Key facts
TYPE
Dedicated Teams
PRODUCT
Web & Mobile app
INDUSTRY
Wellness/Fitness
TIME
2019 - Ongoing
Summary
We are helping Paselibre to make their business thrive through "hassle-free" software solutions.
01.The Client
Paselibre is a corporate benefit for those companies that care for and motivate their employees. They offer unlimited access to more than 600 sports and wellness centers in Uruguay with a wide variety of activities, locations, and hours through a B2B2C subscription model.
Companies are currently looking for different options to attract and retain employees, and Paselibre was created in 2019 to revolutionize corporate wellness with a different benefit and high perceived value for our local market.
Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is not only important for health and relationships, but it can also improve employees' productivity, and ultimately performance, so Paselibre appears as an ideal option for both employees and employers.
Uruguay
+600 centers
02.The Challenges
Paselibre was just a new venture with a limited budget and resources, with considerable uncertainty as to what the business volume could be.
They had very tight deadlines and many things to take care of for going live. The web platform was crucial and a must-have for the business, but it had to be developed from scratch in record time.
They needed a full IT team to get on board immediately. But they were aware that IT was a highly competitive labor market and Uruguay was facing a widespread technology skills gap.
On top of that, they were about to launch their business, and many things were far from being fully defined and clear. They needed a real partner that could handle the project internally, avoiding the hassle, costs, and time associated with recruiting and retaining the talent needed.
03.The Solution
As with any new business, in the short and mid-term Paselibre would be in a state of constant flux. They have seen IT staff augmentation as a powerful tool, allowing them to use outsourced talent on an as-needed basis while managing workers and the backlog directly.
In 2 weeks we were able to recruit and onboard the team needed.
We were in charge of the entire development process. The front-end and design teams had to take into account multiple portals:
The project also involved DevOps experts who worked in the C/CD process to improve the publishing process and make it more efficient.
After the MVP, which was developed and deployed as agreed, we have been working on several releases adding features, new functionalities, and performance improvements.
One of the major challenges after going live was performance and optimization. Paselibre, as a new venture, didn't know in advance how much demand for service there would be. And even their most optimistic forecasts fell short.
The platform incorporates hundreds of videos and photo galleries, and this type of content drastically slows site load times. Paselibre's success heavily relies on its platform and user experience, so we had to focus on and prioritize load optimization.
In general, common strategies to speed up the site such as compression and advanced search/indexing are not enough. So we thought ahead and considered some Cloud services that could help speed up loading times and avoid disrupting the user experience.
2021AWS S3 Refactor
The system's MVP orginally used a custom file storage implemented by the company, so we migrated our cloud provider to AWS in 2021 to reduce project costs and maximize the provider's resource usage.
AWS has an enormous number of videos and photo galleries securely stored on Amazon S3. A simple plug-in allows the website to access this media upon user request quickly, instead of using older methods which slow down load times significantly.
We gained in file availability as S3 is desinged for 99.99% uptime. It maintains this unmatched durability by creating copies of all objects uploaded to S3 and storing them across multiple systems within a single AWS Region.
We also started to use AWS CloudFront CDN to ensure the content was delivered globally with the best possible performance.
On top of that, considering the use case scenario and performance access requirements, we configured S3 tier settings to optimize the cost of using those contents.
2022Cloud elasticity
At the beginning of 2022, the business was growing by leaps and bounds, so it was imperative to work on improving performance and scalability to avoid the system slowing to a crawl or, worse, going down altogether, in case the user base would grow quickly or unexpectedly.
With cloud elasticity, computing power could scale up as high as needed to handle unexpected usage spikes.
Different services were implemented in AWS, including EKS and CloudWatch:
- Amazon EKS to take advantage of all the perfomance, scale, rellability, and availability of AWS infrastructure
- CloudWatch to help monitor the perfomance and health of AWS resources and applications
The corresponding autoscaling was enabled, allowing the application to grow and decrease depending of its traffic.
Cloud elasticity allows Paselibre to cover expected and predictable workload demands and handle rapid and unpredictable changes in operation scale, paying only for the number of resources in use at any given time.
2023Mobile app
Currently, we are working on the mobile application, to be deployed by March 2023. It includes the same features as the web application plus some other new ones, such as giving the user the option to do their check-in.
HIGHLIGHTS
2 weeks We were able to recruit and onboard the team nedeed in record time.
5Products launched: Landing/Corporate site, Administration site, Gym/Center, End user portal and Mobile application
5-7
People assigned to Paselibre: Front & Back end developers, Tester, UX/UI Designer, DevOps Analyst, PM, ETL.
2 seconds
Loading times were significantly improved while having a heavy usage of videos and images.
TECHNOLOGIES
Web apps
We designed and developed landing pages for both companies and centers, which place a crucial role when attracting new leads.
The other apps are where the core experience of Paselibre takes place for all users:
- End users enter their personal portal where they can subscribe to the service, search for their nearest places to go, and enroll to them.
- Gyms and centers also have their own portal to manage the check-in process and keep track of their userbase.
Mobile app
The mobile app includes the same features as the web application plus some other new ones, such as giving the user the option to do their check-in to their gym of choice and statistics of their visits and training.
Its user-friendly and quick to use design allows users to make the most of their fitness routines and keep their settings and visits under control.
04.The Results
The MVP was deployed on time and within budget.
Currently, the Platform handles 10,000+ users, 600+ Gyms, and 20,000+ monthly check ins without friction and it keeps an outstanding user experience.
Their business success relies heavily on the platform, its usability and user experience. User experience, as we all know, is closely related to app performance, and Paselibre has been overpassing their targets every year, which means a huge success.
The Switch team continues to support Paselibre in growing its IT muscle how and when needed to ensure a reduced time-to-market for new features, and rapid response to user feedback.
In a nutshell, we are helping Paselibre to make their business thrive through "hassle-free" software solutions.
+10,000Current users
+600Gyms and wellness center
+20,000Monthly check ins
Testimonial
They go beyond being a supplier, acting as a strategic collaborative partner who fully immerses themselves in your business and projects, treating them as their own.
- DIEGO DE SALTERIAN
CEO, Paselibre
