AI-POWERED SUPPLY CHAIN PLANNING SOFTWARE COMPANY

End-to-end IoT Solution for Cold Chain Management

Improving quality and efficiencies for global vaccine distribution

Background

A nonprofit organization that designs, manufactures, and deploys custom cold chain equipment for low- and middle-income countries around the globe sought a partner to provide an end-to-end IoT solution for device management and data collection/visualization.

Man in lab coat in front of cold storage

Challenge

Preserving the quality and integrity of the global vaccines throughout transportation & logistics was imperative. The cold chain devices used to distribute the vaccines typically resided in environments with unreliable power availability and limited cellular and Wi-Fi connectivity. These environments exposed devices to challenging conditions such as extreme heat and dust exposure, harsh vibrations when in transport, humidity & moisture, etc. Moreover, device ownership was not controlled, meaning devices could easily end up in the wrong hands. This made them susceptible to data privacy concerns, man-in-the middle attacks and other malicious intents.

Solution

The Kopius team began by building a full end-to-end Internet of Things (IoT) solution leveraging Microsoft Azure, which enabled data collection and transmission with a focus on low power consumption and intermittent cellular connectivity. A custom web app was also developed on Microsoft Azure that provided device software, firmware, and configuration management as well as data visualization/reporting. To address data security concerns, Kopius applied a Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) and a hardware-based Trusted Platform Module (TPM) solution to provide secure over-the-air (OTA) device firmware and configuration update capabilities. This meant devices were now protected from malicious activity in the field.

Results

The solution provided near real-time insights into remote cold chain equipment that enabled the client to respond and act accordingly, ultimately improving efficiencies and quality related to global vaccine distribution. They now had the ability to push firmware, software, and configuration updates to all of their devices deployed around the world, giving them the ability to change device firmware, software, and behavior as needed.

HEALTHCARE TECHNOLOGY STARTUP

Healthcare Data Modernization Journey

Optimized data management processes, accelerated product development, enhanced business operations

Background

A healthcare technology startup has an ambitious goal of transforming the healthcare industry by accelerating technological, clinical, and operational advances.

Among the company’s strategies, is to rapidly build a comprehensive offering in revenue cycle management (RCM), achieved by purchasing several RCM businesses and unifying them under the company’s new brand.

Challenge

The client was in an active M&A environment where several companies with similar offerings and disparate infrastructures came together to operate as an integrated offering. Managing several databases built on different technologies, each with its own structure, data sources, and processes was challenging. Each of the acquired companies was also operating its data with expensive on-premise infrastructure in various states of maturity and storage capacity.

Further, the startup did not have adequate data management capabilities, so it urgently needed to improve data management without the expert leadership needed to do it.

Solution

The healthcare technology company needed a unified platform to operate current capabilities, and one that could scale to accommodate future enterprise features.

Kopius was chosen to modernize the data approach because of our expertise in data management and analytics combined with extensive experience in the healthcare industry. In addition, our proven experience working closely with Microsoft on innovative Azure-based projects gave the company confidence that we would effectively transform their system.

Kopius first provided value definition and cloud strategy consulting services, beginning with extensive interviews and a proof of concept with internal stakeholders, and providing education to upskill the company in its data knowledge. We helped our client to choose a solution that integrated Databricks and Azure with a Databricks Lakehouse to create a data warehouse combined with a data lake, which was the ideal solution for their needs and maturity.

The implementation strategy began by updating one of the purchased companies on the proposed data infrastructure to test and iterate before rolling it out more broadly. The approach gave maximum feedback for a rational investment and built adaptation and scalability into the effort through an agile process.

Kopius services for the data transformation effort included value definition, cloud strategy, data & analytics, cloud engineering, strategic technical capacity, and project leadership.

Results

Modernizing the data infrastructure for this tech-first RCM company has optimized data management processes and investments. Further, cloud-based data solutions using Databricks and Azure enabled product development that was not available with on-premise solutions, such as data streaming and machine learning.

Establishing data governance and infrastructure has also made it possible for other business groups within the startup to access certain data to optimize customer experiences and business operations.

Fintech Company

Fintech Company Migrates from Monolithic On-Prem System to Cloud-Based Microservices Solution

Accelerated growth, increased customer satisfaction, increased efficiency

Background

This tech-first provider of professional liability insurance for healthcare, real estate, tech, and other industries leverages technology to make insurance simple and affordable for professionals and small businesses.

The Challenge

Our client’s central technology was rigid to work with and built on an outdated version of a system that depended on on-premise data storage. The system included a client-facing interface for entering data, and a back-end used by team members to access and use the data.

The company experienced significant growth in customers and employees using its system as it expanded the range of products offered. The system was not able to easily scale with their growth and was cumbersome to use, and there was a risk that customers and employees would experience issues. While the code in the legacy system was high-quality, it was difficult to maintain across different teams, and a challenge to find engineers with expertise in the system. Further, team members struggled to update their on-prem data storage, which slowed down the business.

The Solution

It was time for our client to migrate its monolithic legacy system to a modern microservice architecture on the cloud to improve performance and the customer experience.

Our client selected Kopius because of the team’s specialized technical skills, the ease of working with nearshore teams, and the exceptional value of the work for the investment made. Further, Kopius demonstrated significant expertise in the financial services domain, which gave our client confidence that Kopius project leads understand the unique and consequential requirements of software engineered for the insurance industry.

Kopius designated a team that includes a tech lead, developers, a QA lead, a QA analyst for QA automation, business analysts, and a product owner to partner with our client’s teams, enabling us to be flexible and address a variety of domains and products with wide coverage on our client’s platforms.

Kopius developed a modern microservice architecture that includes process automation developed with Golang and deployed on AWS. In contrast to the previous system, this cloud-based solution supports company growth, provides greater flexibility to add features and functionality, and offers a solution that is easier to manage and organize.

Kopius deployed automated QA testing for each microservice, improving the quality of the service and reducing the number of bugs sent to production – improving the customer experience while reducing costs.

Results

Our client is benefiting from reduced infrastructure costs and time investments to support its growth in customers, products, and employees. An additional benefit is that development and deployment processes are now easier and better organized, to further optimize the business. By using micro-services, the client can scale each micro-service differently and suited to its specific needs. The microservice approach also creates flexibility in staffing models and simplifies the structure of roles and responsibilities.

Now our client can scale its offerings with greater performance and is also liberated to add features and products faster and more easily. The updated architecture showed immediate benefits, with the client’s team releasing new products before the new system was fully launched.

Spaceflight

Book My Flight Web Application

Spaceflight is a premier launch services and mission management provider, offering routine, cost-effective access to space, helping customers to explore beyond our planet.

Traditionally, access to space has been limited to government entities due to cost. Sending satellites into orbit once required purchasing an entire rocket; however, with the growing industry of smallsats, the demand for routine, cost-effective access to space has increased exponentially. Demand, coupled with the growing number of launch vehicle providers, created an opportunity for Spaceflight to assist in identifying, booking, and managing rideshare launches.

With a straightforward and cost-effective suite of products and services including state-of-the-art satellite infrastructure, rideshare launch offerings, payload integration and global communications networks, Spaceflight enables commercial, non-profit organizations and government entities to get launched, achieving their mission goals – on time and on budget.

Challenge

Spaceflight’s services are delivered by using a network of launch providers, each with distinct booking and management processes. To be an industry leader, Spaceflight needed its customers to be able to reserve and manage satellite launches from its website. Spaceflight also needed to provide the industry with an aggregated launch schedule for all possible launches.

In addition to the website needing new functionality, the visual design of the website was not competitive and needed to be refreshed.

Further, Spaceflight was challenged by inefficiencies in its internal operations, and complicated customer communications.

Solution

Kopius* was engaged to design and develop a web application to address the booking process for Spaceflight customers. The solution allows users to make a payment, reserve their launch, and to manage all steps of the launch process through an integrated portal.

The process started with UX exercises to plot the ideal user experience and typical user requirements when incorporating this functionality into the existing site. Applying the UX and UI principles designated by Kopius’ design team, the engineering team build the web application, which enables customers to specify launch and satellite criteria, which is matched with an optimal reservation using a cloud-based serverless architecture and a React framework. Kopius used a complex launch capacity matching algorithm, coupled with multiple existing systems to speed time-to-market.

The design team re-skinned the website to deliver a cohesive and competitive visual identity along with enhanced functionality.

Technologies used include Amazon Web Services GovCloud Services, DynamoDB, API Gateway, S3, SES, Cognito, Lamda serverless-based architecture, CloudWatch, and Secrets Manager. Third-party connected services include Smartsheet, Box, Jira, and Strip.

Results

The client experienced the brand elevation that comes from a beautiful customer-centric web application, with a simple, easy-to-use experience. The web application was well-received upon introduction at a major industry conference, demonstrating how space launch services can be simplified. The effort advanced Spaceflight’s mission to offer best-in-class launch provider services.

React Framework

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.

PrecisionHawk

Cloud Enablement

PrecisionHawk is a commercial drone and data company, dedicated to empowering enterprises with actionable intelligence about their physical assets. PrecisionHawk applies artificial intelligence (AI) to its drone footage to create aerial data. PrecisionHawk serves the agriculture industry, and in fact its name comes from the name “wine hawk” because its first drones chased pest birds from vineyards.

Challenge

PrecisionHawk needed to improve its data architecture to further optimize its AI and client results. While PrecisionHawk has an industry-leading team of internal technologists, the specific challenge with its data structure required specialized skills.

Solution

Kopius* was engaged to analyze PrecisionHawk’s data architecture and make recommendations for improvement, and then implement those recommendations.

After a discovery process, Kopius proposed an Amazon Web Services (AWS) Data Pipeline as a web service that would reliably process and move data between different AWS compute and storage services, as well as on-premises data sources, at specified intervals. We then moved on-premise ETL (extract, transform, and load) processes to an AWS Data Pipeline. The solution uses the AWS cloud for data processing and transformation in a data pipeline.

Results

The solution helped PrecisionHawk to easily create complex data processing workloads that are fault-tolerant, repeatable, and highly available. It allows resource availability, managing inter-task dependencies, retrying transient failures or timeouts in individual tasks, or creating a failure notification system. Using the cloud, it also allows the client to move and process data that was previously locked up in on-premises data silos.

*Kopius performed this work under its previously known business name, Valence.