Aurora Solar Achieves 99.5% Accuracy with Hugo

Client

Since 2012, Aurora Solar has become a leading technology provider of modeling software that enables solar professionals to remotely design and sell solar and storage projects. To date, Aurora Solar hit 5 Million Solar Project designs and raised over 320 million dollars, achieving unicorn status with a $2 billion valuation.

Problem

When the pandemic caused the solar installation industry to struggle, Aurora saw a seismic uptick in demand. The pandemic had rapidly shifted customer behavior from manual, onsite solar designs to remote, computer-generated geospatial modeling. Given the company’s lofty goals of putting solar panels on every rooftop, Aurora’s leadership realized they needed to outsource design work, despite it being a critical element, to focus their energy on sales and platform development.

Aurora tapped Hugo to help provide a highly-skilled, remote team of geospatial modelers proficient and production-ready on their proprietary platform in four weeks. “With Hugo’s ability to create and scale flexible remote digital workers, they embraced this challenge, ensuring that Aurora engineers can focus on just building great products.” – Oscar Aguilera, Design Services Manager.

Solution

Hugo approached the challenge by examining the existing people, processes, and technology supporting Aurora’s geospatial modeling. Through meetings with a broad group of stakeholders, consultations with the engineering team, and examination of the Aurora platform, Hugo built a solution focused on three key areas:

Modeler Selection

Recognizing that the task required both technical skills and architectural knowledge, Hugo assigned formally trained architects to the project.

• The architects’ expertise in building design allowed them to excel at creating complex models, tackle challenging edge cases, and provide insightful feedback on software performance.
• By leveraging these specialized skills, Hugo ensured Aurora received not only accurate models but also valuable insights to drive future platform innovations.

Training & Development

Upon review, Hugo discovered that Aurora’s existing training materials were outdated and ineffective, often referencing obsolete platform features.

• Hugo initiated daily feedback sessions with Aurora to revamp all training manuals and videos, creating a comprehensive, up-to-date program.
• Thanks to this collaboration, the team was trained and production-ready within the 4-week deadline.

Workflow Execution

The team needed to balance speed, discretion, and quality in this workflow. To consistently deliver high-quality, responsive outputs for Aurora’s customers, the Hugo team implemented:

• An internal Quality Assurance (QA) grading system that measured model accuracy across five critical roofing dimensions, ensuring high-quality outputs.
• A best practice workflow enabling around-the-clock service delivery, accommodating quick turnarounds and global time zones.

Results

Hugo’s partnership with Aurora Solar yielded impressive outcomes:

• On average, quality accuracy scores were 99.5%, exceeding Aurora’s target by 1.5 percentage points.
• Team size doubled within three (3) months, with new members achieving production readiness in 2-weeks vs. the initial 4-week target.

“For us to focus on explosive growth created by the shift in our client’s behavior, we needed a managed-service provider who could deliver a team that understood the technology, training, and context. Through it all, Hugo has been that great partner,”  – Jay Dakof, Design Operations Manager.