How Sabanto Saved 3 Months of Their Development Time for Notifications Using SuprSend?

Sabanto is pioneering the future of agriculture with its innovative autonomous tractor solutions. By developing retrofit kits that transform existing tractors into autonomous machines, Sabanto is addressing the critical shortage of skilled labor in the agriculture industry. Their technology enables a single operator to control multiple vehicles simultaneously, dramatically increasing efficiency and productivity in farming operations.

The Challenge

As Sabanto's autonomous tractor technology evolved, the company encountered a complex challenge: creating a robust, scalable notification system that could keep farmers informed about their equipment's status without requiring constant manual monitoring. This system needed to:

1. Deliver real-time alerts about critical events across multiple channels
2. Support various notification types (text, email, in-app, push notifications)
3. Allow granular customization of notification preferences based on user roles, specific equipment, and organizations
4. Provide reliable delivery, tracking, and analytics of notifications
5. Scale efficiently to handle growing notification volumes
6. Integrate seamlessly with their existing tech stack and operational workflows

Use Cases for Notifications

Talking about the importance of notifications for their use cases, Ravi Yenduri, CTO of Sabanto, comments,

“...when we do this remotely, we also know that the farmers are not just sitting in front of the computer and monitoring. They all have so much other work that they're doing in and around the field. So, they require notifications to know when they need to tend to the tractor.”
Ravi Yenduri, CTO at Sabanto

Previous Notification System: Evolution and Limitations

Sabanto's notification system evolved through several stages:

1. Initially, they used a basic Slack based notification system for internal updates.
2. They then integrated AWS SNS for SMS notifications.
3. Later, they adopted MagicBell for in-app notifications and attempted to implement email and mobile push alerts. MagicBell also works in the notification infrastructure space, providing a similar service as SuprSend. As per, Ravi Yenduri, CTO of Sabanto, who worked with Magicbell integration, observed the following challenges about it, and the things that led them to look for another solution.
   • Pros: Introduced in-app notifications and attempted email integration quickly
   • Cons:
     • Limited logs data collection
     • Difficulties in implementing iOS push notifications
     • Limited customization options for user preferences
     • Lack of version control for notification templates
     • Security vulnerabilities with exposed API keys

These limitations led to several pain points:

• Difficulty in troubleshooting notification failures
• Lack of insights into notification effectiveness and user engagement
• Time-consuming process for creating and updating notification templates

At that time, they discovered and took on SuprSend as their notifications partner.

Solution Implementation with SuprSend

Sabanto chose SuprSend for its comprehensive features, flexibility, and scalability. The implementation process involved several key steps and considerations:

• Multi-channel Support:
  • Implemented SMS, email, in-app notifications, and push notifications for both iOS and Android
  • Leveraged Suprsend's unified API to streamline integration across channels
  • Utilized channel-specific features like rich push notifications for enhanced user experience

• User Preference Management:
  • Implemented a granular preference system allowing users to customize notifications based on:
    • User role (field operators, dealers, business owners)
    • Notification types (errors, warnings, info)
    • Specific devices or organizations

• Notification Templating and Workflow Management:‍
  • Utilized Suprsend's templating engine for creating consistent, personalized notifications
  • Implemented version control for templates, enabling easy rollback and A/B testing
  • Leveraged workflow management features to create advanced notification logic
  • Use mock data to test and preview the notifications instantly
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• Logging, Monitoring, and Analytics:‍
  • Accessed comprehensive logging where they could easily see logs at user-level, workflow level, or navigate easily from a workflow trigger to a user
  • Set up real-time monitoring and alerting for notification delivery issues
  • Utilized Suprsend's analytics features to gain insights into notification performance and user engagement

Technical Challenges During Implementation

Sabanto operates in a highly complex field where numerous moving parts must synchronize seamlessly with their notification engine. This complexity demanded a deeply integrated solution, far beyond a simple "install and forget" approach.
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1. Complex user-Device-Organization Relationships:
   • Challenge: Sabanto's ecosystem involves intricate relationships between users, devices and organizations, requiring a nuanced approach to notification management.
   • Solution: Sabanto developed a custom data model and API layer, integrating seamlessly with SuprSend's user and preference management systems. This allowed for granular control over notifications based on complex organizational hierarchies and device associations.
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2. High-Volume, Real-time Notifications During Peak Seasons:‍
   • Challenge: Managing sudden spikes in notification volume during intensive farming periods without compromising system performance.
   • Solution: Leveraged Suprsend's scalable infrastructure to implement an adaptive queuing system, efficiently managing notification priorities to prevent system overload during critical agricultural timeframes.
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3. Balancing Notification Frequency and User Engagement:
   • Challenge: Providing timely alerts without overwhelming users, considering the diverse roles and preferences in agricultural operations.
   • Solution: Utilized SuprSend’s batching function to develop an intelligent notification batching system. This system combined related alerts and implemented role-specific cool-down periods, ensuring relevant information delivery without causing notification fatigue.

Results and Metrics

Sabanto has observed significant improvements since implementing Suprsend:

Development Time Saved:

• Accelerated time to market for notifications by 3 months compared to building an in-house solution.

Improved Notification Management:

• Easier creation, testing, and deployment of new notifications across multiple channels.
• Ability to use version control for templates, enabling easy rollback and potential A/B testing.
• Implemented multi-channel very quickly

Enhanced User Experience:

• Farmers/ dealers can now customize their notification preferences, receiving only the most relevant alerts.
• Ability to manage notifications at both device and organization levels.

Better Insights:

• Suprsend's dashboard provides valuable data on notification delivery and interaction rates.
• This data is being used to optimize Sabanto's communication strategy.

We actually asked Ravi, what was his favorite part of integrating SuprSend, and we loved his answer,

"I think, for me, the biggest one was the overall logs. You could look at the logs of workflow, you could look at the logs of a user. You could go from a workflow to a user. You know, all of that logs was pretty easy to follow and actually, worked really well. And then there was the version control of templates and workflows…."
Ravi Yenduri, CTO at Sabanto

Apart from that, Ravi also commented about our observability layer,

“I'm actually counting on SuprSend’s dashboard to give me insights on how people are using or interacting with our notifications to enhance our user engagement.”
Ravi Yenduri, CTO at Sabanto

Building a notification system is about more than just sending alerts; it’s about ensuring both the user and the business are fully informed and in control of the entire process. SuprSend has enabled Sabanto to achieve this, making their notification system a vital component of their broader technology ecosystem.