Bringing to life a marketplace and online platform for isme&co

  • Customer
  • Industry
  • Service
  • Segment
  • Author
  • isme&co
  • IT & Services
  • Cloud Adoption
  • Startup
  • Jodie Rhodes
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At a glance

isme&co is a new digital network and collaborative platform for UK SMEs, providing a market network for independent businesses across the UK at all stages of growth. 

Challenge

isme&co needed specialised guidance across hosting, cloud technology, scalability, and design to bring their unique business community and marketplace concept to life.

Solution

Firemind, build the platform’s infrastructure and best practice framework using AWS services, while also providing branding, UI/UX design, and guidance on the start-up journey.

Services used
  • Amazon CloudFront 
  • Amazon Aurora 
  • Amazon EC2
  • Amazon S3 
Outcomes

  • 16 weeks to deliver, from concept to live site.

  • 1 week to secure seed funding after showcase.

Business challenges

Navigating the foundations of a digital platform

When we were first introduced, isme|&|co were at the beginning of a new venture, one that combined a unique business community, whilst providing a marketplace of specialised businesses and content creation, providing collaboration and guidance for business leaders.

Like many companies who begin to create a new platform that provides a digital service, they knew that in order to breathe life into the concept and nurture it’s evolution into a living, breathing platform, they would need specialised guidance across hosting, cloud technology, scalability and design.

Whilst both co-founders are seasoned and experienced business leaders and are used to occupying C-level roles, this was the first time they would be building a business from the ground up using the latest AWS cloud technology.

Their vision for the isme&co concept would not only need a technical build in the cloud following best practices, but also guidance on branding, style, tone of voice, delivery of a design and implementation of a user interface and experience that would match established platforms.

Furthermore, isme&co recognised significant value in the ability to provide a highly personalised user experience, via suggested content and relevant providers, as well as content moderation and personalisation.

What our customers say

Hear directly from those who’ve experienced our services. Discover how we’ve made a difference for our clients.

Solution

The minimum viable product (MVP)

This project started with the base infrastructure and best practice framework using AWS services. The platform was built within a custom CMS, running on AWS Cloud services. This made use of Amazon’s highly scalable elastic containers as well as the increased load balancing services for dynamic content, utilising Amazon S3 for the storage and retrieval of large and complex files such as images, audio files within podcasts and other digital media.

This entire skeleton was supported by Amazon CloudFront, enabling faster load speeds and dependable service throughout all regions of access. Amazon Aurora was also used for persistent database storage needs as the content, entities and users expanded.

Start-up journey – With experience working with other start-ups in the digital space, Firemind were able to guide isme&co’s journey and project requirements, delivering quick, visible results which helped secure funding during the early 4 stages of development.

Service blueprint – To ensure all user avenues were explored and the business could be built in a way that was scalable, we worked closely with the co-founders to build a thorough plan and flow for every area of the platform.

Discovery & branding – From defining concepts into tangible actions and user friendly webpages to crafting high fidelity mock-ups and designs, we’ve endeavoured to provide both professional cloud services as well as defining branding implementation.

Personalisation readiness – With the platform quickly building both users and business profiles, the wealth of specialised reading content as well as newly founded audio podcasts will enable the ability to add AI/ML driven personalisation options. These services will ensure users of the growing platform will find businesses and content relevant to their interests and spark more genuine and human led connections across the site. In turn, leading to more users, increased activity, less churn and more revenue across the platform.

What’s next?

Following the successful MVP launch, isme|&|co are now early revenues. And the co-founders are fundraising in order to accelerate growth and, crucially, to provide the investment firepower they need for the next generation of the isme|&|co platform. During this time, we are working closely with them to fully map out the platform landscape and next step requirements.

The next phase focuses on defining a path for content and marketplace personalisation, along with manual task automation and more in-depth analytics and reporting.

Continuing to integrate with the delivery schedule of the customer roadmap, ensuring the most successful successful startup journey possible.

Roadmap integration

Through four key stages, from branding workshops to collaborative design sessions, we prioritised user experience for the isme&co platform. Our design team swiftly produced interactive, user-focused mock-ups that showcased the platform's potential, securing early investment to drive the project forward with Firemind.

Best practice delivery

Our in-house design expertise, ensured the platform was built to the highest AWS standards. For a complex platform with social features, secure user access, and reliable content sharing, we focused on a robust deployment to prevent challenges and future-proof its evolution.

Path to AI/ML

At the core of isme&co’s vision is leveraging cutting-edge technology to deliver a responsive and engaging digital-first user experience. By implementing a best-practice AWS architecture, we've created a foundation for advanced machine learning, enabling automated, personalised recommendations on the platform.

We met with both co-founders, Will and Tim, to discuss the ongoing cloud journey with Firemind. Watch the video to gain a deeper insight into the value provided.

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