Case Study: Enhancing Geo-Intelligence Media Platforms Through Nearshore Collaboration
2025-01-08
In today's dynamic and competitive digital landscape, businesses are under constant pressure to innovate and optimize their solutions. Smart Nearshore, a trusted partner of nearshore and IT solutions, partnered with one of Europe’s leading providers of communication solutions.
Faced with capacity constraints, the client turned to Smart Nearshore to bridge skill gaps, accelerate development, and enhance the overall performance of their platforms. Through successful collaboration, Smart Nearshore empowered the client to maintain its competitive edge while strengthening its position as a trusted partner for businesses looking to scale, innovate, and succeed in competitive markets.
Project Overview
Smart Nearshore partnered with one of Europe’s foremost communication solutions providers. This company serves both retailers and brands by distributing advertising messages across 24 European countries. Based in Germany, the client uses industry-leading geodata to provide efficient, precise, and impactful media planning.
At the heart of the client’s strategy is their Geo team, responsible for developing geo-intelligence platforms that power the company’s media planning capabilities. These platforms leverage advanced geospatial data and analysis to deliver tailored recommendations for optimal media mixes, enabling their customers to target audiences with precision.
By mid-2023, the client faced a critical challenge: the need to expand their Geo team to increase productivity and tackle the technological complexities of a niche industry. To overcome this, Smart Nearshore introduced its Team-as-a-Service (TaaS) model, specifically the Extended Team solution, which allowed the client to scale effectively without compromising on quality or control.
The collaboration began in July 2023 and is still ongoing, with multiple new implementations planned as the project evolves.
The Challenge: Addressing Capacity, Niche Expertise, and Language Barriers
In 2023, as demand for geo-intelligence media solutions grew, the client encountered significant obstacles in maintaining their development pace. The client’s goal was to expand its Geo team, and three main challenges emerged:
- Limited Capacity in the Geo Team: While the client’s in-house team possessed considerable expertise, they were struggling with the lack of capacity to increase the platform’s productivity.
- Niche Technology Stack: The client’s platforms relied on highly specialized technologies, including GeoServer and OpenLayers, so they required professionals with the necessary technical skillset.
- First Experience with Nearshore Collaboration: As the client had never worked with a nearshore partner before, all existing platforms and tools were built in German. This posed additional hurdles for external collaboration, requiring consultants capable of navigating both the technical and linguistic complexities.
All in all, the client needed a highly skilled, agile team that could quickly integrate with their existing structure, close skill gaps, and deliver consistent results to ensure platform performance and innovation.
The Solution: Integrating Expertise and Enhancing Multilingual Platforms
To address these challenges, Smart Nearshore provided a carefully selected team of three highly experienced professionals:
- Two GIS Software Developers who brought specialized expertise in GeoServer and OpenLayers, two essential technologies for enhancing the client’s geo platforms.
- One Frontend Developer responsible for introducing multilingual capabilities across all platforms using Angular, thus increasing accessibility for a wider range of users.
By adopting a Team-as-a-Service solution, through the Extended Team model, Smart Nearshore seamlessly integrated these professionals with the client’s in-house team. This collaborative approach ensured that the external team functioned as a natural extension of the existing workforce, promoting alignment and shared ownership of project goals.
The combined team worked on optimizing the performance of geo-intelligence platforms, implementing key improvements to enhance both efficiency and accuracy. With multilingual functionality introduced across all platforms, the client was able to expand the usability of their solutions beyond German-speaking regions, opening opportunities for broader market penetration.
Key Technologies
- GeoServer
- OpenLayers
- PostGIS
- PostgreSQL
- PHP
- Angular
- C#
- RabbitMQ
The Results: Optimized Platforms, Cost Savings, and Seamless Collaboration
The collaboration between Smart Nearshore and the client has yielded significant benefits, both in terms of performance optimization and strategic efficiency:
- Accelerated and Improved Development: Smart Nearshore’s team successfully optimized the client’s platforms, improving real-time accuracy across the entire geographical network. This enhancement ensured better media planning capabilities, directly contributing to the client’s value proposition.
- Cost Efficiency: By leveraging Smart Nearshore’s services, the client achieved substantial cost savings compared to hiring onshore talent. The nearshore solution enabled them to maintain exceptional quality and performance while keeping operational expenses under control.
- Seamless Collaboration Across Borders: Working with Smart Nearshore’s team in Portugal proved to be a strategic advantage. The minimal time difference - just one hour between Germany and Portugal - allowed for real-time communication and efficient project management. Furthermore, Portugal’s talent pool ensured that the team’s expertise aligned perfectly with the client’s needs, fostering a highly productive and collaborative partnership.
The Project’s Next Steps
The partnership between Smart Nearshore and the client has proven highly successful, with clear, measurable results and a strong foundation for future collaboration. Smart Nearshore’s goal is to expand its support into a new area of the client’s business - the web development of their platforms and applications. This phase will focus on Microsoft technologies, further enhancing the client’s technical capabilities and enabling continued innovation.
Tailored Nearshore Solutions for Your IT Needs
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