A large imaging solutions manufacturer revamped their cloud services reporting with a scalable UX-driven engine powered by Jaspersoft

Challenge

The company needed to maintain a high bar of customer experience as its business expanded

Besides printers, the company offered a suite of cloud solutions to help companies of all sizes manage their fleet of printers and print activities. These cloud solutions provided customers with critical usage insights. These insights helped small businesses and large enterprises alike reduce the financial and environmental costs of printing.

The company's cloud services customer base rapidly grew, reaching over 23,000 customers — which was exceeding the ability of its then-current analytics architecture to support and scale. The software architecture team, led by the lead architect, sought a replacement solution that could support such growth.

The company's growing number of customers posed multiple challenges for its previous solution:

• Other reporting servers had high failure rates when processing large datasets.

• Software developers needed to write new data application programming interfaces (APIs) for new reports, which would take too long and wouldn't support agile report development.

• Dashboards would fail to populate with data, creating negative customer experiences and risking a decline in usage. 

To maintain growth and customer satisfaction, the lead architect knew the company's cloud services needed to modernize — and quickly. The company's value had outpaced its technology, and its teams couldn't keep up with customer requests.

Solution

A reporting engine with speed-to-market, reliability, and scalability

The lead architect found Jaspersoft while searching through a charting library and was impressed by his initial review. He and the software architecture team chose Jaspersoft for its turnkey solution, reliability, scalability, and flexibility. Additionally, the security model perfectly matched the company's multi-tenancy needs. Enabled by Jaspersoft, the software architecture team hoped to build a UX-driven reporting experience that was simple and quick for end-users.

A turnkey solution that decreased development time

The company's developers needed a solution with a short development time. This let them focus less on rewriting their then-current reporting system and more on modernizing their customer offerings. Due to the ongoing impacts on customers, the lead architect and his team also needed a reporting solution that was ready to deploy as soon as possible.

Jaspersoft offered agility, ease of implementation, and support for the company's custom UX. Jaspersoft also included a ready-to-use engine that let users visualize, create, manage, and distribute reports.

“One of the key things that I thought was most successful is that Jaspersoft is a turnkey out-of-the-box solution that just worked," said the lead architect.

Their team also valued Jaspersoft's REST API options, which let the company easily incorporate reports and embedded analytics into its website and mobile apps.

Reliability that customers can count on

The company needed a reliable reporting engine that could keep up with its growing customer base. As an out-of-the-box reporting solution, Jaspersoft was well tested across a vast number of customers processing large datasets. It was proven to work in any environment, decreasing the risks of bugs and maintenance issues.

Jaspersoft offered a reliable multi-tenancy model, easy-to-reach support, and a well-documented API framework. These ensured that its reporting features stayed current without requiring constant developer maintenance. Jaspersoft also enabled the company's self-hosting in accordance with GDPR privacy requirements.

"Our error rates and downtime were close to zero with Jaspersoft," said the lead architect. "Our customers’ reports worked every time, and they noticed a big difference in their uptime."

Scalability and flexibility that support user growth

As the company's user base and data volume continued to grow, its new reporting solution had to handle and process hundreds of millions of records. This occurred without requiring extensive configuration or compromising speed or performance.

Many of the company's users generated and viewed reports simultaneously, frequently, and in rapid succession. Jaspersoft efficiently managed resources, such as memory and storage, to maintain performance and limit "bottlenecks" across varying loads. As a result, the company's reporting engine could dependably handle concurrent usage without delays or errors.

Jaspersoft also stood out for its ability to customize reports and visualizations. As the business expanded, Jaspersoft let the software architecture team rapidly develop solutions for customers' evolving needs.

“It was very valuable to be able to rapidly develop, deploy, test, and adapt based on internal and customer feedback," the lead architect shared. "We didn’t have that kind of agility before Jaspersoft.”

UX-driven approach to reports and visual dashboards

UX-driven reports and dashboards were easier for users to learn and use, reducing the need for extensive training. The company's target users generally weren't reporting experts or business intelligence professionals, so user-friendliness was critical.

The reporting developers built dashboards with the user in mind. They made them easy to navigate so customers could effortlessly access the insights they needed. With Jaspersoft, developers could build HTML visualizations and embed them directly into their custom apps. This made reporting and visualizations more consistent and reliable.

Jaspersoft Visualize.js™ made it easy to embed pixel-perfect data visualizations that were scalable, interactive, and user-friendly. The software architecture team could create robust reporting processes without impairing users' experiences.

“We had a great experience using Visualize.js," the lead architect added. "It was well-documented, simple, and filled with examples."

Results

Jaspersoft reliably captured and reported on millions of records, maintaining high customer satisfaction as the business expands

The number of customers served by the company's cloud solutions continued to climb beyond 23,000. The company's reporting engine, powered by Jaspersoft, pulled reports for many hundreds of thousands of printers, devices, and end users. Additionally, Jaspersoft captured hundreds of millions of records and created reports and visual dashboards with over 99% uptime.

According to the lead architect, building a system in house with equal power, reliability, and scalability would have taken about two years. Instead, the lead architect and the software architecture team established a reliable, customer-ready solution in under six months.

The lead architect expressed optimism about his team's product roadmap with Jaspersoft. Following this success, the company planned to build various enhancements, including:

• Scheduling reports with multiple formats

• Drill downs from summary data to causal factors

• Custom report options for the company's users