Case Study / FireHydrant
FireHydrant Incident Management Made User Friendly
Client Context
FireHydrant provides its customers with a comprehensive incident management platform. When disaster strikes, their platform helps software engineers and project managers respond quickly and effectively to minimize downtime and cost. FireHydrant is recognized as an industry leader in the space, recently landing a Series B round of funding worth $23 million to support the rapid growth of the business.
The Challenge
With outside funding comes increased pressure. FireHydrant experienced great success in selling to large companies by using a high-touch sales process, but a new pipeline was needed that would reach small organizations, widening the funnel for future growth. In order to support the increased sales from this strategy, they needed to be able to accept payments online — but they had no means to do so. Their go-to-market strategy depended upon online payment functionality being integrated by a specific, rapidly approaching date, yet all their teams were already allocated to other projects. They reached out to Flagrant for help.
The Solution
Flagrant deployed a cross-functional team, which used its combined expertise (including that of a former Stripe engineer) to build a Stripe integration that supported online-only sales. Development included everything from designing and implementing the customer-facing user experience to platform re-engineering and backend sales support tools.
Working quickly and independently, Flagrant engineers built asynchronous integrations with the Stripe API — one that was engineered to leverage existing patterns in the core application. This required configuring a Stripe product catalog for new customers and migrating existing customer data to the new catalog. They also integrated Stripe with the internal admin portal for maintenance and sales support. On the front end, they developed new UI using React to support the online sales experience
Mid-way through the project, FireHydrant threw Flagrant a curveball; they wanted to pivot and offer a free product for smaller customers, as well as an extended trial of the product’s advanced features.
Flagrant rose to the challenge created by this last minute change, working closely with a FireHydrant team to complete the project within the new scope. This required a revamp of the online sales functionality to include new product configuration and an updated UX to support the Advanced Trial and Free Tier offerings.
In addition to the last-minute change in scope, Flagrant was tasked with creating an onboarding tutorial for all new customers. The team analyzed the problems inherent to onboarding customers to the new products, finding a solution that involved leveraging an existing investment in Intercom.
The Result
The new free product tier created an ideal solution for small teams, possessing the flexibility to grow with the platform. More customers are now purchasing and upgrading purely online via the Flagrant-built Stripe functionality, while the new advanced trial feature is driving the majority of large sales. The onboarding tutorial is being used by over half of new customers, giving users more information and thus more reason to be converted to paying customers.
As a result of the collaboration, FireHydrant now serves more customers, achieving their aggressive growth targets while still helping their existing customers flourish alongside them.
