Sleekr: Turning to Google Cloud for back-office software for thousands of businesses
About Sleekr
Founded in 2015, Sleekr provides integrated payroll, human resources, and accounting software for businesses in Indonesia. Thousands of businesses with a combined total of approximately 100,000 employees use Sleekr solutions.
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Contact usUsing Google Cloud, Sleekr has reduced costs and deployment times while realizing its vision of enabling customers to grow, become more efficient, and compete effectively.
Google Cloud results
- Enables delivery of cloud-based software to thousands of businesses
- Supports business goal of enabling customers to grow, operate more efficiently, and be more competitive
- Helps reduce costs by 30% and deployment times 80% compared to previous cloud environment
Cut time to manage IT from 50% to 10% for two employees
Cloud software is spreading from IT teams at businesses in Indonesia to operations, human resources, finance, and other back-office departments, according to cloud-based applications provider Sleekr. Managers and workers in these departments increasingly invest in cloud software to transform back-office processes and capabilities.
“For example, the need to deliver compulsory employee benefits and make remuneration packages attractive to talented people is increasing the complexity of payroll systems,” explains Rafeequl Rahman, Chief Technology Officer, Sleekr. “Using cumbersome spreadsheets to manage these and other corporate functions is no longer an option. Businesses want an efficient and effective solution, and this is where Sleekr fits in.”
Founded in 2015, Sleekr provides integrated payroll, human resources, and accounting software for businesses in Indonesia. Originally founded to market a simple employee database, Sleekr now helps customers use technology to create more effective workplaces. Thousands of businesses with a combined total of approximately 100,000 employees use Sleekr solutions.
Rahman is responsible for developing and running Sleekr’s software. “I make sure we are constantly delivering value to our customers and making our daily operations smooth,” he says. The business started by using virtual machines in a hosted cloud environment. However, its information technology and engineering team was having to dedicate more than 50 percent of its time on managing routine tasks, such as configuring clusters and performing updates and backups, that had no direct impact on business success. Furthermore, the team saw an opportunity to dramatically reduce software deployment times.
“We wanted to control our costs and allocate team members and resources to tasks that delivered value rather than simply kept the lights on,” says Rahman. “We effectively wanted to hand our infrastructure over to an experienced cloud provider with intelligent managed services. In addition, we had to align our infrastructure investments with our business growth.”
“As the best Kubernetes offering on the market, the offering from Google heavily influenced our decision. Our evaluation also spanned cost and the full suite of products and managed services available from each provider. Google Cloud was easily the best fit for our business.”
—Rafeequl Rahman, Chief Technology Officer, SleekrFaster time to market
Sleekr’s requirements went beyond increased efficiency. The business wanted to capitalize on new-generation cloud products to minimize time to market, improving the customer experience.
After considering its technical requirements, Sleekr decided to adopt a containerized solution. The business wanted to develop and iterate applications quickly with underlying cloud resources provisioned and managed automatically. “As the best Kubernetes offering on the market, the offering from Google heavily influenced our decision,” says Rahman. “Our evaluation also spanned cost and the full suite of products and managed services available from each provider. Google Cloud was easily the best fit for our business.”
Sleekr now runs a Google Cloud environment comprising Kubernetes Engine; Compute Engine to provide infrastructure as a service running on Google infrastructure; Cloud SQL to run its relational database; Cloud Load Balancing to provide cross-region load balancing including automated failover; Container Registry to store its private Docker images on Google Cloud; Cloud Memorystore to provide a fully managed in-memory data store; and Cloud Storage to deliver unified object storage.
“With Google Cloud, we can explore possibilities such as having product managers rather than system administrators deliver releases more securely to production, and our business teams creating charts or reports rather than asking our developers to provide metrics.”
—Rafeequl Rahman, Chief Technology Officer, SleekrA continuous integration and development platform
Kubernetes Engine has given Sleekr a continuous integration and continuous development platform that enables the business to respond more effectively to customer needs.
Using Google Cloud has enabled Sleekr to democratize access to information technology. This helps avoid the strict segregation of duties that can shunt systems and data into silos accessible only to selected teams. “For example, with Google Cloud, we can explore possibilities such as having product managers rather than system administrators deliver releases more securely to production, and our business teams creating charts or reports rather than asking our developers to provide metrics,” says Rahman.
Sleekr has collaborated with a small software house to create an open source tool that enables the business to use Kubernetes Engine as an on-demand staging host. “We work in a high-paced environment, where new features are delivered to production as soon as they pass technical tests and signoff from product owners,” says Rahman. “With Kubernetes Engine, we can deploy several isolated staging environments at once to help ensure there are no delays when we have multiple tasks or features ready to go.”
This approach, powered by Kubernetes, has enabled Sleekr to improve the elasticity and scalability of its environment and reduce deployment times from once a week to several times a day.
More broadly, Google Cloud has enabled Sleekr’s information technology and engineering team to translate the chief executive officer’s vision into actionable goals. “Everything we do needs to be driven by or provide value to the business,” explains Rahman. “This ranges from developing new features to optimize our underlying platform to delivering operational cost savings.”
Adopting managed services through Google Cloud has enabled Sleekr to record savings of more than 30 percent compared to its previous cloud-hosting service, excluding the cost of team members to manage the infrastructure.
“Our focus is on eliminating waste and removing roadblocks rather than cost reduction per se,” says Rahman. “We believe cost reduction is a byproduct of process efficiency.”
Furthermore, despite its increased production activity, Sleekr still only requires two team members to manage infrastructure-related tasks such as operations, maintenance, upgrades, and automation.
“Ultimately, we define success by how our customers grow and deliver value to our nation. Google enables us to realize these goals.”
—Rafeequl Rahman, Chief Technology Officer, SleekrDeployment five times faster
Furthermore, the time needed for the information technology and engineering team to complete routine tasks has fallen to just 10 percent, instead of the 50 percent of their time they previously spent on these activities. This gives customers faster access to better experiences.
“Success is, for us, seeing our customers operate more efficiently, be more competitive, and provide a meaningful, positive impact on their employees and stakeholders,” says Rahman. “Ultimately, we define success by how our customers grow and deliver value to our nation. Google enables us to realize these goals.”
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About Sleekr
Founded in 2015, Sleekr provides integrated payroll, human resources, and accounting software for businesses in Indonesia. Thousands of businesses with a combined total of approximately 100,000 employees use Sleekr solutions.