Tera migrates its business systems to Google Cloud and achieves a 6-fold increase in customer service
About Tera
Tera is a Brazilian professional education company founded in 2016, focused on bridging skill gaps and providing training for active professionals on the skills required by the digital market.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact usTera, a Brazilian company that provides education focused on training for new jobs favored by the digital economy, invested in cloud-based solutions to resolve bottlenecks in its payment system.
Google Cloud Results
- Tera managed to integrate the systems of its course sales cycle with the Google Cloud platform and its tools.
- As a result of the migration, the company increased its customer service capacity from 7 people to 45 potential students: over 6 times the previous capacity.
- The sales cycle was reduced by nearly 40%, from 25 to 15 days.
- As an immediate result, the company increased its annual turnover by 35%.
Tera is a Brazilian training company for adults focused on the skills required by the new jobs of the digital era. Its activities are based on the redefinition of professional training, applying technology and design to afford students long-lasting training. After all, the so-called "fourth industrial revolution", the knowledge society revolution, requires new digital specializations that are not covered by formal courses. Tera responds with a broad range of training experiences, including hands-on and updated content, supported by a network of hundreds of professionals from the largest IT companies in Brazil, and by investments in dynamic and disruptive platforms using cloud-based systems and processes.
The company is so young that it first offered courses in 2017, only a few months after it was created. "We had this idea of becoming a digital economy school based on the bootcamp model (intensive training). We offer lessons lasting between 1 week and 3 months, always focused on specific skills for the digital economy, the most sought-after skills by employers via LinkedIn throughout the world," explains Wilson Tayar, Tera partner and CTO.
According to Tayar, digital technologies have progressed to such an extent that professionals cannot be trained at such a fast pace. "We want to fight the skill gap, which is the imbalance between the market's supply and demand for professionals with certain skills. We are certainly taking the first steps to solve this problem," he says. Tera aims at disseminating the skills that are critical for the market, but which have not yet been leveraged by professionals.
In order to streamline its offer of content and the scale of its business activities, Tera has adopted an optimized structure, with only 22 employees and the use of digital resources. Its technological definition leaves no room for doubt by using the Google Cloud platform in its solutions and processes. Take the sales cycle solution for example: after migrating to the cloud, it expanded by 6 times the daily customer service capacity.
Cloud as a business tool
The partnership or "mentoring" with Google is inherent to Tera's DNA. "This is a model for us, both for our technology and for our mission as a company. Education has changed significantly worldwide thanks to Google. When we became a participant startup in the Google for Startups Residency Program, we sought to integrate their cloud solutions," Tayar recalls.
Tera entered the Google for Startups Campus in 2017, following a "blended learning" model (online and clasroom lessons), primarily focused on classroom learning, allocating slots when courses are "closed", i.e. confirmed. "Our quick growth led to scalability issues, which is when we turned to the cloud for a solution to our bottlenecks."
The most troublesome bottleneck was in the sales assistance system. Before, Tera had two commercial agents that handled all the processes involved in the course cycle manually and one person/customer at a time, which limited the maximum daily number of students assisted to approximately seven. This represented a real problem, as each course needs 30 confirmed students to be opened.
With the support of Google Cloud, Tayar applied a combination of tools, such as Cloud Functions APIs, connected to the payment system of App Engine and Pub/Sub, a messaging platform integrating systems hosted on the Google Cloud platform. "Everything is integrated into PipeDrive. That way, contacts do not need to learn anything new, and once approved, they have access to all processes, such as payment conditions and activity flow (such as contracts) until the end," he explains.
This solution’s design is the result of help provided by a professional of Area 120, a division of Google that promotes innovation and partnerships. "He came to Brazil to help participant startups in the Google for Startups Residency Program, and suggested the idea of integration using Functions. We also helped in the setup of the infrastructure at different times," he explains.
Results and evolution
Results became apparent right away. An increase in the limit of 7 people assisted per day to 45 students, i.e. a 6-fold growth in the customer service capacity, even surpassing the maximum number of students per classroom (30). All processes were automated.
"Another significant metric was the 40% reduction to the number of days for the negotiation cycle. Before, we needed 25 days from the initial contact to payment confirmation, and now we only need 15 days. Our sales volume has grown by 35% and we are now able to open more courses."
—Wilson Tayar, Tera’s partner and CTOThe sales team has doubled in size (from 2 to 4 agents) and the company is planning to continue its expansion. This is a simple task, as it only involves training new staff on PipeDrive.
“We are now expanding processes from B2C to B2B, reaching corporations in need of training for their employees. We will continue using Pub/Sub and are planning to use Cloud MemoryStore (in-memory data storage service managed and developed in a scalable infrastructure),” says Tayar. He further highlights the use of StackDriver, a cloud-based system management service offered by Google Cloud that provides performance and diagnosis data for public cloud users. “This product solves different issues and interconnects naturally with Cloud Functions,” he adds.
Cloud Build is another important tool, both for dynamic software building, regardless of the language used, and code allocation. "It handles DevOps, since the development architecture here before was NoOps: no allocated operations team. That's why we create everything directly in Functions. All processes are now easier, and native in Google Cloud," he concludes.
Tell us your challenge. We're here to help.
Contact us
About Tera
Tera is a Brazilian professional education company founded in 2016, focused on bridging skill gaps and providing training for active professionals on the skills required by the digital market.