LumApps’ employee experience platform scales to 4 million users with Google Cloud & SADA

Four million is a large number in most contexts. When it comes to users for a company that’s been in business for only a few years, it’s even larger. Enter LumApps, which created its employee experience platform in 2015 to fill a void in the marketplace for a true SaaS solution that could scale to the needs of large enterprises and that would be easily accessible across any device or language.

“Our idea was to give information to people so they could better understand the company they worked for through engagement on a daily basis,” says Elie Mélois, Co-founder and CTO at LumApps. “Our product tailors each experience to the unique needs of an employee, from executives and managers to frontline workers.”

LumApps intelligently connects people, information, and business applications to empower employees and enhance productivity. “In the modern digital workplace, we want employees to engage not just around work activities, but to find a greater sense of purpose in their organization, to find community, and particularly if they don't have that in-office experience anymore, to be able to develop that sense of community online,” says Christopher McCLaughlin, CMO at LumApps.

With over 250 people in six offices located on three continents, LumApps serves prominent companies like Airbus, Air Liquide, The Economist, and Electronic Arts.

Business challenge

Rather than use open source code or build on an existing platform, LumApps decided to architect their employee experience platform from the ground up. This allowed them to fully master, understand, and profile information for employees. With a small team of developers, LumApps needed to base their Employee Experience Platform on a fully managed cloud host that would take care of the infrastructure and would enable the development team to concentrate on solution delivery.

“From the beginning, Google Cloud was a great match for us,” says Elie Mélois. “We initially started with App Engine, which was great as we were really focused on building the product. Google Cloud technology is exceptional; it was really easy for us to develop our initial product. Now, LumApps integrates with all the Google Workspace productivity and collaboration tools, including Gmail, Calendar, Meet, Chat, Docs, and Drive. Then, for our next phase of development, we decided that we wanted more autonomy and observability of the tech stack.”

With the tech stack plans in hand, LumApps turned their sights to business. They quickly closed their first deal in their native France within four months of launch, onboarding 100,000 users from one customer. After that, LumApps realized they needed to leverage their size by selling through the channel. Published reports show that one-third or more of leading tech companies’ revenues can come through the channel.

“When you’re thinking about the channel in a global sense, you have to ask yourself two questions, ‘How quickly can you go to market?’ and ‘How far can you go?’ says Noam Ktalav, VP of Channel at LumApps.

To take their employee experience platform to market worldwide, and in North America, in particular, LumApps determined that large Google Cloud resellers would make ideal channel partners.

Solution

After their initial success with App Engine, LumApps decided their next phase solution would take further advantage of Google Cloud’s managed services. “Google Cloud now does all the hard work for us for scale and stability,” says Elie Mélois. “Anything we can have Google Cloud manage for us, we let them. We use all the cloud technologies with managed services, from Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to BigQuery to CloudSQL.”

Through the Google Cloud ecosystem, LumApps and SADA, a three-time Google Cloud Reseller Partner of the Year, began to work together.

SADA was already a big Google Cloud reseller, so we did some deals together. SADA sold LumApps to some of their customers, and that’s how we started our partnership. They were a partner that we specifically targeted due to their vast install base of Workspace customers.

Elie Mélois, Co-founder and CTO at LumApps.

Since then, LumApps has joined SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program, a go-to-market acceleration program for ISVs, SaaS, and digital natives. Upon joining SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program, LumApps was assigned an account manager, who serves as their go-to resource for everything from business planning to program execution. Alliance account managers can help with go-to-market strategies, account mapping to maximize success with targeted prospects, business reviews to measure performance goals and objectives, thought leadership content, and promotional opportunities with SADA and Google Cloud.

Other benefits of the SaaS Alliance Program include co-branded marketing collateral, sales enablement sessions and materials, and co-selling and targeted lead-generation with the SADA sales team based on qualifications.

Results

As a result of working with Google Cloud and SADA, LumApps has been able to more fully leverage Google Cloud technology, empower their technical teams, extend their market reach, and enrich their pipeline with SADA’s help and their participation in SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program.

Using the fully managed services available in Google Cloud solutions such as Google Kubernetes Engine, BigQuery data warehouse, and CloudSQL relational database services, LumApps can devote their engineering resources to building a better product and not maintaining infrastructure. “We went from zero to three hundred customers without a DevOps engineer,” says Elie Mélois. “That’s all thanks to Google Cloud. We have over 50% of our staff dedicated to engineering and product functions. That wouldn’t be possible without leveraging the capabilities of Google Cloud.”

LumApps has also come to rely on channel programs like SADA’s SaaS Alliance to increase brand awareness and adoption of its innovative employee experience platform.

About 40% of LumApps revenues comes from channel partners; in North America, we depend a lot on SADA for that channel revenue. Our partnership in the Alliance accelerates our relationship to a new level. SADA positions us exactly in the markets we seek to expand. With co-marketing and co-selling initiatives, this partnership has been a win-win situation for an independent software vendor (ISV) like LumApps.

Noam Ktalav, VP of Channel at LumApps.

The partnership between SADA and LumApps includes a dedicated Alliance Sales Representative to identify new customer opportunities, an exclusive interview on SADA’s five-star-rated Cloud N Clear podcast, and creating a customized POWERON LumApps packaged service to ensure seamless integration of LumApps into Google Workspace in just five days by SADA.

SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program is an industry-leading initiative aimed at helping independent software vendors (ISVs) and SaaS organizations scale their businesses faster and maximize the value of their partnership with Google Cloud. The SaaS Alliance Program guides software companies to drive innovation, enhance their product offerings, accelerate customer acquisition, and amplify their marketing efforts. As a Google Cloud Premier Partner, SADA has formed powerful and impactful partnerships with ISVs by filling the increasing demand for go-to-market support and expertise. Learn more about SADA’s SaaS Alliance Program.