Tearfund is a non-for-profit, Christian relief and advocacy organisation, partnering with churches in more than 50 of the world’s poorest countries to tackle poverty and injustice through sustainable development, by responding to disasters and challenging injustice. Central to this is their website UsefulGifts.org - a Shopify site that provides different fundraising activities. This site is connected to three separate backend Ruby on Rails applications via the Shopify API.
Tearfund were looking for an experienced Rails team to take over the development and maintenance of their 3 Rails applications as they didn’t have the capacity to do so in-house. Their current developer was changing their business model and could no longer provide the support required.
Tearfund relies heavily on the Rails applications, and so , it was important to make sure the management and maintenance team were Australian based. Being on the same time zone, and having that ease of coordination, communication and understanding was paramount to minimise any downtime due to technical issues.
"We decided on reinteractive because the price point was reasonable, they had senior, experienced Rails developers, with some knowledge of Shopify and they have Australian based staff."
Adam George, Web Administrator
Tearfund
reinteractive took over the 3 applications and deployed them onto the OpsCare Heroku managed support service.
"The reinteractive team really took the time to understand the purpose of the apps and actually recommended we merge one of the apps with another bringing it down to a total of 2, reducing our overall costs which is really fantastic."
"Thanks to reinteractive, the apps continue to provide functionality for our business and our supporters. I have confidence in the Reinteractive team and the depth of their understanding, systems and processes. They have excellent communication and understanding and I have every confidence in them. I no longer have a cognitive load about those apps, and can focus on our core business needs."
Adam George, Web Administrator
Tearfund
Prior to onboarding the applications were upgraded to recent versions of Ruby and Rails. This was important to ensure there were no security or performance issues with the applications. Part of this process also involved combining two of the micro-services, which was designed to make ongoing management of the application much easier.
reinteractive then transferred the applications and databases over to Heroku. Thorough testing of the Shopify API and functionality was done to ensure everything was working correctly before the app was then cut over to the new service. Tearfund was involved in every step, doing their own testing alongside reinteractive.
The Heroku servers are then continually monitored to ensure uptime. Any lowered performance or scaling issues are dealt with on an immediate response basis by our 24/7 team. We make daily backups, and make sure all of the elements of the infrastructure are kept up to date.
You can read more about our Heroku managed service here.
"There were 3 key lessons learnt during the project: 1. Be aware of the total cost of ownership over the app life cycle and plan accordingly, 2. Good communication with development partners is essential and 3. Outsourcing where appropriate can help free up in-house resources to focus on core business needs."
Adam George, Web Administrator
Tearfund
Merging 3 apps into 2 significantly increased efficiency and reduced costs.
OpsCare provides the level of service and stability enabling Tearfund to feel confident to focus on the core business needs and targets
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