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Staff Augmentation Case
Tech Transformation & Team Building at Cakap
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Tech Transformation & Team Building at Cakap
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Accelerated new feature delivery by using the latest technologies
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Accelerated new feature delivery by using the latest technologies
Client background
Cakap is an online learning platform based in Indonesia, with 3 million+ students and 1,800+ course instructors. Unlike its competitors, Udemy and Coursera, Cakap offers 2-way direct interaction between the students and instructors to enhance the learning experience. It's a multi-award-winning upskilling platform accredited by Forbes Asia, the World Economic Forum, MURI, and many more organizations. Currently, Cakap owns the crown of the #1 Upskilling Platform in Indonesia. Although Cakap didn't make these achievements overnight, it had to go through numerous challenges before obtaining this marvelous level of growth. PerfectzDigital has played its role in helping Cakap maintain and grow its business. We have been working with Cakap for over 2 years - and we assist them with our dedicated staff augmentation services.
Key Challenges Faced By Cakap:
Cakap was still a kicking startup at the beginning, and it did revolutionize Indonesia's online course market in a short amount of time. But an online course provider is highly dependent upon its digital presence, i.e., its “website pl on and application”. Although Cakap had an expert development team, the number of resources was quite few for such a large platform. Furthermore, the costs of hiring world-class developers and managing a complex platform were massively high for a growing startup. With fewer developers, it was tough for Cakap to implement new technologies for optimizing the website portal and mobile applications (iOS & Android). Moreover, training the employees was time-consuming as those developers had to work on the platform full-time. The client had time constraints to train the on-site staff and budget limitations to hire new skilled developers. In this case, Cakap required expert developers at reasonable costs to keep their website and app experience optimized for both segments, learners, and instructors.
The following were the challenges faced by Cakap:
Immense costs of hiring individual expert web and app developers- Small team of developers to manage a large growing learning platform
- Training the current development team due to time constraints
- Upgrading the back end tech stack for higher platform uptime
- Transition to the latest tech stack due to time and budget limitations
- Inability to add latest features due to old legacy technologies
- Risk of affecting the current users as tech change can alter user experience
- Longer development cyles and time to market
Role Of Perfectz Digital
- Proposed Solutions
Cakap made the choice of partnering with a top-notch staff augmentation service provider. Perfectz Digital is known for its splendid team-building services in the Asia region. So Cakap decided to get in touch with Perfectz Digital for ultimate growth and securing the future. Perfectz Digital onboarded the client 2 years ago and quickly started developing a strategic roadmap. Our team conducted 2 weeks of analysis to identify the pain points of Cakap. We did the company’s tech reviews and staff assessments to find the loopholes in the operations. Finally, a Tech Uplift & Team Building Plan was proposed to Cakap. We understood team building and technology reforms were necessary for a company with such potential to grow. Our team initiated the project to transform the Cakap into a world-class upskilling platform.
Team Building: Synergized Staff Augmentation & Training
At the time of onboarding, Cakap had only 21 team members in the development team to manage the platform on web and mobile apps. The client required new human resources for each tech vertical: Backend, Web Front-End, Native iOS, Native Android, and DevOps. We provided a remote dedicated team of developers to the client, which is massively cost-effective compared to hiring an on-site staff. Perfectz Digital hired 26 new developers for the client who possessed excellent domain knowledge and expertise to do the job. 15 of those resources were young and fresh developers to lessen the budgeting burden on the client. The fresh developers were not rookies because all our new developers go through a 4-month training program before deployment for clients.
Tech Vertical | Team Expansion |
|---|---|
| Back-End | From 4 to 13-member team |
| Web Front-End | From 6 to 12-member team |
| Native iOS | From 5 to 10-member team |
| Native Android | From 6 to 12-member team |
| DevOps | From 2 to 4-member team |
Backend Technology Stack Upgrade: Java Spring Boot
Cakap’s platform user base was massively growing so it required a significantly powerful backend to manage a wider audience. Consequently, the back-end development team was increased from 4 to 13 members to revamp Cakap’s back end
Analytics & Reporting Capabilities to Enhance Front End Communication
To optimize the front-end communication in real-time, it was migrated to a detached standalone application. Likewise, analytics and reporting capabilities were enhanced to refine the user-centric applications in real time. It helped eliminate UI/UX errors as soon as the issues occurred.
Re-architectured the Platform's Signalling Flows & Periodical Security Patches
Cakap had minor back-end issues, causing higher loading time, page element issues, and overall performance. Our back-end team re-architectured the platform’s signalling flows to eliminate performance issues and usage
Backend Tech Stack Upgrade
The client’s current tech stack was not up to par with the latest technologies, so it was vital to upgrade the back-end tech stack to the most optimized solution for their platform. Hence, the back-end technology was upgraded to Java Spring Boot, which is one of the best back-end frameworks for web apps. It has enormous scalability and security options to support Cakap’s platform functions
Disaster Recovery Planning
Similar web applications, such as Udemy, Coursera, etc., have essential disaster recovery plans on the back end to maintain platform availability in case of unforeseen events. A reliable Disaster Recovery Plan was introduced by incorporating a multi-level backup system for the application. If the Cakap’s web app goes down, our team can choose the latest backup to maintain the application's uptime.
Effective Business Logic Alterations
In addition to other back-end changes, some core business logic alterations were implemented to the Cakap, including the web app and mobile applications. For example, the instructor dashboard was unified with the learner dashboard. So, a user who was using Cakap for learning and teaching purposes could perform both functions from the same dashboard.
Separation of Existing Features to New Microservices
Decoupling the single application features to microservices help achieve greater scalability, modularity, and maintainability. Therefore, the existing features were separated to microservices to reduce server load and enhance performance.
Middleware Upgrade
Cakap was using Kafka as its middleware, which is excellent for enhancing performance metrics and qualitative functions. But it wasn’t updated with their application’s requirements. Our team assisted with upgrading the Kafka to optimize the Cakap’s functionalities.
Tech Uplift: Empowered the Cakap’s Tech Stack
The second major challenge was implementing the latest technology for Cakap’s mobile applications on Android and iOS. Cakap’s current app development team was working on less efficient and near-outdated technologies for mobile applications. Moreover, adding new features was a hassle due to old legacy technologies. Tech Uplift was necessary to improve the security and user experience on portable devices such as tablets and smartphones. Moreover, it was essential for the client side to enhance the development, testing, and deployment. Unfortunately, it was not easy for Cakap to transition to new tech as thousands of users were already using the applications. The technology revamp could have affected their current user base due to changes in UI/UX. After carefully assessing the risks and opportunities, we aimed to implement the complete technology transformation for Cakap mobile apps. Our team conducted online meetings with the client’s development to understand their situation and directed them at each step to help them transition to the latest technologies seamlessly. We even hired a small extended remote team to add a single backlog feature in the latest technology without interrupting the existing team’s work.
Adaptation of New Android Technologies
Everything was upgraded to the latest technologies, from programming language to testing, to amplify team effectiveness and efficiency. Here’s a breakdown of our tech amendments at
Programming Language Upgrade - From Java to Kotlin
Kotlin’s syntax is more concise and has better support for Android development, which leads to more readable code with fewer errors. Moreover, it has better null safety, interoperability, and functional programming features, meaning better productivity in a shorter time.
Design Pattern Shift- From MVP to MVVM
MVVM architecture is a better choice for Android applications compared to MVP. Its data binding aligns well with the Android data binding library. The testing, maintenance, and support simply outperform the MVP design pattern.
Asynchronous Execution - RXJava to Coroutines
Kotlin Coroutines offers seamless control over the execution flow thanks to its lower-level concurrencies compared to RXJava’s higher-level reactive programming.
Implementation of Modern Design Practices - From XML to Jetpack Compose
Our experts recommended that Cakap switch to Jetpack Compose as it is the ideal choice for building an Android app’s native UI. It helps improve the rendering and startup time while loading all the elements successfully with less code.
Design Pattern Shift- From MVP to MVVM
MVVM architecture is a better choice for Android applications compared to MVP. Its data binding aligns well with the Android data binding library. The testing, maintenance, and support simply outperform the MVP design pattern.
Asynchronous Execution - RXJava to Coroutines
Kotlin Coroutines offers seamless control over the execution flow thanks to its lower-level concurrencies compared to RXJava’s higher-level reactive programming.
Transition to the Latest iOS Technologies
Similarly, the development methodologies were altered for Cakap’s iOS application. Let us explain the breakdown in the following points:
Major Tech stacks
Spring Boot
Kotlin
SwiftUIt
XCUITest
Jetpack Compose
Cakap’s Road To Success
Since Cakap’s partnership with Perfectz Digital, Cakap's e-learning platform has achieved significant results. The Elearning platform itself is able to handle over 3 million students with over 1800 instructors. The client has a sufficient team of developers in each tech vertical to support their operations. Time to development and market has decreased significantly as a larger team is working on the project. Each feature is thoroughly tested and optimized before deployment, which results in a positive user experience. Code quality, usability, and testing have massively improved, making Cakap’s platform optimized for all users across various devices. The client does not rely on manual testing much, as we have incorporated automated testing to make the QA process even faster. Furthermore, each tech vertical involves continuous integration and delivery to optimize the development and release. Cakap can recruit new staff from Perfectz Digital at any time. The client does not have to handle the burden of recruitment, interview, and training as Perfectz Digital manages these operations as Cakap’s staff augmentation partner
Client Testimonials
Yohan Limerta
Perfectz Digital has been a valuable strategic partner in building our platform teams. They approach each solution with creativity, speed, and quality