The Journey with Dynatrace
HBF Client Case Study
Briefly describe your role and what a typical day looks like for you. How does Dynatrace fit into your daily routine?
As the Head of Integration, I oversee the integration services that ensure smooth communication across HBF’s digital ecosystem, including cloud-native environments, core systems, and third-party platforms. My day-to-day responsibilities involve my team and I using Dynatrace to monitor integration points, proactively detect potential issues, and coordinate across teams to maintain seamless operations.
The platform’s real-time insights are crucial, enabling me to prioritise tasks and ensure system reliability as part of HBF’s broader digital transformation efforts. The log ingestion capability across every asset, and ability to search across everything quickly and easily, is critical in this space. It allows data-driven judgements to be made on actual member impact. When you can see exactly how often a problem is occurring, and its impact, it allows the business to make much more informed decisions in terms of the priority of implementing fixes.
What challenges were you and your team facing before implementing Dynatrace?
Before adopting Dynatrace, HBF’s digital transformation faced challenges due to fragmented monitoring solutions. Each department utilised its own tools, leading to a lack of unified visibility across systems, including key integration layers. This made it difficult to detect and resolve issues quickly, resulting in inefficiencies, and delays in providing a seamless user experience. The integration team’s challenges were particularly acute, with complex dependencies across different services and platforms.
What motivated the decision to choose Dynatrace over other solutions?
HBF selected Dynatrace because of its ability to provide a comprehensive observability platform that could consolidate monitoring across the organisation, including integration services, cloud infrastructure, and legacy systems. Its AI-powered insights, automated problem detection, and seamless integration capabilities made it the ideal choice to support our digital transformation objectives. Dynatrace allowed us to break down silos, so that teams could collaborate more effectively and proactively resolve issues.
Human Touch: Was there a moment or aspect that resonated with you on a personal level?
Seeing the immediate impact of the “labelled MVP” delivered by Avocado was a turning point. The early wins in improving visibility, performance testing, and defect resolution validated our decision to adopt Dynatrace. It was reassuring to witness how the right platform, combined with a strong partnership, could make a tangible difference in the day-to-day experiences of my team and me. This early success helped build momentum and secured buy-in from the wider organisation.
Sector
Health Insurance
Customer Details
HBF Health
Luke Osborne
STRATEGIES & SOLUTIONS: The Transformation
Describe the implementation process and the initial reactions of your team.
The implementation of Dynatrace was a collaborative effort involving HBF, Avocado, and Dynatrace, working together to deliver a cutting-edge observability solution. The architecture we deployed is entirely modern and cloud-native, designed to integrate real-time monitoring, observability, and automation across multiple environments. Avocado’s deep technical expertise and flexible approach enabled us to adapt the solution dynamically as the project evolved. The initial reactions were overwhelmingly positive, as teams quickly recognised the benefits of real-time monitoring and AI-driven insights.
Team Dynamics: How did Dynatrace affect team collaboration and morale?
Dynatrace played a pivotal role in fostering a more collaborative environment. By consolidating monitoring tools and creating a “single pane of glass” for system health, different departments were able to work together more effectively. This approach helped break down silos and allowed teams to focus on shared objectives. The resulting boost in productivity was evident, as team members were empowered to resolve issues faster and take proactive measures.
Share a specific instance where Dynatrace made a significant impact on a project or initiative.
During a critical phase of modernising our cloud infrastructure, Dynatrace helped identify bottlenecks and performance issues in real time across 10,000 assets and 800 jobs across four environments. For example, the platform detected recurring outages in Core DB services and identified high failure rates in integrations with third-party banking services. This early detection allowed us to implement targeted fixes, preventing major disruptions and saving an estimated 20 hours of troubleshooting time in one month.
Dynatrace has since gone on to pick up other potential issues and has been our key source of truth for resolving many incidents since the launch of our new systems and technology in August 2024.
Personal Victory: How did this success feel on a personal level? What did it mean for your team?
It was incredibly satisfying to see our efforts pay off so quickly, with the team able to resolve issues that previously may have taken days in just a matter of hours. The improved efficiency translated into a sense of achievement and confidence within the team, reinforcing the value of our digital transformation efforts and encouraging further adoption of agile practices.
OBJECTIVES: The Outcomes
In what ways has Dynatrace contributed to your professional growth or leadership within your company?
Dynatrace has enabled me to take a more data-driven approach to leadership, using insights to make informed decisions and optimise system performance. The platform’s modern architecture and automated insights have transformed the way we operate, helping me lead the team with a future-focused mindset and deliver measurable results. This has solidified my position as a leader driving digital transformation within the organisation.
Every defect now has supporting data attached from Dynatrace including how many times it has occurred in the last 30 days, criticality, times, dates, etc. This allows for much more informed decision making.
Can you quantify the impact of Dynatrace on your projects in terms of time saved, productivity increased, or revenue impacted?
· Approximately 30+ hours of troubleshooting in one month from automated problem detection: Automated identification of incidents, including critical issues in the Integration services
· Approximately 50% increase in Triage Productivity; thanks to the consolidated monitoring, which reduced the time spent on issue diagnosis and manual checks.
· Technical Teams now feel much more confident supporting our new Cloud assets created as part of our digital transformation
· The operational efficiencies gained from using Dynatrace have allowed teams to focus on strategic initiatives rather than firefighting. This shift has helped foster a culture of continuous improvement. The new architecture’s automation capabilities and integration with our Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) processes are empowering teams to innovate without sacrificing quality or system stability.
GOALS: The Future
How do you see Dynatrace playing a role in your future projects or personal career development?
Dynatrace will remain a cornerstone of our strategy as we aim to further advance our observability capabilities. We plan to explore deeper integration with our CI/CD pipelines and leverage AI-driven analytics to enable predictive monitoring. Personally, I will continue to champion the use of advanced observability tools across the organisation to further drive automation and innovation.
What advice would you give to others in your industry facing similar challenges?
Embrace a collaborative approach to digital transformation by selecting strategic partners who can integrate seamlessly into your teams. Implement a modern observability platform like Dynatrace to gain comprehensive visibility across your IT landscape. This will enable you to act swiftly and decisively, driving better outcomes for both your business and customers.
