How Envoy optimizes value with feature flags & experimentation

Envoy turned to feature flags and experimentation to improve feature rollouts, boost growth, and streamline the release process.

Industry
Software and Services
Locations
Americas
Ready to get started?
Try Harness for free today.

Summary

Learn how Envoy adopted Split feature management and experimentation (acquired by Harness) to enhance their feature rollout strategy, increase release velocity, and achieve aggressive business growth targets.

  • Continuous experimentation: Envoy uses Split to run bi-weekly experiments that increase revenue by improving conversion rates and encouraging customer upgrades.
  • Increased developer efficiency: With Split, Envoy eliminated manual feature flag management, freeing up product managers and developers to focus on higher-value tasks.
  • Improved release velocity: By enhancing their branching strategy and automating deployments, Envoy accelerated the pace of feature delivery without sacrificing quality.

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.

Explore More Customer Stories

Imperfect Foods adopted experimentation, enabling them to rapidly test new features, make fast website changes, and drive significant growth.

Feature Management & Experimentation

Through targeting rules and feature flags attached to data, thredUp experimented and delivered more impactful promotions.

Feature Management & Experimentation
No items found.
Feature Management & Experimentation