, and not only surfacing actionable insights, but using those insights to personalize the user experience, is foundational to every transformation conversation. Having access to the right data for decisioning has a profound impact on strategic planning as well as customer satisfaction. Getting this right, and developing efficient supporting processes result in time and cost savings for both the business and its customers. Power BI provides all of the functionality to create rich, interactive data visualizations from the P21 ERP and multiple other data sources to share important business insights across the company.

AZP wanted to increase their reporting capabilities. They not only wanted to look at their core business data, they also wanted to be able to marry that with other data from other systems they use. The data warehouse supports their goals of increasing their digital equity by cataloging and understanding their analytics as well as adjacent data—it’s a data scientist’s playground. For example, while it’s nice to have information about a specific property like where it is, and how many units it has, AZP would also like to know if the property has a swimming pool? If so, is that pool chlorine or saltwater? Now AZP can better support their customers by knowing when to offer pool equipment, and if so, what kind. With these kinds of deep insights, AZP will soon know when they last ordered and calculate when that customer might need to resupply. Ultimately, AZP will be able to plan their marketing campaigns for re-order both by time-to-restock and seasonality before the customer runs out.

Power BI: The road to Actionable Insights and Personalization

Property managers really do value this level of personalization. If AZP can help them replace a $15 part before it fails causing a $15,000 expense, their gratitude is often expressed in loyalty and referrals. This level of personalization and customer care is at the heart of AZP’s business philosophy and it makes the life of the property manager a lot easier when someone knows as much about their properties as they do. It’s super-fast for them to open up their phone, query their account, find the part they’ve bought before, buy it again and receive it same day as AZP ships out twice a day. And if they need to talk with a human, that’s still easy.

With the new website, AZP puts availability front and center. Item availability is sourced from the ERP providing visibility into forecasting and replenishment. If they’re managing multiple properties, data specific to that property is also made available.

Their BI isn’t just looking at their ERP, it’s looking at data assets from marketing, sales, Google, supply chain and elsewhere in a centralized environment so it can be better analyzed. From here data serving specific audiences can be pulled and communicated out in dashboards custom built for each audience.

When TechFabric engineers begin feature discussions and ideation on dashboards, they first seek to understand, through personal interviews, research and feedback loops, who the dashboard is for, how they will use it, what data is primary, secondary, not important, etc. Ideating is fluid. For example, while ideating the executive dashboard some features were deemed as something the c-suite would not want to see every day; but it would be quite useful for sales, so the section was moved. KPIs for all dashboards can evolve as needed.

BI Personalization for the AZP Multifamily Execs Too

There are two important questions that Marketing and Sales like to ask: what is the company’s total market share in (specific region); and what is our market opportunity and where?

A data warehouse is a great place to store a lot of information that doesn’t change all of the time. In addition to relevant regional data already owned by AZP, a pipeline can be created from any number of data aggregators in the real estate market and access industry data for the entire nation if desired, and it can all be stored until needed. This achieves two important things: first, AZP can get accurate numbers for those two questions marketing and sales want answered; and second, when it comes time to consider new markets, AZP already has the information they need for decisioning with company leadership.

AZP knew at the start how much value they could elicit from the data they already had and continue to do so as they surface and better understand their existing data. The get excited about the fact that when they start leveraging all of the other sources of data, they will deliver an experience such that when customers visit the new AZP Multifamily website, it will feel like a whole new AZP.

AZP and TechFabric continue to build upon the early successes, using agile approaches to seek out and connect information in the data warehouse for greater ways to influence how products and services are presented the result of which is continuous ideation and improvement.

For this project, AZP and TechFabric feel like they’re just scratching the surface.

#001e49

Reimagining Ancillary Products For Credit Union Members  

Financial Services / Fintech - Providing Insurance Products to Credit Unions

SWBC Case Study

While many large enterprises may have at one time started in a garage, by the time you have many thousands of employees, you’ve gone through numerous platform enhancements at the application level. As a result, it can be hard to see that what once was an integral part of your software and business strategy, may no longer be meeting the needs of your staff or your customers. If a company has done this across departments, it becomes exponentially more complex.

And, if you’ve outsourced these projects over the years (a common practice) vendors have changed, internal team members have changed; and most importantly -- when creating software is not your main mission, even if you’ve been doing it for years, organizations often “hit a wall.”

Why does this happen? Because it’s hard for large companies to see that they’ve been using old paradigms of software development without even really realizing it. This is where the focus leans more on optimizing outcomes (which is indeed important) when really, the focus should be on optimizing the process for creating superior software. That’s where you unlock opportunity to hit the user experience out of the park – that’s where the value is. To achieve that, most very large companies need a very specific kind of development partner – one that helps them change the way they think about what they are delivering to customers. That takes trust.

SWBC works primarily with Credit Unions, an $86bn market. Credit unions are member-owned, nonprofit financial institutions that operate to maximize membership benefits for saving and investment and offer a wide range of products. They partner with SWBC to offer a host of different programs that that aren't inherent to them like the wide array of insurance products SWBC carries.

SWBC provides the platform for these Credit Unions to use. When sales are configuring an auto loan for a customer, they open up the Unity portal, and they have a wide variety of other insurances the consumer can consider. Buying a car is stressful enough; the existing Unity software was using what we’ve now learned is an entirely wrong approach from a design perspective and did not consider how users were interacting with the software; what that experience was like. Without too much investigation it was clear that performance was suffering, it was slow and with the existing process it often took over 50 clicks and 8-10 screens to compete one loan transaction. The experience for both loan officer and customer was overly complex.

Working with a Software Partner that Asks the right Questions

TechFabric has a unique approach to product design, one that focuses on testing and user feedback loops at each step to ensure we are building the right product, for the right audience on the right platform. 

The TechFabric development teams are true solutioners. Others might see the obvious and simply “reface” much of the design just by using a new UI approach. Not TechFabric. The first step was a request by the TechFabric team to meet with all of the SWBC internal teams -- anyone who works on the product in any way. This seemed like a different approach to SWBC but they allowed access.

After the TechFabric team completed a week of intensive presentations, learning and listening sessions it was clear to the client the incredible value of being able to ask the right questions to the right people. Then, TechFabric asked to meet with some of SWBC’s customers. That was something no one had ever asked of them, and there was some reluctance.

But, by providing this access, SWBC added an important layer – the client’s clients as active development participants.

The TechFabric team met with their top five credit union customers and walked through the same process to understand all of their pain points. The simple act of asking the right questions, listening with respect, and engaging with ideas was a win all around. Working that closely also enabled the team to mitigate many issues that would normally plague later-stage development.

At that point the team was able to take all of this knowledge and reimagine the legacy software from a holistic standpoint for an outstanding end to end user experience that is all API driven.

Then the team started going deeper. Someone on the team asked, “What are the chances that people buy similar packages every single time?”. In a further streamlining move, bundles were born and even fewer clicks achieved!  It's a value-add to the business, it's a value-add to the credit union customer and check out can be achieved in one click. The “what if” became a powerful mantra for the team.   

Even in the testing phase prior to launch, LOS Express was driving account retention with current accounts as well as re-capturing accounts that had previously gone to competitors. Now, LOS Express is not only a market-leading application, but it also acts as an effective sales tool for onboarding new accounts.  With the new modern design of LOS Express and Unity Direct the applications are much more robust and responsive and the platform itself can be enhanced to accommodate their future needs as well.  The ROI continues to surface but at this stage results are:  

Account Retention, Re-Capture & New Growth   

On the surface is a redevelopment of a legacy piece of software using modern software development. But it’s more – it’s the methodology, teamwork and imagination that drove innovation; the deep collaboration between architects, the customer and the customer’s customers that resulted in the front- end layer decoupled from the back end to become completely API driven – a true transformation.

TechFabric started with SWBC’s Unity product, an ancillary product insurance platform. Ancillary insurance is a common line of products that all auto loan providers (like Credit Unions) want to be able to offer, one of the most popular being Gap insurance (no one wants to drive off the lot, have an accident and then fail to get reimbursed fully for the car they just bought.) From the original Unity Net product, the team created two products: Unity LOS Express and Unity Direct.

Co-innovating with the SWBC team, we looked at both React and Angular as the front-end framework, and opted to go with the latest version of Angular to gain the performance and speed of development (among other benefits) it offers. We took a broad approach with this decision, including future updates of other products in the suite in a global view. Zeroheight was utilized as the design system platform to fully enable the front-end engineers, also making components available to the SWBC internal teams. 

Using Angular and a modern design approach, our front-end teams re-designed the Unity platform into a single-page application. This approach greatly increased performance and provided the ability for users to more easily move between functions and toggle screens to edit existing quotes where previously they had to create new versions each time.

The Unity suite backend codebase is C#, utilizing SQL databases hosted on AWS and utilizing .Net Core technology. Our front-end teams co-innovated with SWBC’s backend teams to re-architect and re-structure the backend and APIs to respond to the reimagined front-end. While we were focused primarily on front-end, our teams and AWS experts collaborated to help solve issues and contribute to the backend layer as well.

Among the many product innovations in the new LOS Express is a VIN decoder. This functionality automatically decodes data from the VIN database providing the loan officer with the make and model of the car, etc. It populates all of the loan documents significantly accelerating time to completion. It also takes care of sending the vehicle information to 3rd party carriers providing Major Mechanical Protection, for example, with the rates sent back for review. Where pricing data originally took 30 seconds to be returned, it now takes just 5 seconds. Where the loan officer interacted with 8-10 screens, now there’s only 2 due to the single page application approach.

Not ready to buy yet? Customers can obtain a quote and when they return, that quote will roll up in the system for further adjustments and finalization. The loan officer starts with the cost of the car, and with the customer adds other desired products like vehicle return and payment protection, and the built-in cost calculator recalculates the price based on each product. Before the loan officer saves their work, certain parts of the website will highlight areas that are incomplete or need to be corrected or it will not allow the application to proceed further increasing accuracy. Once the review page is reached, additional functionality was added to be able to edit right on the page without having to edit the original input (bi-directional data flow). Once finalized, the loan is booked, a contract is created, email confirmations are generated and it triggers billing in a separate system. Voila!

Customers can also get insights into how much car they can truly afford. Once a “dream car” is calculated, a customer may decide to shop for something else, but when they do purchase the vehicle, all they need to provide is the VIN number and the quote updates automatically with the actual pricing. This is but one of the handy decision-making functionalities TechFabric built in to the new SWBC platform. Two dynamically generated GAP and MMP graphs take the vehicle details and value, and calculate the GAP value by years so customers can determine how long they may need Major Mechanical Protection (MMP) based on the loan.  For the borrower it’s a method to analyze if the insurance product is worth the spend for the period of time based on what the graph is showing.  Everyone benefits from this transformation.    

It was the engineering, the product design, the brand development, the market research – it wasn’t just one thing that motivated customers to return to the SWBC platform. It was the totality of the solution, evidence that great things happen when you share, and great design happens consistently when everyone’s empowered. Every day that the TechFabric and SWBC teams met, a culture grew – a level of collaboration never before experienced that changed the view of what was possible or even needed.

Now the teams are no longer just redeveloping a piece of software, they’re looking holistically at the whole path and who is on the path. Today the end-to-end experience is defined far more broadly. Because of that, and the insights gained along the way, more avenues of opportunity have emerged.

It’s software reimaging, product development, and omnichannel marketing. And it’s amazing.

What Really Brought the Customers Back? 

#ffffff

No Sales Agent Or Apartment Unit Left Unoccupied

TechFabric_CaseStudy_LeaseHawk.pdf

Digital Transformation In A High Stakes Market With Complex Processes

TechFabric_CaseStudy_iLending.pdf

Doubling Auto Refi’s Without Adding Loan Consultants

TechFabric_CaseStudy_AutoApprove.pdf

#44e0b7

Partnership With A Global Electromechanical Precision Manufacturer

TechFabric_CaseStudy_NMBTC.pdf

#cb0400

Turning Every Real Estate Agent Into A "Cash Offering" Beast

TechFabric_CaseStudy_Zoodealio.pdf

Transforming Vehicle Repossessions & Transportation

TechFabric_CaseStudy_vrmPRO.pdf

#1f3655

Removing The Pain Of Paperwork With Digital Certifications

TechFabric_CaseStudy_SmartCert.pdf

#598b00

Cloud-Native Solutions For Auto Protection Services & Ancillary Products

TechFabric_CaseStudy_CUDirect.pdf

Automotive

Real Estate

Supply Chain

Industries

Below are just a few samples of the transformative solutions we strategize, design, develop, implement and manage for our clients. To setup a demo to learn and see more, contact our sales & solutions team to setup a time today.

Our Work

Fintech