Case Study - Mentorgain: reimagining mentorship with a SaaS platform

Mentorgain is an intuitive SaaS platform designed to simplify and enhance mentorship programs for organizations. With features like automated matching, powerful analytics, and easy program management, Mentorgain helps companies foster a culture of growth, development, and support.

Client
Mentorgain
Year
Service
SaaS Development
logo

Overview

A woman solopreneur developed a B2C web application that allowed users (mentees) to sign up and schedule mentoring sessions. However, she faced challenges with her previous service provider, who was slow to deliver updates and charged high fees for feature enhancements.

Seeking a trusted and strategic partner to elevate her platform and build new features with exceptional quality and efficiency, she approached us for assistance.

The ask

Our client initially sought our expertise to enhance her existing platform, Mentorgain, by integrating advanced features that would improve user engagement and streamline operations. As the project evolved, she aimed to transition from a B2C model to a scalable, multitenant B2B platform. This new platform needed to cater to multiple organizations, each with its own customized experience and data security measures. Key requirements for this transition included:

  • Robust multitenancy: Support for multiple organizations with role and permission-driven access control.
  • Comprehensive user roles: Inclusion of various user roles such as Platform Admin, Organization Admin, Mentor, Mentee, and dual-role capabilities.
  • Oauth authentication: Seamless registration and login with Google Business and Microsoft Teams authentication methods.
  • Platform administration module:
    • Onboarding new organizations and associating them with specific domains.
    • Importing users via CSV, triggering automated invitation emails, and managing non-preapproved users through an approval process.
    • Monitoring user sign-ups and managing billing based on active user counts.
  • User management:
    • Tools for Org Admins to invite participants, manage profiles, assign mentors, and access performance analytics.
    • Features for Mentors and Mentees to manage availability, schedule sessions, and track mentorship progress.
  • Advanced session management:
    • Integration with Google and Microsoft calendars, rescheduling capabilities, and session feedback collection.
  • Data-driven analytics:
    • Actionable insights for Org Admins to track sessions, user engagement, and mentorship success.
  • Scalable and secure architecture:
    • Enhanced authentication with options for Google, Microsoft, or email-password.
    • Notifications for session updates, reminders, and engagement-driven emails.

The goal was to create a platform that not only delivered a rich user experience but also provided data-driven insights that would attract organizations by highlighting the value of mentorship and training.

The pain points

While developing the B2C interface, our team encountered several challenges. The original codebase was not written in a modular way, creating issues with scalability, maintainability, and performance. Additionally, the previous platform was built directly on a production environment without separation between development and production. This setup made implementing and testing new features difficult, as any changes risked immediate disruptions and downtime for active users.

The solution

To address these issues, we rewrote the code following best practices, focusing on improving performance, maintainability, and security. We separated the development and production environments to prevent real-time issues during testing and deployment. The B2B platform was deployed on AWS cloud services to ensure scalability. Over the course of three to four months, we delivered an MVP of B2B platform with a more responsive and secure interface.

Core Functionality

  • AI-generated session questionnaires: Integrated OpenAI for creating dynamic questionnaires and improved overall performance.
  • Multitenancy: Supported subdomain-based routing and modified authentication to allow the same email across different tenants.
  • Administration Tools:
    • User import from CSV.
    • Configurable authentication providers (Google/Microsoft, email-password).
    • Customizable login pages displaying tenant information.
    • Admin-configurable mentor/mentee questionnaires and matching algorithm factors.
    • Transactional email configuration using Novu.

Technical Architecture

  • Data security: Implemented row-level security (RLS) for data privacy and integrity.
  • File management: Used separate S3 buckets for file segregation by tenant.
  • Microservices approach: Leveraged an Nx monorepo structure for modular development, separating API, UI, and admin UI repositories.
  • Documentation: Provided Swagger documentation for all APIs.
  • Search and filtering: Set up Elasticsearch with separate indexes for tenant data.
  • Performance enhancements: Database query tweaks, and implemented caching with Redis.
  • AWS environment: Ensured environment segregation with VPCs, security groups, EC2 instances, RDS, and a load balancer.

Engineering Practices

  • Version control: Established code review and approval processes for all changes.
  • Coding standards: Ensured zero ESLint errors and adherence to strict standards.
  • CI/CD pipelines: Set up for staging and production for three repositories.
  • Quality assurance: Introduced Playwright-based sanity tests for end-to-end testing.
  • Documentation: Maintained comprehensive documentation on Confluence covering the architecture, key decisions, and technical considerations.

The outcome

We built the B2B platform from ideation to launch, establishing a robust technical architecture. This allowed the client to successfully transition from a B2C to a B2B model, significantly enhancing user experience and broadening the platform's reach.

Core technologies

  • Full-stack development
  • Multi-tenant SaaS architecture
  • Automated matching & analytics
  • Cloud infrastructure (AWS)
  • OpenAI integration
  • NestJs & React

Impact

  • B2C: The platform continues to efficiently serve individual users, now supporting over 100 mentors and 500+ users.
  • B2B: The pivot from B2C to B2B enabled the client to open new revenue streams by offering customized solutions to corporate clients, greatly expanding the platform's scope and profitability.

The Lean Product Studio’s expertise has been invaluable in bringing Mentorgain to life. From development to ongoing support, their attention to detail and commitment to quality have made a tremendous difference.

quote
Gauri Gokhale
Founder - Mentorgain
MVP development
4 months
Scalable SaaS architecture
Multi-tenant
CI/CD automation
100%

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