Client Profile
The Client is an established European bank, one of the largest banking institutions in the EU. It holds a firm spot on FT Global 500 ranking, which lists the largest businesses headquartered in Europe. The company provides a wide selection of financial products and services to clients located in CIS, Europe, Asia, Africa, and the USA via its vast network of branch offices and business subsidiaries.
Challenge
In early 2020 the Client decided to adopt a new digital transformation strategy. Its main objective was to give the bank a new competitive edge with the help of modern business automation software powered by the latest technology. The development plans were quite extensive and covered various business aspects: digital solutions and services for individuals, corporate customer products, sales automation, tailor-made digital workflows and business processes for the top and middle management, etc.
The Client decided to hire in-house only the key project personnel. So the main challenge was to find a sufficient number of reliable external contractors that would bring in just enough talented developers to cover the entire project scope within reasonable timeframes. The qualification criteria for contractors added up to the challenge as they were quite strict. To win this partnership, each contractor had to meet a number of conditions:
- Expert knowledge in building and managing full-stack dedicated development teams;
- Developers on staff available to join the project asap and start delivering results quickly;
- Proven successful experience of complex business automation for banking and finance industry;
- Efficient recruitment to adjust development team composition as required.
Our team managed to pass the evaluation process with no significant difficulties. The key factor of success here was the rich experience in the banking sphere which was accumulated by GP Solutions over the years.
Goals
The digital transformation endeavor started by the Client was quite complex. The entire development was split into several branches, or “streams”. GP Solutions was invited to join the one dedicated to development of specialized software for simplifying daily routines of the bank’s management staff.
In line with the agreement, GP Solutions was to supply fully stacked development teams to extend the joint group of developers allocated earlier (our stream already involved over 50 IT specialists at the time). Our agreement also envisaged an opportunity for long-term engagement in case the initial partnership would turn out to be a success.
Solutions
The cooperation started off in July 2020 with the first 2 IT specialists allocated full-time. Quite soon the first allocated duo turned into a complete development team with both back-end and front-end developers on staff. What concerns the overall cooperation format, it was handled as follows: the project owner supervising the project, business analysts were allocated by the Client, while most of the engineering scope was covered by external contractors, including GP Solutions.
Throughout the engagement, our specialists participated in 4 out of 7 subprojects managed as part of our development stream. Below is an informative description of key activities performed by our specialists in each project:
Project # 1: Internal business processes
1 team lead, 1 React developer, 2 Java developers, 1 System Analyst, 1 QA.
Java 11, SpringBoot, JUnit, Redis, PostgreSQL, React / Redux, Typescript, Webpack: 4.42.0
It was the starting point of our cooperation. As part of this subproject our team developed a subsystem which contained various tailor-made business workflows designed for optimizing daily activities of the bank’s management. In particular, our developers implemented the following business processes:
- Ordering of marketing materials for day-to-day sales activities;
- Organization of business events;
- Coordination and approval of changes to the corporate staffing table;
- A separate workflow to control the results of internal audits.
The development process included plenty of notable technical solutions. For example, the online spreadsheet functionality, which helped to optimize the work process by allowing simultaneous collaboration of multiple users within a single online table. Also, worthy of mentioning is the point of sales directory listing. It contains detailed information on all distribution units managed by the bank.
We allocated a complete development team for the project from our side. It included back-end / front-end engineers, dedicated resources for QA and system analysis. Our efforts were appreciated. As a result, the partnership extended into other subprojects within our development stream.
Project # 2: Internal training portal
1 team lead, 1 front-end developer, 1 back-end developer, 1 QA specialist.
Java 11, SpringBoot, JUnit, Redis, PostgreSQL, React / Redux, Typescript, Webpack: 4.42.0
This is another subproject which required a full-stack development team from our side. It is dedicated to building a fully-featured corporate training portal. The portal stores a large database of educational and testing materials. It was structured as a closed-out autonomous system — all the learning materials are contained inside the portal with no redirection to any 3rd-party resources.
The training system offers diverse functionality for managers. They can assign a test or a course to any of their employees whenever necessary and fully supervise their progress and achievements. As for the employees, any of them can visit the portal freely and launch any course whenever it is necessary to improve their skill level.
Project # 3: User account for managers
1 team lead
Java 11, SpringBoot, JUnit, Redis, PostgreSQL, React / Redux, Typescript, Webpack: 4.42.0
This project was set up to manage front-end and back-end development for the sub-system designed for assigning and processing managerial tasks by the senior management staff. It is interconnected with the other sub-systems developed within the stream (for example, the business process sub-system mentioned earlier). This time, only a team lead was required from our side as a replacement to the bank’s in-house employee. Our employee’s efforts paid off with better overall team’s productivity. It is also notable that all subsequent platform releases started going out with more regularity and fewer hiccups in the process.
The team managed to complete and successfully release many important features under the supervision of our team lead. For example, the online calendar feature designed for bank managers to handle their day-to-day activity schedule. Another significant release is the custom notification system that was built to inform managers on all critical activities and status changes taking place within their system accounts.
Project # 4: Online storefront for corporate customers
1 team lead
Java 11, SpringBoot, JUnit, Redis, PostgreSQL, React / Redux, Typescript, Webpack: 4.42.0
This project is focused on building a new version of the bank’s corporate B2B portal. It serves to provide various online banking services for corporate customers. In particular, it allows users to open and register an account, request a bank loan, and order pre-packaged service plans for business, along with a number of other activities and options. The team supervised by our specialist developed both the front-end and back-end functionality for the corporate portal. Special attention was dedicated to the custom content management system (CMS) that was built from scratch. It is a highly functional and flexible solution, allowing to manage diverse media content and regularly update the data published on the portal.Overall, the team managed to apply efficient solutions that were well in line with the project requirements. This is largely thanks to our team lead, who managed to pull out the best out of the development team under his supervision.
Results
After over a year of cooperation, it is possible to state firmly that the cooperation turned out to be quite successful. Starting with just 1 project and 2 FTEs, it quickly blossomed into a full-scale partnership involving 4 projects and 11 FTEs.
The Client is fully satisfied with the results of our work. As of September 2023 there are also good chances that this cooperation will last till the digital transformation strategy is implemented in full.
Technology:
Front-end: HTML / CSS, JavaScript, React / Redux, webpack
Back-end:
Java, Kotlin, SpringBoot, JUnit, Redis, PostgreSQL, TypeScript, liquibase, docker, swagger
Scope:
18 234+ man-hours