Client Case Study
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Client Case Study A LEADING FINANCIAL SERVICES FIRM SERVING THE UNDERBANKED ENGAGES SENECAGLOBAL FOR OUTSOURCED MOBILE APP DEVELOPMENT OVERVIEW SenecaGlobal was selected by a leading Financial Services Solutions company to lead their Mobile Development and Quality Assurance effort. This product development featured a SenecaGlobal delivering all of the IOS and Android Development for this leading financial institution as they delivered key mobile apps to their growing customer base. After successfully delivering early pilot apps, SenecaGlobal was selected to continue this mobile development and added additional teams that delivered new architectural web components for the next generation Financial Services customer platform and provided the QA services as well. THE SITUATION About the Client The client is a leader in financial services industry, in particular in the area of providing key financial services to “under-banked” customers and prospects. Providing a suite of location based, web-based services and mobile services, they are leading the way in delivering valuable mobile financial services to this largely underserved market. As a Financial Services’ product delivery organization, our client has provided a series of applications and mobile apps that push needed Financial Services closer to the end customer and enable increased loyalty to the client’s brand. Scope and Requirements The client’s existing suite of legacy financial services products required the end customer visit a physical location to transact services such as sending money to relatives and friends across the country and all over the world. In order to gain market share and increase customer loyalty to the company, the goal of providing both web-based and mobile apps to the end customer to eliminate the need to visit a specific location to transact financial transfers – particularly for the under-banked population. The client was looking for a technology partner who could help them build high-quality mobile products for the IOS and Android mobile platforms. The initial scope of the engagement was to build an Android and IOS “wrapper-app” that would leverage newly developed web services from their new Self-Service Web App. The scope also included providing the Quality Assurance Testing to ensure that the precise execution and user experience required was achieved. Given the market momentum towards mobile enablement of financial services, the client wanted to deliver mobile apps “asap” to capture customer demand. Not wanting to scale the organization internally, the client was looking for an experienced, dependable partner to provide these critical services. THE SOLUTION Objectives § Set-up dedicated software development and independent testing teams, working as an extension of the client’s team. § Set up mobile development and release processes to introduce the “wrapper apps” and new features to the apps, to support the businesses ongoing vision for mobile financial services. § Set up development and release processes to resolve bugs as they are identified. § Deliver the IOS and Android versions of these Financial Services apps with high quality and within target dates identified. SGMS/BC/PRO/15 SENECAGLOBAL PROPRIETARY INFORMATION VER, NO: 2.0 1 Client Case Study § Take complete ownership of the mobile software development, maintenance and support of a set of mobile apps. Challenges § The existing web application components and database were monolithic in architecture and were not suitable as micro services. SenecaGlobal met this challenge by contributing a Web Self-Service Development team that assisted in the design, development and delivery of key web services to be consumed by the Mobile App. § Since the initial version of Mobile Apps was intended to be “wrapper-based”, these web application services were crucial to the success of the mobile App delivery. § Collaborate and work with the globally distributed engineering and product teams, spread across multiple time-zones (NY, Hyderabad and Shanghai) Delivery § SenecaGlobal met the web services challenge by contributing a Web Self-Service Development team that assisted in the design, development and delivery of key web services to be consumed by the Mobile App. § Upon successfully delivering the “wrapper-based” mobile apps to the client, SenecaGlobal is now providing native mobile features in both Android and IOS as these financial services Mobile Apps evolve with additional valuable features for customers. § SenecaGlobal is leading both the Mobile App and Web Self-Service Quality Assurance for the client. Technology § Android Mobile OS, iPhone OS, Java, Objective C, Swift, XML, Gradle, Maven. § Android Studio, XCode, Windows and MacOS Sierra § App Distribution: Google Play Store, Apple App Store and TestFairy § Various Mobile Analytics: GTM, Mixpanel and AppsFlyer. § VisualStudio.NET 2015, .NET Fx 4.6., ASP.NET MVC, WEB API, Aspect Oriented Programming, Entity Framework § KnockOut, Node Js § SQL Server 2016 (Always On) § Gated Check-in and Continuous Integration using TFS 2015 § SSRS, SSIS, SSDT 2015 § Email and SMS sending using Queues § TFS for Defect Management & Managing the Agile process The Team The team was set-up at SenecaGlobal’s state-of-the-art offshore delivery center in Hyderabad, with a highly- skilled set of resources comprising one architect, and four mobile app developers and 2 testers. Over a period of 6 months, the team scaled to over 20 resources. SenecaGlobal is now managing three offshore teams for Mobile and Web Development each, as well as the entire Quality Assurance team for the web and mobile products. The Process SenecaGlobal teams follows agile (Scrum) methodologies using Sprint based development cycles for continuous delivery. Microsoft Project Plan and Microsoft Team Foundation Server (TFS) is used for planning, monitoring and issue tracking. SGMS/BC/PRO/15 SENECAGLOBAL PROPRIETARY INFORMATION VER, NO: 2.0 2 Client Case Study While the pace of delivering the code/solutions is rapid, peer code review, continuous testing and periodic code refactoring ensures quality delivery to the client. GoToMeeting, email, telephone and TFS are used for collaboration with the client across multiple geographies and time zones. Software Solution/Service Delivered § SenecaGlobal built the mobile solution for the existing payments services and delivered them in a series of monthly releases. It helped stabilized one of the most high-revenue generating products, much to the client’s delight. § SenecaGlobal worked closely with the product team, added new features like Mobile Wallet and Check Cashing to enhance existing services. § All software testing activities were previously conducted manually. SenecaGlobal QA engineers introduced automated testing in a phased manner using hybrid frameworks (Appium, UI driven from XML, etc.) § Consolidated multiple isolated service applications into centralized gateway service. Converted Web services into RESTful services using Web API. § Developed frameworks for • Centralized logging mechanism (supporting both synchronous and asynchronous logging) • Measuring and Monitoring the performance of critical business methods (using aspect oriented methodology) • Application Configuration framework to facilitate Automated build and deployment across various environments. § Handled the encryption and decryption on identified PII data. § Developed UI and API applications to • Manage the Email and SMS templates. • Create Question and Answers across various categories for FAQ section of Corporate WebSite. § SQL Server Reporting Services • Configuration of Reporting Server and Reports Portal • Auto Deploy of Reports to selected environments. • Development of reports. § Upgraded SSIS packages • Upgrading from BIDS 2005 into SSDT 2015 to support SQL Server 2016 • Converting the script blocks from VB to C#.NET • Developed Custom CLR Stored Procedure for sending mails from SSIS packages. • Changed the package deployment model to project deployment model • Usage of project parameters and environment variables. • Auto Deploy of SSIS Packages to selected environments. • Created Environments and mapping of environment variables to package parameters using custom script. • Mapping of Jobs to Packages. § Automated 500+ manual test cases. § Configured Continuous Integration along with Gated Check-ins using TFS 2015 § Continuously Support deployment of (10+) applications (including Web, Windows, API applications) to QA, UAT and Production environments. § SGMS/BC/PRO/15 SENECAGLOBAL PROPRIETARY INFORMATION VER, NO: 2.0 3 Client Case Study Business Value Delivered § SenecaGlobal delivered entirely new Mobile Products for the client where none existed for the company’s customers. § SenecaGlobal contributed to the new Web Application Architecture as a part of re-engineering the 10 years old Financial Services application platform. § SenecaGlobal architects took ownership of mobile app design and worked with client architects to ensure alignment of web and mobile apps. § SenecaGlobal introduced software engineering and test automation best practices to dramatically increase the productivity and efficiency of the team, thus enabling them to deliver value to the client much faster and at a much lower cost. § SenecaGlobal now leads multiple teams for the client in Mobile Development, Web Development and holistic Quality Assurance testing of their web and mobile products. A strong process driven approach ensures that the software releases are of the highest quality, increasing the client’s competitiveness and penetration in their markets. CONCLUSION The outsourced mobile and web product development and quality assurance testing services provided by SenecaGlobal ensure that the financial services client is able to provide high-quality IOS and Android applications along with Web Self-Service applications to their customers and prospects. As a valued technology partner, SenecaGlobal was the “GoTo” provider of Mobile Apps for our client to confidently provide important customer products for under-banked customers. SGMS/BC/PRO/15 SENECAGLOBAL PROPRIETARY INFORMATION VER, NO: 2.0 4 .