Empire Group: Leveraging DevOps and Automation to Enhance Business Operations
Technologies: AWS CodeCommit, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy, ECS, API Gateway, Cognito, RDS Aurora, SNS, and S3.
THE CHALLENGE
Empire Group needed to solve some challenges with their carriers delivering in turbulent areas with limited internet access. Providing visibility for the logistics team would give them an advantage they didn’t have before. The other challenge that Empire faced was that their old systems were not connected to the carriers in real-time. Being able to invoice customers and provide notifications to their customers needed to be faster.
THE SOLUTION
Presidio is working with Empire Group to deliver their new mobile software at lightning speed through automated workflows leveraging AWS CodeCommit and CodePipeline. The AWS products introduced were CodeCommit and CodePipeline which would push their application to a production. This solution would allow for automated deployment and automated scalability which has become strategic to their vision of self-driving IT Operations. Each time a new feature is checked into the CodeCommit repository, AWS CodePipeline delivers it seamlessly into production via AWS Elastic Container Service (ECS) Infrastructure.
Empire’s trucking services are often in areas where there is limited internet access, so the use of progressive web application (PWA) based technology allows for caching and offline use of their application. This in conjunction with AWS Cloud Front CDN caching services allows for high-performance mobile applications even under such difficult conditions. With this new technology in place, Empire Group’s carriers are empowered to do their job with confidence and allow the central logistics and customers to know when a package has been delivered successfully. This solves a problem the carriers faced quite often since they are often traveling to areas with spotty mobile coverage.
THE IMPACT
Empire Group is now able to spend more time on their core business rather than spending time with IT operations. As new features are requested of the business, Empire can now commit code to their repository which will then trigger the pipeline to build, test, and deploy to production. Taking advantage of AWS Elastic Container Service and RDS Database also allows the staff at Empire Group to reduce the administrative overhead of maintaining systems and scale out on demand. The business is also now able to track deliveries and update their systems in real-time so that invoices can get out the door as soon as a delivery is confirmed. The improved logistics provides much needed insights into the customer experience which was not possible before. Knowing that the carrier was able to deliver service to the customer at the expected time is something that was difficult to know due to the manual efforts the confirmations would need to take to get back to Empire Group staff and the turbulent conditions the carriers faced assigned.
THE CUSTOMER
Empire Group has been in business for 70+ years and counting and specializes in transportation and logistics for their customers’ needs. They started as a small organization and are currently carrying more than 1,500 loads monthly in every area of the continental United States. The logistics team at Empire has unparalleled focus on job performance, customer satisfaction, and ability to manage supply chain. Empire employs carriers who are focused on turbulent terrain and conditions that many other logistic companies might shy away from.
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