Cloud Based Business Software portal

Deploying IBM Cast Iron for aggregating data
from different OSPs using single sign-on
and providing business insights
through dashboard widgets and KPIs

Client

A New Zealand based company who was the winner of IBM SmartCamp ANZ 2014, offers a cloud based platform that provides strategic business insights to enterprises across BFSI vertical in key data retrieval and providing business metrics through a number of widgets and KPIs.

Deployed in IBM Softlayer®, the platform aggregates the critical business data using WebSphere Cast Iron® from various online service providers (OSPs) through a single sign on (SSO). It provides a set of widgets which are driven by the data retrieved from user’s OSP. These widgets transform the data into graphical representation of various KPIs/metrics related to the business on a dashboard.

As a powerful media for OSPs serving F100 clients across BFSI vertical and industry-leading audit, consulting, tax, and advisory services across the ANZ and Europe region, the platform maximises the value of the customer data by increasing the lead generation potential; improve credit risk estimates in acquiring new customers; drive efficiency of banking marketing programmes and increase the sales through predictive analysis and improves customer experience. The framework integrates some of the industry standard OSPs across BFSI, HR and Payroll domains.

Business Challenges

The platform depends on two critical requirements – Widgets and Account provisioning for the user in OSPs and USPs of the framework. Account provisioning is when the user purchases any of these OSPs from its online stores, the platform will create an account for the user in OSP. Widgets need data and the system retrieves the data across all the OSPs that are available in the online stores. The system also integrates with various productive tools such as CRM and customer service software etc.

Some of the critical challenges are:

Integration of around 40+ OSPs with its online stores and widgets.

Due to dynamic nature of data retrieval, the API to the OSPs will always keep changing.

Accuracy of data derived from OSPs

Performance of the back-end integration that ensures the data retrieval and account provisioning is dependent on the API performance of the OSP.

Data Analytics and Big data – the data which is retrieved from various APIs and various API resources that are to be transformed, involves big calculations, huge data processing and data massaging. This affects the performance issues.

Engagement

Under a dual onsite-offshore model, Covalense deployed a 20-member composite team for the product development. Leveraging the template integration processes (TIPs) and ‘no coding’ capabilities for accelerated deployment, IBM WebSphere Cast Iron® has been extensively used for integration of APIs of various OSPs. Hosted in IBM Softlayer®, frond-end technologies (AngularJS, jQuery and Raphaël graphs) have been used to construct the UX and asynchronous widgets. Middleware include Java/Spring, Node.js and RabbitMQ.

Covalense engineers’ designed an asynchronous framework that will ensure the account provisioning as soon as the user purchases the OSP. Once the accounts are provisioned, data retrieval from the OSPs is ensured into the platform’s data store. Study and analysis of various OSPs and provide data to various widgets has been extremely challenging. Covalense engineers devised a framework for data retrieval and implemented backend schedulers and jobs which will query all the OSPs for user data in regular intervals.

The framework designed to addresses the huge data volumes having heterogeneous data structures across disparate business entities and normalise and process them to achieve desired analytical drilldowns in near real-time speed. Big data is transformed and integrated with custom business rules to achieve revolutionary visual representation of the dashboard widgets which provide the key business insights for critical decision making with optimal performance.

Business benefits

Delivering a consistent customer experience, Covalense provided the frameworks which can be reused without much effort and cost for all the other channels across BFSI, HR and Payroll domains.

Leverage Template Integration Processes (TIPs) and accelerated deployment due to IBM WebSphere Cast Iron® has enabled the framework to integrate rapidly without custom code for both cloud and on-premises application within days. Besides the ‘No Coding’ capabilities of WebSphere Cast Iron® helped in cost reduction and accelerate the business benefits achieved through systems integration.

The technology stack has reduced the total cost of ownership (TCO) with short implementation cycles and realized up to 80% savings over custom coding.

The system offers a best-of-breed dashboard widgets platform that integrates more than 40+ OSPs. and the framework is unique to its competition with a common data warehouse across disparate cloud business systems like accounting, payroll, admin etc.

Framework provides a strong data management for both structured and unstructured data thereby the quality, accuracy, and depth of customer data determine the value of customer insights.

It has also maximized the value of customer data by leveraging big data analytics across customer retention, market share growth and increasing share of wallet. The advanced analytics provided by the platform improves the credit risk estimation by exploring diverse datasets and unlock the opportunities to drive top-line growth.

The system will assist in maximising lead generation potential with customer retention and limit customer attrition.