Smile IT Solutions

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

 I am the Owner of a sports company 

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Football Club

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Smile IT Solutions to accomplish?

• Digital Transformation for Operational Excellence
• Enhanced Communication and Fan Engagement
• Revenue Growth and Diversification

SOLUTION

How did you find Smile IT Solutions?

Referral

Why did you select Smile IT Solutions over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Pricing fit our budget
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Smile IT Solutions were assigned to this project?

6-10 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

Football clubs serve as the lifeblood of communities across the UK, yet smaller clubs often rely on outdated systems and struggle with high costs, hindering their ability to effectively engage fans, generate revenue, and manage operations. Our company is no exception, as it strives to unite its community while grappling with tasks such as news broadcasting, newsletter distribution, membership management, ticket sales, and facility scheduling. 

Additionally, while the club recognises the importance of its existing community, it also understands the need to expand its reach and appeal to a broader audience. Considering these challenges, the Club recognises the pressing need for a new tool to overcome operational hurdles and expand its outreach effectively. 

This tool would serve as a comprehensive solution to streamline day-to-day operations, allowing the club to manage them more efficiently. By incorporating features that engage users and attract new members, the new strategy would help the club broaden its audience and diversify its revenue streams.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• Development Agility: Development cycles have shortened, allowing our company to respond rapidly to the changing needs and expectations of fans. 
• Operational Efficiency: The serverless backend with AWS Lambda and Amazon RDS has led to a decrease in operational overhead and costs. 
• System Reliability and Performance: AWS CloudWatch has ensured system stability and reliability, even during high-traffic events. The club now experiences fewer outages or performance issues. 
• Enhanced Fan Experience: Leveraging AWS's robust infrastructure, the club introduced a suite of interactive features on their app, which not only enriched the content but also made it more accessible and engaging for fans.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

We were well kept informed of all the steps involved and had several requirement gathering meetings where the team from Smile IT Solutions have been visiting our club to really get to know us before starting to offer us a solution for our problems. They have been providing updates regularly and held a number of demo meetings and prototype reviews before the development started. 

During development we have had to make a number of changes and they have never refused the changes and kindly never added anything to the cost thanks to their agile approach in development.

What was your primary form of communication with Smile IT Solutions?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting
• Email or Messaging App

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Smile IT Solution offers a variety of services and being a multi cloud and IT vendor partner they have been able to accommodate everything from our Google Workspace, WiFi Network using StarLink due to our location limitations to our fully managed AWS account and even providing and building native apps for Zebra devices. They are truly a one-stop shop for everything IT a business needs and they do it with the best brands out there.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Smile IT Solutions could have done differently?

Not really.