Cloud Nerd delivers more to their clients in a fraction of the time with Gearset
Founded in 2015, Cloud Nerd provides software solutions to companies around the world. Using Salesforce, they’ve created everything from manufacturing plant monitoring systems to loan management systems, carrying out over 500 projects for clients globally. “You name it, we’ve built it,” says CEO Chris Scheppler, who has fifteen years of experience working with Salesforce.
Cloud Nerd has always been driven by efficiency, and working on such a wide range of Salesforce projects in a competitive market meant that they needed a powerful tool to help them stay ahead. As Chris explains, that’s where Gearset came in:
“We wanted to be more efficient than other consulting firms and work towards a fixed-bid process. So, how do I take a twenty-hour deployment and knock it down to two? I immediately searched for tools, and that’s how I found Gearset.”
Faster deployments, fewer errors, greater impact
The Cloud Nerd team needed a way to deploy changes faster, so they could avoid the frustration of slow, error-prone deployments with change sets. Chris explains one of the main factors that led him to look for a DevOps solution:
“We sell the idea that technology can help your business run more efficiently — you can do twice as much in half of the time. But if we’re not doing that with our own business, what the hell are we selling? That’s why we’ve stuck with Gearset.”
For the Cloud Nerd team, automation is key
Everybody wants their job to be easier. Clients want things done faster, without compromising on quality or security. “I’m a big automation guy,” notes Chris, “and that’s what we want to do for our clients. Every salesperson wants to go, click, here’s ten leads that are perfect for you to call right now and here’s the reason you should call them. Everybody wants that.”
With Gearset, Cloud Nerd can enjoy this level of automation for their Salesforce deployments, making their own work so much easier. “We’re very big fans of the compare and deploy function. Every Friday, our developers validate their deployment packages in Gearset, so that when we get to the deployment, there’s really no work to do.”
The team also create automated change monitoring jobs, so that Gearset tracks and notifies the team of any changes made to Salesforce environments. Every single metadata change is monitored, whether it’s deployed with Gearset or added directly in production. And if something isn’t right? No problem. “We’ve had a lot of instances where something went wrong, and being able to roll back quickly was fantastic,” recalls Chris. “It’s great being able to tell clients that getting things out to production is very low risk because, if there’s an issue, we’ll just roll back straight away.”
Customer success means more business for Cloud Nerd
When Cloud Nerd takes on a new client, they want that company to have the best experience possible. “If we can do a deployment in two hours rather than twenty, this has a huge impact. Our impression on the client is better, and the likelihood that we’ll win future business is exponentially greater.” Chris has measured the impact of Gearset on Cloud Nerd’s business:
“For projects where we’ve used Gearset, we’ve had about an 80% retention rate, compared to 60% with non-Gearset clients.”
The time Cloud Nerd saves by using Gearset to complete complex tasks more easily gives them a competitive edge. Chris cites seeding test data as an example, which is normally “exceedingly laborious” but takes less time with Gearset’s data deployer. “Your tool does a really good job of making that process more efficient, so we can save time. If we can make each step of our process faster, then we’ll make more money, we’ll do more projects, and we’ll have happier clients. That’s a pretty big win for us!”
Gearset significantly boosts Cloud Nerd’s efficiency across a range of DevOps processes, and that translates into real results for Cloud Nerd’s business. Chris recalls an occasion when the Cloud Nerd team were able to surpass all expectations — including their own:
“Once, we had estimated about twenty to twenty-five hours for a pretty hefty deployment with a large, global asset management company. We actually ended up doing that deployment in around two and a half hours. It was a huge win!”
