Amazon Web Services Enterprise Support Safeguards Captain BI's SaaS Business

In the era of rapid growth in the cross-border e-commerce industry, leveraging data efficiently to achieve business forecasting and precision operations injects new momentum into global development and provides a competitive edge. Shenzhen Chuanqi Technology Co., Ltd. is dedicated to helping cross-border e-commerce sellers achieve digitization, intelligence, collaboration, and globalization. They have launched Captain BI, a business intelligence SaaS product tailored to meet the needs of sellers of all sizes on various platforms. Captain BI provides insights into business operations, real-time sales performance, and multi-dimensional data analysis.

For SaaS services like Captain BI, stability and high availability are not only essential for the user experience but also critical for customer business development. As a vital partner in customer operations, the Captain BI team must effectively monitor and manage cloud infrastructure and respond to unforeseen events. "Our operations team faces a myriad of challenges, from ensuring stability during cross-border traffic surges to dealing with potential delays during peak service loads. We need a significant workforce to handle monitoring alerts, in addition to addressing occasional minor failures," says the Captain BI operations manager. "From the perspective of an SaaS service provider, we constantly strive to optimize business stability and user experience. To achieve this, we sought professional technical and service support. We aim to optimize our cloud architecture, deployment, and operations in alignment with best practices from a cloud-native standpoint."

Following a comprehensive evaluation of their business and operational needs, Captain BI operations team opted for the Amazon Web Services Enterprise Support. They aimed to utilize the tools and professional expertise provided within this support plan to enhance availability and business continuity while ensuring cost control.

Amazon Web Services Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) Safeguards Critical Moments

Cross-border e-commerce customers require more frequent business data analysis and data-driven business intelligence during important holiday promotions, such as Amazon Prime Day and "Black Friday." This presents a significant challenge for Captain BI's SaaS business. To mitigate business risks during critical holiday promotions, Technical Account Managers (TAMs) initiate the Infrastructure Event Management (IEM) process in advance. They analyze and assess potential performance bottlenecks that may arise during promotions and proactively reserve and scale infrastructure resources to ensure smooth business operations throughout the event.

"With Enterprise Support team working alongside us, we can confidently handle the surge in concurrent traffic during major events such as Amazon Prime Day and Black Friday. Even with business volumes increasing by over threefold, our resources are always prepared and readily available for immediate deployment," says the Captain BI operations manager.”

Preparing Business for Lifecycle Termination of Hosted Software with Proactive Services

Captain BI heavily relied on a popular software product in its early offerings. As the old version of this software product is set to stop receiving support in October 2023, Captain BI urgently needs to provide a seamless upgrade for its users to ensure the stability of its SaaS business. "Upgrading from the old version to the new version in a production environment requires careful planning and consideration," the Captain BI operations manager notes. “Faced with pressure of this upgrade, the proactive alerts from Enterprise Support service gave a deep impression. The TAM provided advance warnings about the end of life for this product a year ahead and offered professional tools to assist in pre-upgrade checks, identify compatibility issues with the old version, and provide tailored solutions and follow-up plans. This allowed the upgrade process to proceed steadily according to the plan and minimize business impact to zero.”

Enhanced Technical Support with On-Demand Access to Subject Matter Experts, Minimizing Technical Friction Between Cloud Services and Business

In addition to proactive services, the Enterprise Support team has established an efficient channel for communication between the Captain BI team, Amazon Web Services' technical and development teams, and subject matter experts. "Before using Enterprise Support services, many of our issues required waiting for case response. Now, our technical account manager can directly assist us in escalating complex cases to the backend service team for collaborative troubleshooting. They also provide specialized mitigation recommendations, enabling a tighter integration between our business and Amazon Web Services. This allows us to better leverage the advantages of the cloud and our investments," says the Captain BI operations manager.

By adopting Amazon Web Services Enterprise Support, the Captain BI team not only successfully addressed the operational challenges posed by their rapid business growth but also reaped multiple benefits. In the event of a failure, 24/7 technical support from TAMs and support engineers ensured rapid responses, with most issues being pinpointed and resolved in as little as 15 minutes. This close collaboration and quick response eliminated the need for a large operations team and high labor costs, allowing the Captain BI team to handle alert monitoring and management of the entire SaaS service platform, freeing up more human resources for business development. The technical account manager regularly conducts post-mortems on past issues, shares best practices, and offers optimization suggestions for Captain BI's technical architecture, deepening their understanding of Amazon Web Services' various services and further enhancing the resilience of Captain BI's operations.

The billing services and consultative checks for cloud operations provided by Enterprise Support allow the Captain BI operations team to stay updated on cloud resource usage and receive cost optimization recommendations from expert teams. This helps optimize costs and avoid unexpected expenses due to sudden spikes. "In the service report provided by experts, we can clearly see which aspects of our business are more suitable for using reserved instances, how to choose the right services and instance types for specific workloads, and view cost-saving ratios. With this detailed report, we can stay informed about the business's operational status and find a balance between business performance and cost," notes the Captain BI operations manager.

Furthermore, by combining Amazon Web Services' managed services with Enterprise Support service, Captain BI can harness the advantages of cloud-native architecture to further enhance the reliability of its SaaS services. They also better protect user data and business security with the help of Amazon Trusted Advisor, enabling over 500,000 cross-border e-commerce customers to operate their global businesses in an intelligent and collaborative manner through data-driven insights.

In the future, the Captain BI team will continue to collaborate with the Enterprise Support team to achieve ongoing optimization of their big data architecture and performance. They will also embed more cloud-managed services into their business intelligence products, providing cost savings and a more diverse range of features and convenient experience for cross-border e-commerce customers.

Shenzhen Chuangqi Technology Co., Ltd. is a leading Chinese SaaS system service company specializing in cross-border e-commerce. Under its flagship offering, Captain BI Business Intelligence, the company focuses on Amazon's precision operations and data analysis. It provides comprehensive and multi-dimensional analysis for enterprises at various stages and scales. Captain BI offers a one-stop solution for precise advertising and end-to-end supply chain collaboration management, helping businesses achieve data-driven operations.