Have you ever heard of vendor lock-in? What is it and how can it become a commitment for suppliers and their customers?
Often, the goal of suppliers is to solidify a direct, continuous, and trusting relationship and loyalty with their customers. This type of relationship, however, is not always easy to manage. The vendor lock-in comes into play when a client company ties itself to its supplier of products and services exclusively, becoming dependent on the supplied service, on the ad-hoc designed product or on the implemented technology so much that it cannot back out from the relationship so easily. Change is possible, but only with a high and expensive effort in terms of time and resources. Indeed, this is called the lock-in effect.
What does the vendor lock-in entail?
If, on one hand, working with a low number of suppliers results in the reduction of process complexity and in their homogeneity, on the other, it decreases the client’s negotiation capacity. Moreover, increasing the number of contractual and organizational obstacles, the potential shift from a supplier to another becomes increasingly complex. Just think of the supply of technological services and/or products: you have license agreements to observe and all the investments to structure the project team in terms of updating and developing specific skills - especially in the case of yearly projects. That’s why the consequence is a locked-in effect with the customers.
Why did GreenVulcano adopted a no vendor locked-in approach
Usually, when carrying out a substantial product development - or better, a development that could affect systems supporting the company’s core business - two of the main concerns of who has to choose the partner/supplier to rely on are: in the short term, efficiency - that is, the solution must be supplied on time and must be of high quality; and, in the long term, what happens after the delivery. Clients are afraid that the solution will depend on the supplier. Thus, they want to be sure they might find new suppliers somewhere else if necessary. What solutions? GreenVulcano adopts a different approach from those currently on the market.
We aim at efficiency, providing a high-quality product in full respect of any deadline and with the tools that allow the customer to change supplier whenever necessary - as Gaetano Rossi explains, GreenVulcano’s Vice President & General Director. Our customer can choose to stay with us only if they believe we worked fine together. That is, we set our projects following an agile methodology that allows us to share our know-how with the customer. Customers will be included in all the stages of the project’s realization. They immediately acquire all the necessary information and the gained know-how is co-managed in spaces/repositories by both the customer and the supplier.
GreenVulcano’s approach towards its own customers
As stated by Livia Bochicchio, GreenVulcano’s Scrum Master and Project Manager:
Customers are able to follow the projects autonomously - after the development of the product - thanks to manuals and instructions or, even, the source code provided by our team. At the end of the project, usually, we share the information repositories: a complete package both at the code’s level and at the related information one. It’s our way to relate to the customers with honesty and transparency, giving the customer our availability and allowing them the necessary autonomy. I believe this will become a benefit rather than an issue in terms of loyalty. Because it allows the customer to have their project’s keys in their hands in the best conditions possible.
Our strength? We provide all the technical product-related documentation and we explain how certain features work and what potential issues may arise. We aim at our customers' satisfaction, not from their dependencies in projects that could last years. We want our customers to stay and work with us because they are satisfied with our working methodologies. When a problem arises - for instance, issues during the testing phases - we provide a report on what happened together with hypotheses of other potential issues that might occur later to ease our customers’ operation during resolution. Qualitatively, hence, we provide a 360-degrees product whose goal is to allow our customers to be independent from us and to avoid the locked-in effect.
Keywords of the no vendor lock-in approach?
Autonomy, transparency, trust, know-how.
Do you want to know more about it? Write to us. We’ll be more than happy to tell you about our approach and our offering.
Safeguard of cashflow is fundamental for any business and Creopay, the first “cash delivery” platform, helps companies solve all the diverse issues related to required payments.
Through the fintech app, the company creates a proprietary customer database from which it sends a direct payment link - which works with all the main payment circuits. This way, cash flow increases simply and rapidly, consequently improving the company’s profitability.
It is an effective and efficient way to help businesses grow quicker even in difficult moments, allowing them to digitize a critical process such as payments ad fiscal compliance, without having to spend large sums of money for this kind of service.
Whether it is dormant accounts, payment requests to activate a supply contract or even to cash in the rent, you only need a “digital” memo, sent via SMS or email, and a simplified and accessible procedure via a link to give the opportunity to the other party to safely settle heir account.
GreenVulcano Technologies is a high-profile company: we could realize a project from scratch and have it just like we wanted it
Antonio Fontanelli - CEO of Creopay #cashdelivery
The web cash in is universal and is provided with a custom POS. This can be activated immediately and it only takes a few minutes to through the process. This way, businesses can receive payments from all over the world in whatever currency.
Creopay is the ideal solution when it comes to the management of expired or recurring payments thanks to the opportunity to set up installment plans.
From debts to service subscriptions and even to most conventional invoice management with the possibility to set up automatic sending with the correct amount to be paid.
There no unnecessary costs in any part of the user experience and cashing in is quick and utterly traced. The product, moreover, is compliant with the Italian law for fiscal and banking matters. Debt reconciliation is instantaneous and automatically produces a receipt of payment to safeguard both the involved parties.
In the case of recurring use, the customer can also save the payment source for future operations - a very useful function when dealing with recurring customers of installments.
The use of the fintech app is an autonomous process in 4 stages:
With what kind of customers can I use CREOPAY?
Creopay was one of the innovative projects GreenVulcano recently followed and supported. The project embraced both the application architecture and the creation of the manuals for managers and users.
The rebuilding of Creopay 2.0, designed by GreenVulcano Technologies, is a web-based, cloud-native, safe distributed and scalable application based on a multilevel architecture on three layers:
The Presentation layer deals with the UI for all the activities carried out by human users and involves both the back-office and the user face for the end-users. The data of the Presentation layer are supplied by the Business services layer while further data are shared via API with third-party services.
The Business Services layer contains a set of loose coupling services following the principle of “Decompose by business capability”. APIs are listed according to safety and business functions in conjunction with event-driven processes. Automated and programmed tasks deal with the completion of Creopay 2.0’s business processes.
The Persistence layer contains a set of databases to safely store business information and metadata.
A final security layer deals with the IAM and secures the Presentation layer and all the following structure.
Creopay 2.0’s Architecture
Creopay 2.0’s architecture is based on PaaS (Platform as a Service) and cloud development and deployment environment. An infrastructure natively scalable and based on containers. It is a more efficient, quicker and lighter solution.
The container structure allows the application to be encircled in auto-consistent environments, ensuring an extreme deployment velocity, scalability and ease-of-use for porting among development environments, tests and production.
The platform allowing to create and execute Creopay 2.0’s container is Docker, an open-source, flexible and user-friendly platform. The architecture of the containers is regulated by monitoring servers that trigger the system and keep monitoring the execution of independent containers. The execution harmony among the various containers is ensured by solutions such as Kubernetes. Kubernetes is the leading product to manage medium and large architectures. It is an open-source project made by Google. This way, all the various, Linux-based containers make the application easy to distribute and scale according to whatever necessity with a high degree of abstraction.
The architecture designed for Creopay 2.0, thus, allows the fintech company to have a more efficient management of workloads.
Last month, we had a review of our 2020 and what it meant to us.
In the last few days, Alfredo Adamo, historical member of the great GreenVulcano Technologies family and CEO of AlanAdvatage, expressed and sent us a wish to all of us.
“Many of you often heard me say: “We’re the strongest! Only health can stop us… And it’s not doing it”. I think this touched on all the issues we faced as a company and as a great family in 2020.
More than once I said this sentence is “my motto” and, luckily, thanks to the skills af all the people working with us, I could repeat myself in all these years. Month after month, what we call our network grew in size, number of people, revenues, in the whole overall value. Today, our network earns more than 30 million euros in revenues and our reputation is growing as well.
Never before our health was put to the test by this devious virus! Unfortunately, it hit some of us directly. Some of us lost relatives, friends, loved ones. And it is to all our beloved ones that left us during this terrible year - whether due to the virus or for other reasons - that we send all our love.
However, what we kept seeding and harvesting in 2020, we’re sure it will blossom in 2021. We have all the opportunities to do increasingly better. Thanks to the great work we’re all carrying out, I’m sure that the famous green of GreenVulcano Technologies will also be a sign of hope for the recently started new year.
I’d like to remember once more the story of Professor Randy Pausch, who passed away in 2008. In September 2006, Randy Pausch was a brilliant math professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He had a wife, three kids and he passionately loved his job, his coworkers and his students. Suddenly though, doctors diagnosed him an advanced pancreatic cancer. One year later, on September 18th 2007, Pausch held his last pulic lecture, his “Last Lecture”, in front of four hunded people and left his last message to friends and coworkers: “Achieve your childhood dreams”.
We are hence entering this new 2021, full of ambitious goals and new projects, trying to be close, kind, united. Seek help from a coworker and you’ll receive it. Remember, we are all a videocall away, just a few seconds away from each other… Let’s not lose our spirit.”
We want to start 2021 with this wish by Alfredo Adamo. We want to start from the complex reality of these last months without forgetting the quality our group showed in this trying period, with exceptional adaptability skills.
Company news won’t lack, the first for 2021 is quite important too: the onboarding of Gaetano Rossi as new Vice President – General Director. The arrival of Gaetano in GreenVulcano Technologies represents a natural step forward in the growth and improvement strategy we are carrying out for the group and the whole network.
Gaetano started his career in the ICT industry in 1991 in Telesoft and has been there for 8 years as a Project Manager. He then moved on to working in several companies of the Telecom Italia galaxy: for instance, from 2005 to 2013 he was in Shared Services, where he covered management roles until he finished his adventure as OSS Development and Management Director.
From 2013 to 2017 he had an extremely important experience in TI.IT (Telecom Italia Information Technology): up to 2014 as ADM integration & Testing Manager, from 2014 to 2017 as BSS Mass Market Systems Manager and then as Digital BSS Delivery Manager.
Under his coordination, and thanks to the support of more than 300 employees an 500 consultants, TIM became a true multinational giant. A colossus which is still a model of reference, besides being the pride of Italian telecommunications in the world.
The target we’re aiming at is clear and simple to understand: to help Team GVT to achieve an astounding professional, technical, organizational, economical and - above all - people-oriented growth.
We’re approaching the end of 2020 and as a corporate group, and more importantly a second family, we think it’s important to share with you our exciting vision for next year.
We’re living in an increasingly digital market, more and more inclined to adopt new technologies and more sustainable methods for the city life. GreenVulcano Technologies has always been on the forefront of what drives the widespread adoption of technologies and lifestyles previously considered avant-garde. Rest assured that we won’t let these new opportunities slip away.
Even the new methodologies of work from home, for instance, were confronted in the best way possible - in line with the innovative disposition of both the company and each of us individually. Our Co-founder Gianfranco, last May, recommended to us 10 ways to feel mentally healthy when working from home during the lockdown. They turned out to be extremely helpful in organizing our working day at home. Keeping us from going crazy!
Maurizio Fiumara, Senior Manager of the group, contributed more than once on the company blog titled dealing with the topic of social recruiting. As a result,we were able to add 25 new colleagues to the team in just the last 18 months.
As a company, we did not hesitate to respond to the emergency by allowing our teams to work from home. I can definitely assert that the work-from-home methodology worked. All our colleagues kept working efficiently and willingly, fully supported by the company board. And this wasn’t restricted to simply working matters. We also organised virtual coffee breaks and periodic meetings where we could discuss various topics and have fun.
A few weeks later Mario Stefanutti, CTO of GreenVulcano Technologies, opened the doors of the R&D lab. He described the collaboration among our colleagues during the end of the first wave, here is how he remembered those moments:
We realized that we’ve been technically ready to change for some years. We have audio/video communication platforms, cooperation tools and adequate, efficient, and mature technological means that play a very important role. Mankind will necessarily make good use of this work-from-home experience. It will become an increasingly important tool in the future even after the emergency.
Looking back, 2020 started off strong with the establishment of the new spin-off Sensoworks, which deals with IoT and infrastructure monitoring. By the end of January, Sensoworks was officially launched and not looking back, as was discussed on our blog.
Sensoworks is the culmination of the many successes we experienced in the field of IoT. This success was the driving force behind the need to create its independence. However it will always contain the DNA of our (growing) family.
As you may also know our second spin-off, Automyo, demonstrates our desire towards experimentation. In this case, distilling the essence of automation and robotics and using it to give birth to our RPA product called Claudio. The timing of this couldn’t be better.
Among the many successful projects we also wanted to call attention to ePopZeb. This project was developed together with Regione Lazio. It was just recently completed and shown on the virtual screens of this year's virtual Maker Faire conference. Very exciting to see this take place.
Nearing the end of 2020, the topic of sustainable mobility, especially that of micromobility, was a key focus. GreenVulcano Technologies didn’t miss the opportunity to mention its contribution to this topic. The details behind this can be found in our recent press releases, as well as some special TV appearances by Marco D’Ambrosio, the group’s Business Developer, and Claudio Ortenzi, Senior Analyst.
But if 2021 is the year of mobility, as reported by Mario Stefanutti, we can’t help but to have a special mention of all the fantastic news from the IoT monitoring front. Since May, Sensoworks has had the good fortune of working with Autostrade per l’Italia and Anas for a number of monitoring projects resulting in a real and relevant impact on the national infrastructure. Likewise, Sensoworks has also secured a partnership with Acea, which we’re sure will bring us many, many beautiful updates in the coming year.
But above all, we have to thank our fantastic team. Without it, we wouldn’t have any of these marvelous victories.
We aim to increase the number of team building activities in 2021, so as to get to know each other even better and to be closer than ever. If 2020 has taught us anything, it has shown just how much we can give as individuals and as members of a bigger team.
Happy holidays to you and your families from all the GreenVulcano Technologies group.
