Key benefits
Achieved 30% boost in platform capacity
Easily scaled to support more than 12,000 customer workspaces per day
Maintained PEXA’s performance as transactions doubled over the past 18 months
PEXA is transforming the way Australians buy and sell property with more than $2 trillion (AUD) worth of property value transacted through its digital platform to-date. With AppDynamics, PEXA increased its scalability and gained additional visibility across its applications further helping make the property settlement process easier.
“We improved our key metrics around performance and response times with AppDynamics. That's something you don't achieve simply by scaling infrastructure.”
John Natsioulas
GM of Technology, Architecture, and Engineering, PEXA
Challenge
Provide scalability and visibility across the platform, ensuring PEXA’s performance was maintained while supporting rapid growth.
Solution
AppDynamics provides end-to-end observability of PEXA’s platform to track, manage, and improve performance as the business rolls out new services and grows in Australia.
Results
PEXA achieved a 30% boost in platform capacity, allowing its teams to easily support double the number of customer workspaces per day, while improving overall performance metrics.
“Visibility across our many customer segments and experiences allows us to deliver the best outcomes for home buyers and sellers who rely on our services. We would not have been able to establish our current feedback loop without AppDynamics.”
John Natsioulas
GM of Technology, Architecture, and Engineering, PEXA
Challenge
Supporting rapid growth and improving performance metrics
PEXA is a world-first innovation, revolutionizing the way people buy and sell property. With 10,000 member organisations (lawyers, conveyancers and financial institutions) in its network and more than 10 million transactions, with property settlement value in excess of $2 trillion (AUD) having been facilitated via its digital settlement platform, PEXA is a fundamental pillar of Australia’s property infrastructure. Today, PEXA is integrated with six land registries, five state revenue offices across the country, as well as the Reserve Bank of Australia, and, with its customers, helps facilitate 80% of all property settlements in Australia.
As the company grew, it needed to ensure that it could scale up and continue to maintain or improve its performance metrics to better serve its customers.
“We had two goals,” says John Natsioulas, GM of Technology, Architecture, and Engineering at PEXA. “The first was to build a scalable platform upon which we could add new services and grow quickly. The second was to gain visibility across our application performance and end-user activity so we could continuously improve our standard of service.”
The solution was put to the test as over the past 18 months, PEXA nearly doubled the number of transactions it had completed since its inception in 2010. Working with AppDynamics, PEXA had complete visibility across its applications and development processes to catch performance issues quickly, helping it maintain the highest standard of service and performance, critical when the company supports 20,000 home buyers and sellers settle safely every week.
Putting customers first with end-to-end visibility
With AppDynamics, PEXA was able to adapt to the growth in the number of transactions it processed, and maintain a holistic view on the performance of its platform. With an end-to-end view of the business’ applications, services, and customer activity in one place, Natsioulas and his team were able to monitor how each piece of their operation performed and proactively address any issues that might affect end users.
The end-to-end visibility PEXA has gained with AppDynamics plays an important role in the speed and reliability of its customer experience. “Having this observability allows us to keep our applications and teams running at full capacity,” says Natsioulas. “Our platform needs to operate optimally because so many people rely on it to ensure that they can move into their new home as planned.”
Migrating to the cloud years ago was only the first step in PEXA’s digital evolution. The transition from on-premises to software-as-a-service (SaaS) also ensures the company will always use the latest capabilities and software releases to run its services, while AppDynamics helps it to ensure these applications perform optimally. By contrast, PEXA’s previous on-premises systems involved manual processes that made them not as well suited for rapid growth and shifting customer needs.
As a lynchpin in Australia’s real estate infrastructure, our business needs to stay ahead. We need instant access to the latest software so we can pay that forward to customers. We also need to monitor how our applications are performing and affecting end users at all times so we can fine-tune our service in line with their needs,” says Natsioulas. “That’s what AppDynamics delivers.”
Scalability, visibility and better metrics
PEXA’s purpose is to transform property experiences for everyone, by offering its digital settlement solution for a safe, secure, and efficient property settlement journey. Digitization meant that in the face of COVID-19, the buying and selling of property could continue largely uninterrupted, and the Australian property industry continued to flourish. This meant that the right systems needed to be in place to support the sustained industry demand and ensure that customers could continue to settle property for their clients with ease.
AppDynamics helped Natsioulas and his team identify application queries that would have previously compromised the performance of its services. One such analysis revealed that by offloading excessive queries from one of its core database applications, PEXA could improve system capacity and performance by 30%.
“We improved our key metrics around performance and response times with AppDynamics. That's something you don't achieve simply by scaling infrastructure,” says Natsioulas. “It’s essential to focus on your applications, iterating upon production metrics and friction points to strip the fat and work more efficiently each day.”
These enhancements also positioned PEXA to manage spikes in demand during peak periods. The company’s two busiest moments come at the end of the financial year and the end of the calendar year, when it goes from supporting 6,000 workspaces per day to more than 12,000. Even with demand on its platform doubling, PEXA can handle the spike with ease and keep its applications running at optimal capacity.
“As a company, we constantly talk about the importance of building trust with our customers. The fact that we can identify and help businesses address their own challenges with our data goes a long way in building those strong relationships.”
John Natsioulas
GM of Technology, Architecture, and Engineering, PEXA
Building trust with end users
In keeping with its uncompromising focus on service quality, PEXA uses AppDynamics End User Monitoring to build stronger relationships with its major stakeholders and customers.
AppDynamics also helps PEXA monitor and optimize the performance of its mobile app, PEXA Key. Regardless of the type of device or operating system its customers use, the company can monitor the applications they use for potential errors and address them quickly, guaranteeing a high standard of service on an increasingly popular channel for its customers.
What’s more, PEXA can share its deeper insight into data from end-user activity with customers to help them manage their own performance challenges. For instance, PEXA works with financial services firms to address local performance issues that require access to its application data.
A virtuous feedback loop
Perhaps the clearest sign of PEXA’s transformation is the continuous loop of insight, iteration, and improvement that now shapes its services. With a complete view of its application production and end-user activity, PEXA’s teams are continuously fed insight that helps them perform their jobs at a higher level. That in turn translates to constant improvement for customers.
“Customers are at the heart of everything we do at PEXA. Our team’s performance and the customer experience go hand in hand. Visibility across our many customer segments and experiences allows us to deliver improved outcomes for the businesses and families who rely on our services,” says Natsioulas. “We would not have been able to establish our current feedback loop without AppDynamics.”
This shift in approach has also freed up Natsioulas’ team to focus on production and performance optimization, rather than just monitoring PEXA’s systems and managing upgrades when they risk falling behind. What’s more, they’ve been able to double their application performance without heavy investments in additional infrastructure.
“It gives me great pride to say we’ve improved our customer experience and can manage twice as much volume while keeping our costs in check,” says Natsioulas. “With AppDynamics, we continue to work faster and get new services out more efficiently, which is a win for our business, customers, and their clients alike.”
About PEXA
PEXA is revolutionizing property settlement in Australia with its digital settlement platform. The company’s network of financial institutions and legal and conveyancing firms helps more than 20,000 buyers and sellers settle their homes safely each week.
