Leveraging Microsoft Azure offerings, how Whatfix is building a robust and highly-available datacenter with failover

Founded by Khadim Batti and Vara Kumar, Whatfix is a leading Digital Adoption Platform that helps companies deploy advanced software tools rapidly and securely. The SaaS startup offers seamless integration with applications to empower users, providing in-context information and guidance to immediately increase individual capability and collectively amplify productivity. It is creating a new model for digital adoption for employees and customers alike by enabling users to learn in the way they’re most comfortable, while still using the software tools required for their day-to-day jobs.

Based on the universal human truth – Without proper know-how, the tools meant to propel us forward can end up holding us back – Khadim and Vara realised that with technology emerging everyday, there was an opportunity to provide individuals and organisations the knowledge and understanding of these essential tools in real time. “We now play a significant role in the digital adoption process, while still allowing our customers to learn and adapt to digital transformation at their own pace,” said the founders.

Today, Whatfix is on a strong growth trajectory and is a critical part of India’s startup ecosystem. With recent funding, Whatfix's valuation has increased 3X in the last 15 months. The team has achieved the best-in-class net revenue retention rate (NRR) at 132 percent in the enterprise customers segment in 2021, as well as a 250 percent increase in revenue from expansions of existing business.

“We have seen an increase in the usage of our product, with a rise of almost 20 percent for product demos while our revenue has multiplied over only the last several years. Whatfix has now raised $139.8 million to-date. We are using the funds to continue growing our stronghold in the US market while also accelerating global expansion into new markets such as Asia Pacific and Europe,” they reveal.

Understanding Digital Adoption Platforms

The Digital Adoption Platform (DAP) market is growing at a significant rate, as an increasing number of enterprises realise the urgency to reap the benefits from their digital initiatives. With DAP’s help, enterprises can successfully drive up adoption and provide a superior user experience. This becomes increasingly relevant amid the current pandemic when there is a ubiquitous need to provide remote training and support experiences.

While many organisations focus on a particular region or industry, Whatfix’s solutions can be integrated with almost any form of application, be it mobile, web, or desktop apps.

“We already work with a significant portion of the Fortune 1000 and we believe it’s time for the rest of them to come aboard as well,” the founders said, adding, “We are a digital adoption platform that offers in-app employee training for software solutions across the business. Whatfix modules are customised as per customer needs; easy-to-understand contextual guidance and step-by-step instructions help employees understand solution functionalities and onboard quickly.”

By boosting adoption, Whatfix helps its customers achieve ROI faster on their enterprise software investment. A 2X increase in revenue has been recorded as a result of increased customer usage of the Digital Adoption Platform. This was bolstered through the addition of over 130 enterprise customers including Center State Bank, Vivial, AkzoNobel, Ciena, Aurecon, and more, adding additional support for desktop and mobile applications, in addition to browser applications.

Whatfix credits their growth to their unique offerings such as easy installation, automated content creation, SCORM compliance, and contextualised guidance.

Scaling with Microsoft

Leveraging Microsoft Azure's availability offerings, Whatfix is building a more robust and highly-available datacenter with failover. Whatfix recently announced the launch of its new datacenters in Europe in addition to their two existing data centers in the US. With a global customer base, it is imperative that Whatfix serves the customers based on their region of operation to ensure optimal performance. In addition to providing customer confidence, Azure's cloud offerings have several security certifications (ISO, SOC2, etc). As a security conscious company, Whatfix offers clients services that meet these standards. “Recently, we leveraged Azure vault services to safeguard keys that are used to secure customers’ data,” the founders explained.

The team revealed that they came across many instances where their customers wanted a secure cloud infrastructure and Whatfix chose Azure, as it is recognised as the most trusted cloud partners for enterprise and hybrid infrastructure. “With Whatfix now deployed on Azure, we have been able to garner trust with customers and that in turn has resulted in sales wins,” said Khadim and Vara.

Additionally, Whatfix is a part of the Microsoft ISV Connect program and has developed several integrations for other Microsoft products including Whatfix Assist, a content search, and sharing apps for Microsoft Teams. Last year, the team announced a new addition to their technology partnership with Microsoft to support enterprises in adopting the Microsoft Dynamics 365 Suite.

“As part of our efforts, Whatfix is exploring the synergies between artificial intelligence and digital adoption. Through behavioural analytics, Whatfix hopes to provide highly actionable insights based on software usage patterns. With Microsoft’s AI Infrastructure, we should be able to test and take some of these initiatives to market faster,” they explained. The team hopes to migrate their infrastructure to Azure completely in the coming year, while also evaluating other technologies that they can leverage from Microsoft that will enable them to get to market faster.

When it comes to DAP tools, the team has high hopes. They believe that digital adoption is not only key to a successful digital transformation, but it is also becoming a fact of business life. DAP tools support employees from configuration, to testing, to go live, and provide both the foundational knowledge and the instructional help that comes into play later. Speaking about new trends in the digital adoption solutions space, they expect DAP to simplify digital transformation further. They also believe that Robotic Process Automation (RPA) will drive Employee Engagement and AI-Powered Personalisation engines will play a key role in employee training.