This interview is published on March 2021.
Frontliners is a visionary digital platform that delivers a total business solution for restaurants, cafes, bars and shops. Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the Danish platform provides companies within the hospitality and retail industry a unique all-in-one employee platform with relevant tools and functionalities to optimize performance and sales.
The key vision is to give companies across relevant industries the necessary means to continuously increase employee performance through a loop of employee performance measurement and relevant consecutive training. Combined with easy to navigate employee scheduling capabilities and AI recruitment features, the platform provides a powerful basis that helps drive business optimization and employee engagement.
Customer Satisfaction
Frontliners was founded in 2017, by Danny Fabricius Fogel. With more than 15 years experience in managing sales forces in the retail industry, Danny had a high level of understanding for the factors driving sales and customer satisfaction. Yet, as a customer himself, he kept witnessing lacking levels of service in both retail and hospitality. This became the driving factor in creating the ultimate all-in-one employee platform for the future. With his commercial background, combined with CTO Jeannette Hanson’s IT experience, the business took off. “We had our first paying customer onboard the system in September 2020. By the end of 2021 we expect to have 9.500 users”, Jeannette explains.
From IaaS to Paas
In order to ensure that the platform is ready for this large growth in customers, Frontliners wanted to transfer her architecture from an IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) to a PaaS (Platform as a Service). In other words: a shift from using Virtual Machines to the flexibility and scalability of a Webapp. This change is not only more cost efficient, but it also means that Frontliners will say goodbye to all unnecessary resources.
Easy and intuitive
To explore what they needed to successfully perform this transformation, Frontliners visited a workshop hosted by Intercept. “I knew very little about Azure”, says Jeannette. “I was surprised about how easy and intuitive everything it was. So I contacted Intercept afterwards to learn more about their solution.”
In Control
“Frontliners wanted to be more in control”, says Team Leader Azure Support Engineer Marc Bosgoed. “They were looking for a partner who could help them take the next step.” Frontliners found this partner in Intercept. “It was surprisingly easy to change from a Danish to a Dutch Cloud Service Provider”, says Jeannette enthusiastically. “It was done in the blink of an eye.”
Quick response
“One of the things we did is that we showed Frontliners how they can use their resources more effectively”, says Marc. This approach was very different from their previous CSP. “They never really helped us or did anything proactively”, confirms Jeannette. Being able to trust upon a Cloud Service Provider is important. “As a CSP, you must be able to help your customers at all times. Even if it’s in the middle of the night”, explains Marc. “Technical issues can be a threat to the business of our customers, if we don’t respond quickly enough.” Jeannette: “There are still so many things that we don’t know about working in Azure. Therefore it is great that we have direct access to technical people that can help us.”
Ambitions
“Intercept has helped us to make Frontliners a better solution in Azure”, says Jeannette. Now that the transition to a PaaS architecture is completed, it is time to take a closer look at the scalability of the platform. “We will ensure that the application scales according to their ambitions”, concludes Marc. Ambitious, they sure are. “We are aiming to go global”, says Jeannette. Their platform will soon be ready, to make that dream come true.
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