Astrak was already building its own AI environment. Tugger got them there sooner.
Astrak Group knew exactly what it wanted to build. Rather than wait for every piece to be developed in-house, they plugged their 8x8 data in through a ready-made Tugger® connector, and started creating value months ahead of schedule.
Meet Astrak
Astrak Group is a market leader in earthmoving equipment parts. Undercarriage, ground engaging tools, hydraulics - supplied to OEMs, plant hire firms, dealers, infrastructure projects, mining and defence.
Eighteen years in, eight facilities worldwide, and a business that's grown both internationally and through acquisition.
That growth brings complexity. And complexity is exactly what Stephen Cope, Astrak's Chief Information Officer, is using AI to get on top of.
"As Astrak has grown internationally and through acquisition, the complexity of the business has increased significantly," Stephen says. "We see AI as an important part of how we continue to scale, helping us connect systems, improve access to information, automate repetitive processes and allow people to make better decisions faster."
Connect systems. Improve access to information. Automate the repetitive. Help people decide faster. That's the job AI has at Astrak, and it starts with the data.
A harder brief than most
Astrak didn't come to AI looking for a science experiment. The intent was deliberate from the start.
It wasn't about experimenting with AI for the sake of it. We wanted to start putting the foundations in place for AI to interact securely and accurately with our core business systems and data.
Secure. Accurate. Connected to real systems, not a sandbox. That's a harder brief than most AI projects set themselves, and it's the reason the data layer mattered so much.
Where Tugger came in
Astrak's team already knew the environment they wanted to build. The sticking point was the plumbing - getting their 8x8 communications data flowing into it.
"Tugger came onto our radar as a practical way of solving that connectivity piece quickly."
One connector later, that piece was solved.
Twelve months, or today?
Astrak has the technical capability to build connectors itself. That's what makes this decision worth sitting with, because it's the question every capable IT team is wrestling with right now. Here's how it played out.
The plan. Astrak knew the type of AI environment and architecture it wanted. Foundations for AI to work securely and accurately with core business systems.
The blocker. Getting the 8x8 data into that environment. Building the connector in-house meant standing up new infrastructure and working through the data mapping from scratch.
The find. Tugger appeared on the radar, with the 8x8 connector already built and the mapping already done.
The decision. Plug in, don't rebuild. Easy setup, flexible commercial terms and no need to recreate infrastructure that already existed.
The result. Foundations in place. Business systems talking to AI securely. Value landing now instead of next year.
AI is moving too quickly for businesses to spend 12 months building something they could have deployed today.
Speed and simplicity won the day
"The biggest attraction was speed and simplicity," Stephen says. "We already understood what we wanted to achieve technically, so being able to plug into a ready-made connector meant we didn't need to recreate infrastructure that already existed."
Three things sealed it.
Ease of setup. No infrastructure to stand up, no data structures to reverse-engineer.
A flexible commercial model. No long contract to sign before finding out whether it worked.
Mapping already done. The data work that usually eats the first month of an integration project was finished before Astrak started.
"The ease of setup, flexible commercial model and the mapping work that had already been done all helped reduce both development time and risk."
Astrak had a clear direction of travel with AI. Tugger didn't change the destination - it moved the arrival date forward.
Rather than waiting for every component to be developed internally, Tugger gave us a way to accelerate that journey and start creating value much sooner.
Build what makes you different. Buy the plumbing.
If you're waiting until your AI roadmap is fully built before you start getting value from it, you're waiting too long.
Being technically capable doesn't mean a company should build everything itself. Our approach is to own and develop the areas that genuinely differentiate Astrak, while using good technology that already exists to accelerate everything else.
Astrak's approach is the one to copy. Be clear on the environment you want. Build the parts that make you different. Buy the plumbing. The connectors already exist.
