Overview
EzeScan is Outback Imaging’s flagship document and information capture product suite, enabling clients to substantially reduce the cost of deploying automated data capture and information processing.
Founded in 2002 by Mike Kirkby, Outback Imaging is a privately held Australian-owned company which has grown to having offices across Australia, the UK and USA, with numerous global resellers.
A SaaS deployment challenge
EzeScan developed and delivered on-premises software solutions and started to find its customers were demonstrating an increasing appetite for a SaaS-based offering.
EzeScan was:
Seeking a simplified approach for providing its existing customer base with documented reference to security processes, certifications and standards for the EzeScan product (both on-prem and Cloud offerings).
Exploring possibilities to augment and expand its skill set to best support and manage the transition to AWS.
Looking to stay one step ahead of adhering to the endless required compliance certifications.
Seeking to rapidly scale its already successful business based on customer demands.
Hoping to stay one step ahead. With a strong presence in the US and UK, both markets demanded consistent SaaS-based providers. Making the shift to Cloud/AWS meant it could continue leading the market and staying ahead of the competition.
Looking for an experienced managed service partner with best practices on architecting infrastructure on AWS to enable rapid scalability and fast deployment. Having a partner that could manage the project with continuous compliance around regulatory standards was also a driving factor.
Looking to add the capability to service growing markets throughout multiple regions, including the US and UK.
Why Thoughtworks?
Initial contact was driven by demand from EzeScan's customers, who were eager for EzeScan's solution to be offered as a cloud offering. As part of this cloud adoption EzeScan wanted a partner with thought leadership, ongoing services, and management for onboarding customers - Architectural leaders in SaaS deployment. Thoughtworks was chosen because of our ability to directly help onboard its customers quickly and more efficiently; something other managed services providers lacked.
Background and business requirements
Before engaging Thoughtworks, EzeScan was entirely on-premise, with both desktop and service based applications. However, EzeScan was seeking alignment with supported technologies in its cloud environment and wanted to provide its customers with the option of high quality and scalable cloud-based offerings in addition to the existing on-prem solution.
EzeScan had internally identified that developing a cloud offering within five years was the right business goal to strengthen future market demands.
Its five-year goal would effectively mitigate the risk of on-prem offerings becoming redundant in the market in the future. With the shift to the cloud, EzeScan could also expand its product offerings to continue driving market adoption and delivering best of breed software.
Both myself and our entire team have found it a pleasure working with Thoughtworks and the working relationship with Thoughtworks has exceeded our expectations. It is important to do your own research and don’t just try to shift to cloud on your own. Leveraging the expertise of AWS partners, like Thoughtworks has definitely helped us fast track our move to cloud.
Solution
Accelerating future growth with Thoughtworks' AWS solutions
The initial Cloud Foundation provided EzeScan with a secure Landing Zone that adheres to major compliance and security controls with integration directly with its current SSO. The Foundation is aligned to AWS’s Well-Architected Framework which spans the Six Pillars of Operational Excellence, Security, Performance Efficiency, Reliability, Cost Optimisation and Sustainability.
Thoughtworks delivered the product via Infrastructure as Code (IaC), meaning the solution was easily re-deployable across multiple regions and allowed for the creation of multiple operational accounts for various workloads and business units. This has allowed EzeScan to deploy the solution quickly in Australia, UK and USA regions.
As Thoughtworks delivered the Cloud Foundation as templated IaC, we could offer the solution at a fixed price. We chose this method for our customers as it provides a clear set of deliverables and timelines, paired with the fact that fixed price implementations are inherently less risky for customers.
For customers in heavily regulated industries, Thoughtworks can provide a security traceability matrix to illustrate alignment to each of the controls in certifications such as ISO27000:1, SOC2, PCI-DSS, IRAP and GDPR.
To further support EzeScan, Thoughtworks packaged up the Cloud Foundation with our world-class Managed Services to provide EzeScan access to augment and extend its team with highly qualified cloud engineers. The service has included complete visibility and control of the platform, round the clock support, 365 days a year, the benefit from ongoing cloud design improvements and AWS Well-Architected advice and continuous compliance.
Technologies used:
EC2
Fargate
MS Windows Server
RDS
Route53
Key challenges
EzeScan faced a challenge in the decoupling of the Windows-based application into a containerised solution to achieve two core goals:
Lowering of business costs
Ability to independently scale the individual components
EzeScan’s primary challenge was to develop a cloud based solution to meet the growing demands of customers and industry alike. Its customers faced challenges of high costs and a need to reduce the costs, errors and time associated with manual invoice processing.
Outcome
Customers have found that using software as a service lowers the real cost of deploying and utilizing software applications.
The benefits of EzeScan’s cloud solution:
Lowered the price point for invoice processing
Fast invoice input and improved payment times
Improvement in cash flow projections/management
Fixed monthly cost
Available to use 24/7
Provided as a managed service reduces customer admin
No customer infrastructure cost
EzeScan Cloud has initially been deployed to offer its customers a SaaS Accounts Payable solution. 90% of new Accounts Payable customers prefer to utilize a cloud solution.
Thoughtworks worked with EzeScan to:
Allow them to migrate its AP Processing Solution to a new SaaS platform to meet current market demands resulting in new revenue stream in Australia and UK
Enable faster provision of customer solutions
Simplify and improve EzeScan’s global support services
Facilitate growth into other markets
Improve compliance with standards e.g. ISO 27000:1, 27017, PCI-DSS, IRAP and GDPR.
The partnership between Thoughtworks, AWS and ourselves is based on mutual respect and learnings with all partners working seamlessly together to help us achieve our cloud goals and drive increased uptake of our solutions globally.
