Self-managed super funds (SMSF) are one of the most popular ways for Australians to invest their retirement savings. From humble beginnings, Squirrel has now become one of the leading, 100% Australian owned and non-bank SMSF companies. Their innovative SMSF platform is supporting customers across Australia to self manage their super funds and take control of their finances.
We recently caught up with our customer Squirrel Super to discuss how our Cloud Managed Services is helping Squirrel to scale their SaaS business.
Itoc's Cloud Managed Services has enabled Squirrel Super to:
- Deploy new application features faster
- Have peace of mind legislation requirements are up to date
- Save internal resource time to focus on innovation and development
- Run their Amazon Web Services (AWS) environment at peak performance 24/7
Challenge
An extremely agile deployment model for apps was critical.
Squirrel Super offer customers flexibility, efficiency and connectivity with an online solution to self-manage their super. This means an extremely agile deployment model for apps is critical.
Squirrel Managing Director, James Burr said that as they continued to innovate and develop their platform, the existing build and deployment processes became a bottleneck and an impediment to the application release cycle.
“The capacity of the internal team of software engineers at Squirrel was being consumed by managing tedious manual software releases.” (James Burr)
The superannuation landscape is constantly changing and keeping up with the regulatory compliance can be intense. “We needed a solution to deploy our applications faster than ever whilst reducing the risk.” (James Burr)
Squirrel’s CTO identified that as a digital native business and start up it is hard to have expertise across the board.
Approach
Running at peak performance 24/7.
The initial engagement with Itoc involved a review of the current state of their AWS platform, followed by DevOps enablement, however the CTO identified the need for an extra pair of hands. When James Burr moved into the role as Managed Director at Squirrel shortly after the departure of the CTO, the value of an ongoing managed service with Itoc became even more evident.
Itoc’s Cloud Managed Services looks after the operational heavy lifting and ensures that the Squirrel AWS environment is running at peak performance 24/7, without business interruptions. “The ongoing support from Itoc has been amazing to take the responsibilities off of the Squirrel team of managing data in this ever-changing environment.” (James Burr)
“We see Itoc as an extension of our team and their customer service is a highlight. I really like that I can pick up the phone and talk to the Itoc team rather than relying on an online ticket system,” said Burr. “Itoc have gone above and beyond to contribute to a seamless transition between CTO’s. This has given us the time to look for the right fit for the next CTO and have the confidence that we haven’t been at risk during this time.”
James Burr as well as Squirrel’s CEO and Head of Product appreciate the higher level of support from Itoc and that they no longer have to worry about the risk with the data and technology.
Outcome
No more bottlenecks when deploying new features.
The managed services arrangement means that the Squirrel team can focus on building great customer experiences and deliver new applications and services, and we can leave the operational management of the AWS platform to Itoc. (James Burr)
“This is so important to us not just for the day to day operations of the technology, but the peace of mind that by working with Itoc our data is safe and we are up to date with legislation.” (James Burr)
Squirrel Super no longer has bottlenecks when it comes to deploying new features for their customers resulting in significant time and cost savings. “Itoc has now taken away the manual effort and complexity of application deployment, so we can spend time delivering better software faster.” (James Burr)
Squirrel’s internal team of software engineers, product and financial education specialists can now get back to being busy with ongoing innovation and development for services. “With Itoc on our team, we need less IT expertise internally so we can focus on what matters to our customers.” (James Burr)
The next phase for Squirrel Super is underway to expand their product suite and to continue to enhance their amazing customer experiences, all with the help of Itoc.
