Envoy, a visitor and delivery management software provider, relied on manual, cumbersome feature release processes requiring constant coordination between product and development teams. By adopting Split's feature flagging and experimentation platform, Envoy automated rollouts, eliminated manual flag management, and enabled bi-weekly experiments measuring business impact on conversion rates and upgrades. Product managers now independently launch features while developers focus on building.
About Envoy
Envoy is the leading visitor and delivery management software provider for offices worldwide. Their platform helps companies securely manage visitor information and track packages arriving for employees. With a focus on growth and revenue generation, Envoy sought to implement a more efficient feature rollout process to meet aggressive business targets. They turned to Split’s feature flagging and experimentation capabilities to scale their release process and measure the business impact of new features.
Challenge
Manual, cumbersome release processes
Before adopting Split, Envoy’s process for rolling out new features was slow, inefficient, and involved significant coordination between product managers and developers. The team relied on an in-house feature flagging solution, which required manual steps to create and track feature flags.
Eric Crane, Product Manager at Envoy, shared: “Before Split, our feature releases were cumbersome and time-consuming, requiring our product managers to make special requests to developers every time we wanted to launch new functionality.”
Additionally, Envoy lacked visibility into which customers were receiving what features, creating friction between development and support teams. Product managers struggled with manually compiling customer IDs for phased rollouts, and the lack of visibility into feature treatments made customer support more difficult.
Envoy’s in-house system couldn’t keep up with the company’s rapid growth, and they needed a more scalable solution. Split offered a turnkey platform that would allow them to streamline their feature rollout process and, importantly, integrate experimentation to measure business value.
Solution
Adopting feature flags and experimentation
Envoy implemented Split’s feature flagging and experimentation platform to improve release velocity and business results. By using Split, Envoy was able to scale feature flagging across all code repositories, including backend, frontend, and mobile apps, allowing them to manage feature rollouts more effectively across the organization.
Key benefits:
- Streamlined feature rollouts: Envoy now wraps every new feature in a Split flag, enabling safe functional and performance testing in production without impacting all users.
- Increased release velocity: By automating the feature release process, product managers no longer need to wait for developers to help manually set up rollouts, speeding up the process.
- Better control and visibility: Split provides Envoy with complete control over who gets which features and when, making it easier to track customer experiences and resolve issues promptly.
- Data-driven experimentation: Envoy evolved from simply rolling out features to running continuous experiments, allowing them to track and optimize business impact in real-time.
Eric Crane, Product Manager at Envoy, commented, “Every team—from product and engineering to design and support—leverages Split to confidently create a great experience for our users.”
Results
Faster releases, improved customer experience, and increased revenue
With Split in place, Envoy significantly improved their feature rollout process, driving both operational efficiency and business growth:
- Reduced rollout time: Feature rollouts, which used to require significant coordination, can now be launched automatically by product managers with minimal developer intervention.
- More frequent experimentation: Envoy runs bi-weekly experiments, testing everything from user activation rates to customer onboarding improvements, which directly impacts revenue growth.
- Risk mitigation: By using feature flags for phased rollouts, Envoy can mitigate risk by exposing new features to a subset of users before scaling to the entire customer base.
- Improved developer efficiency: Developers now focus on building features rather than managing manual flagging processes, allowing them to push updates faster and more often.
Business impact
Business growth through experimentation and data-driven decisions
Envoy’s use of Split has allowed them to meet their business objectives faster, particularly around revenue growth. With the ability to run continuous experiments, Envoy has improved key metrics such as conversion rates, user activations, and customer upgrades. The ability to segment users based on licensing entitlements also allows Envoy to run targeted promotions, increasing revenue opportunities.
Additionally, Envoy tracked their new customer education program by measuring onboarding flow times and testing the impact of new features on user success. This data-driven approach has enabled Envoy to scale their services while ensuring customers discover the value of their platform as quickly as possible.
"Split has enabled us to test, release, and experiment at a scale that directly impacts our revenue. We're now able to launch experiments every two weeks, testing new features and measuring results in real-time.” — Eric Crane, Product Manager, Envoy
Future
Expanding the platform across Envoy’s dev process
As Envoy continues to grow, they plan to refine their use of Split to further automate their feature management and experimentation processes. They are investigating using Split to integrate with Jira for automated ticketing and feature flag management, reducing the complexity of managing large volumes of feature flags. Additionally, Envoy is exploring how Split can fully manage user entitlements across their various pricing tiers, providing further customization and flexibility to meet customer needs.
