I was recently reading Satya’s book Hit Refresh when I was struck by the fact that my employer had recently had their own moment where we Hit Refresh. For those who aren’t familiar with Catapult Systems – we have been providing services to help our customers leverage Microsoft technology for over 20 years. Here’s a quick behind-the-scenes tour of how Catapult Hit Refresh and changed their direction to provide more value for our customers…
In mid-2014, Catapult identified the shift towards the cloud and how digital transformation would fundamentally alter how business is done for our customers and ourselves. The shift to the cloud has drastically changed the landscape of how service-based firms, like Catapult, functions. This was readily apparent as projects which would have taken weeks or months, were now able to be completed in days. Catapult’s Hit Refresh moment happened when Catapult came to the realization that we could provide our clients with more value by fundamentally changing our approach.
Instead of deploying a solution for a customer and returning two years later when the new version became available, we decided to take a partner-centric approach to deploy a solution—which could easily be adapted and work to provide more value to the client over time.
This approach is what we refer to as “Solutions as a Service”, leveraging Microsoft technologies combined with Catapult’s expertise and Customer Success Management with our own intellectual property.
The first of these solutions was branded as “Fuse” and went live at our first customer site mid-2015. Fuse helps to empower your employees by providing a modern intranet solution that connects people and information. Built on Office 365, Fuse is proven to drive licensed usage of SharePoint Online by a factor of 4X.
The second of these solutions was branded as “Launch” and went live early in 2017. Built on Azure and OMS, Launch helps to optimize operations by providing IT Lifecycle Management services focused on users, Windows 10 and Servers. Launch has been able to automate more than 98% of IT Lifecycle Management tasks without intervention and makes IT organizations more effective through automating redundant tasks.
The third of these solutions was branded as “Spyglass” and went live late in 2017. Spyglass enables our customers to be more efficient at improving their IT Security and Compliance through assessment, ongoing security coaching, implementation, and unique insight and analytics engine. Bridging siloed security tools into a single pane of glass for reporting, Spyglass tracks, monitors, and remediates issues, continuously improving a company’s security and compliance.
The shift to Solutions as a Service has brought growth to Catapult, provided an improved, consistent working relationship between Catapult and our customers, and helped us to effectively partner with Microsoft in a digitally transformed world.
This post is part of the collection of #HitRefresh moments, inspired by Satya Nadella’s book Hit Refresh. You can read more at www.hitrefreshbook.com.