Organizational Transformation in the AWS Cloud

Business leaders often think of cloud migration as a way to solve a problem using technology: it’s about security, efficiency or eliminating the costs associated with an expensive data center. But cloud migration is much more than that.

For a nonprofit that serves as an advocate in the child care space, migrating to the AWS cloud was an opportunity to revolutionize their organization both technologically and culturally. The 501(c)3 organization works with government agencies and military and civilian families on child care issues, but despite their enormous impact, the organization’s growth was hampered by outdated technologies and processes.

When presented with a time sensitive opportunity to significantly further their mission, they looked to AWS and Intel for the technological solution, and to CDW to help them rethink how they do business from the ground up. In this use case, we’ll explain how this nonprofit transformed not only their infrastructure but also their organization’s approach to technology.

Much of the nonprofit’s contract work depends on a platform called the Fee Assistance Portal (FAP), which enables contract deliverables for various military branches. Military families use the platform to apply and submit verification documents, receive approval for fee assistance and select a child care provider from the nonprofit’s extensive network. In addition to families that use FAP, the child care providers in the nonprofit’s network also interact with the platform to apply and submit verification documents, receive approval for their certification to serve military families and receive fee assistance.

But the nonprofit had a problem. The Fee Assistance Portal was more than 10 years old, and the technical limitations were causing slowdowns across all parts of the system. The platform was designed to meet user expectations at the time it was built, but now staff members were being held back by the outdated technology, which lacked the user-friendly features and responsiveness that they needed to effectively serve today’s tech-savvy families. On top of that, the organization was concerned about performance and availability — they wanted to guarantee 99.999% uptime and ensure that the platform’s performance met the needs of the growing number of families taking advantage of fee assistance.

As a first step, the nonprofit moved its existing platform into the AWS cloud via a simple “lift and shift.” But they knew a basic migration would only replicate the old problems in the new cloud environment. The organization’s team envisioned a flexible and scalable platform that would serve them well into the future, growing with them so they wouldn’t find themselves needing another major overhaul 10 years later. The AWS cloud offered everything they were looking for: accessibility, security and the ability to maintain the infrastructure and deploy updates in a modular way.

In short, the nonprofit’s leadership knew they were ready to commit to a long-term home in the AWS cloud — but where to start? For help with both articulating the vision and designing the solution, they called in CDW.

CDW is not only an AWS partner, but we’re also one of the few providers who use human-centered design (HCD) to build cloud solutions. As a nonprofit with a human-service mission at its core, the organization wanted to bring that approach to its application. HCD is a unique problem solving technique that centers user experience and the human perspective at every step. It’s not always easy to implement, but it can transform an organization’s culture when it’s done right.

Here are the six steps CDW took to make it happen:

CDW is not only an AWS partner, but we’re also one of the few providers who use human-centered design (HCD) to build cloud solutions. As a nonprofit with a human-service mission at its core, the organization wanted to bring that approach to its application. HCD is a unique problem solving technique that centers user experience and the human perspective at every step. It’s not always easy to implement, but it can transform an organization’s culture when it’s done right.

Here are the six steps CDW took to make it happen:

Before they made changes, the organization wanted to be sure they genuinely understood the needs of parents, child care providers and their own internal team members. 

To understand what users wanted from a new application, CDW and the nonprofit needed to talk to the users themselves. First, we recruited users via surveys and interviews to better understand the challenges they faced. Using that data, the team built a map of all the different constituent groups. They then prototyped user journeys to better understand how parents and child care providers used the platform, and what pain points needed to be addressed first. Finally, we took this information and used design-thinking methodologies to brainstorm potential solutions.

The employees and end-users recruited in step two helped define the technical pain points that needed to be addressed in the new solution. These pain points included:

• Storing files: On a regular basis, parents must renew their eligibility for child care benefits. Previously, the files they submitted were stored in an inefficient database that was neither user-friendly nor cost-effective. To solve this problem, the CDW team decided to move all files to S3, which offers nearly infinite storage at a low cost. This immediately reduced buffering and improved the functionality of the entire system.
  
  
• Enabling users to view their application status: Anxious parents want to see where they are in the approval process after they submit their application. In the past, this meant the nonprofit team spent hours fielding calls and emails. The new solution improves transparency by building a parent status tracking functionality into the new architecture. To create this feature, CDW and the nonprofit team utilized a number of AWS tools and services, including AWS Cognito, Cloudfront, NLB, S3 and more.

The nonprofit organization knew that investing in employee training would be critical for bringing human-centered design to their organization. With CDW’s help, they developed a plan to get all employees on board and conducted formal HCD training sessions with more than 100 staff members. And to help the nonprofit staff get a sense of what the process looks like in action, we also modeled the agile HCD approach during their brainstorming sessions and workshops. Today, the nonprofit has fully embraced this culture shift as part of its overall mission.

Cost was a key factor in this nonprofit’s digital transformation. To keep costs as low as possible without sacrificing design or quality, the CDW team used a global delivery team. We also used open-source software on the backend of the application to save money and make the app more flexible and scalable for the future. And leveraging Intel’s CPUs, which were found to be the best fit for compatibility, performance and cost-efficiency, allowed them to maximize their system’s reach while reducing costs.

The nonprofit organization also followed one of the key principles of HCD by starting small. To begin, CDW helped the organization migrate one subset of their application. The goal for this piece of the migration includes streamlining the onboarding of new child care providers, quickly searching for providers within the system and making it simpler for any provider to add enhanced references and move to a higher membership level within the app.

With this prototype, which they developed using Agile design sprints, the nonprofit will validate that the app’s front and backend will meet their needs. Plus, it will give them space to run this smaller subset of the application by their users to get feedback that will shape the rest of the app. The prototype also gives them an existing technology stack to work with, which they can fine-tune as they move the rest of the application into the AWS cloud. By moving a small section of the app first, they set themselves up for streamlined migration and leave space to incorporate user feedback along the way.

The nonprofit organization is ready to bring their mission to a much wider audience, and thanks to CDW’s expertise and the technology backbone provided by AWS and Intel, they are well on their way to achieving that goal. As the nonprofit continues to develop a SaaS solution that will serve America’s families, they are also paving the way for other nonprofit organizations to embrace cloud technology, human-centered design and a more agile approach to fulfilling their missions.