Retail and Commercial LendTech Innovator

Posted by Encora on May 24, 2023 12:26:29 PM
Encora’s approach drove significant improvements across the client’s eCommerce KPI dashboard.

Topics: Product Engineering & Development, Quality Engineering, Product management, Cloud Services, Azure, Banking, Financial Services & Insurance

Industry Context

As more individuals and organizations shift from net savers to borrowers, the demand for related services has surged. The market has witnessed the rapid proliferation of lending technologies, known as "LendTech," catering to the needs of retail and commercial financial institutions. LendTech companies leverage real-time data in this competitive landscape to gain an edge. Emerging technologies empower lenders to make informed decisions by intelligently balancing risk factors and growth opportunities, transforming the loan origination and servicing industry. 
ST Industry

Client Challenge

  • The evolving LendTech landscape requires swift product updates, but the client's product enhancement cycle lagged behind market needs. 
  • High developer attritiondisrupted consistent product development. 
  • Developers were not focused on innovation, leading to slower platform advancements. 
  • Software defects post-release compromised user experience and stretched resources. 
  • Prolonged development cycles hindered the client's timely response to industry shifts, allowing competitors to gain an edge. 
ST Challenge

Approach

  • Product Management, delivered capabilities to meet reporting requirements for the servicing of government loans (e.g., Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, VA, etc.)
  • Cloud Services, established a new environment for development and product hosting. Platform Modernization, assumed full end-to-end dev responsibilities for loan origination, servicing, and default management products
  • Quality Assurance, expanded and streamlined processes related to performance, usability, functionality and accessibility testing


ST Approach

Why Azure?

  • Provides a broad range of cloud services, including computing, analytics, storage, and networking
  • Offers scalability and flexibility to handle large quantities of data 
  • Improves collaboration and enhances the user experience 
  • Provides a cost-efficient platform with its pay-as-you-go pricing model 
  • Enhances and implements backup and disaster recovery 
  • Offers comprehensive compliance coverage 
  • Uses multilayered, built-in security controls and unique intelligence to detect and protect against rapidly evolving threats 
  • Improves infrastructure and insights 
  • Integrates with other tools (e.g., Memcached and Mule Services). 
  •  
Why Azure_

Azure Solution

  • ASP.NET web applications are hosted in Azure App Service (Platform as a Service) to provide a scalable and managed platform for delivering web applications to users.
  • Azure SQL Database (Hyperscale Service Tier) handles a high volume of concurrent transactions with high scalability, security, reliability, and availability. 
  • GitHub helps implement DevOps best practices like version control, collaborative coding, automation, CI/CD, security, and team administration. 
  • Azure Event Hubs help ingest and process real-time messages and communicate to external systems in a scalable and secure manner. 
  • RabbitMQ in Azure communicates between applications and microservices. 
  • Azure Web Application Firewall (WAF) on Azure Application Gateway protects applications from common exploits and vulnerabilities. 
  • Azure for Healthcare delivers better health insights with improved clinical informatics and operational insights, including Hybrid Cloud, Mixed Reality, and Artificial Intelligence. 
Azure Solution 3

Results

  • Significant improvements to product development throughput and quality 
  • Brought schedule and defect variances to below 1%
  • Increased story points per release by 22%
  • Experienced lesser developer turnover
  • Enjoyed better continuity and preservation of intellectual property
  • Saved money and reduced capital expenditures within seven environments by using more than 95% Azure PaaS services from development through production.
  • Achieved several business objectives, including handling loans from 500K in on-premises servers to millions in Azure Cloud.

ST  Results
sagent case study graph 3 story points

Productivity

sagent case study graph 1 developer attrition

Developer Attrition