Case Studies

Overview

A leading global insurance and benefits provider was operating a mission‑critical workflow application on a licensed enterprise platform. Over time, rising license costs, rigid release cycles, and limited customisation began to restrict innovation and increase operational expenses.

To address these challenges, the organisation partnered with our team to modernise the application into a fully owned, cloud‑ready, full‑stack solution — maintaining the robustness of existing business processes while gaining full control of cost, architecture, and development agility.

The Challenge

The client's application had evolved over many years into a highly customised system at the heart of their daily operations. While reliable, it presented several growing challenges:

• Escalating license and hosting costs due to platform dependency.
• Restricted flexibility tied to vendor‑controlled release cycles and roadmap priorities.
• Complex upgrade processes that risked business continuity.
• Limited integration with modern analytics, cloud, and identity management systems.

Leadership sought to preserve proven workflows and data models while freeing the business from commercial and technical lock‑in.

Goals and Success Metrics

Together, the project team defined clear objectives:

• Eliminate recurring license and infrastructure costs.
• Preserve or enhance all core workflows and user journeys.
• Establish a clean, modular architecture designed for long‑term evolution.
• Improve system speed, usability, and maintainability.
• Enable seamless integration with existing APIs, data warehouses, and identity systems.

Project success was measured through reduced operational costs, improved user satisfaction, and faster delivery cycles for new features post‑migration.

Our Approach

1. Assessment and Strategy

The engagement began with an in‑depth discovery phase designed to build a complete understanding of the existing system:

• Analysed data models, entities, and inter‑system dependencies.
• Mapped key workflows, integrations, and peak‑load scenarios.
• Identified technical and process pain points impacting scalability and UX.

A detailed transformation roadmap was then created, prioritising high‑value features and defining a phased migration plan to minimise business risk.

2. Target Architecture Design

The project team defined a modern, scalable full‑stack architecture based on clear separation of concerns:

• Front end: Responsive, role‑based interface tailored to end‑user workflows.
• Back end: Secure service layer with well‑defined APIs for business logic.
• Data layer: Normalised schema structured for analytics, reporting, and integration.

The architecture was designed using cloud‑agnostic patterns, ensuring deployment flexibility across on‑premises or preferred cloud environments with no vendor lock‑in.

3. Incremental Rebuild and Migration

The new solution was implemented and deployed through an incremental approach:

• Rebuilt and validated workflows in low‑risk, iterative phases.
• Introduced integration bridges to allow old and new systems to operate in tandem during transition.
• Conducted staged data migrations supported by automated validation and rollback processes.

This approach limited operational disruption and allowed users to adapt progressively.

4. Testing, Validation, and Change Management

End‑user adoption and reliability were central to the rollout's success:

• Users participated in iterative demos and usability reviews.
• Automated and manual testing verified workflow accuracy and performance.
• Targeted training and quick‑reference materials prepared users for the updated interface.
• A structured hyper‑care phase ensured prompt resolution of post‑go‑live issues.

The Challenge

A major UK financial institution was struggling with a 15-year-old legacy application that was becoming increasingly difficult to maintain, expensive to operate, and unable to scale with business growth. The system was built on outdated technology and required constant patching to meet security and compliance requirements.

Our Solution

We conducted a comprehensive assessment of the existing system, identifying critical business logic and dependencies. Our team designed a modern, container-based architecture that preserved all existing functionality while enabling cloud deployment. We implemented a phased migration approach with zero downtime, ensuring business continuity throughout the project.

The Challenge

A government agency was running a critical BMC Remedy instance that was approaching end-of-life. The system managed thousands of service requests daily but was constrained by legacy infrastructure, high licensing costs, and limited scalability. The agency needed to modernise without disrupting public services.

Our Solution

Leveraging our 25+ years of Remedy platform expertise, we designed a container-based migration strategy that preserved all existing workflows, integrations, and custom modules. We built a modern microservices architecture that replicated Remedy functionality while providing enhanced performance and scalability. The migration was executed in phases, with each phase validated before proceeding.

Overview

A mid‑sized financial institution was running a core internal process—portfolio exposure tracking and approvals—on a sprawling Excel workbook shared across teams. The file had grown over years into a de facto application, with complex formulas, hidden sheets, and manual macros. This created operational risk, version chaos, and made audits painful. The institution engaged our team to convert this spreadsheet into a robust, browser‑based full‑stack solution.

The Challenge

The Excel "application" was originally built by a subject‑matter expert and gradually evolved into a mission‑critical tool used by risk, finance, and operations. Over time, several issues became acute:

• Multiple versions in circulation, leading to inconsistent numbers and rework.
• Fragile formulas and macros that only a few people understood, increasing key‑person risk.
• Manual copy‑paste steps to feed other systems and reports, introducing data‑entry errors.
• Limited security and access control—anyone with the file could see or change sensitive data.
• Difficulty meeting audit and regulatory expectations for traceability and change control.

Leaders recognised these are common pain points for organisations whose "applications" live in Excel or MS Access, especially in regulated sectors like financial services.

Goals and Success Metrics

Together with the client, the key objectives were defined:

• Replace the Excel‑based application with a secure, role‑based web system.
• Preserve all critical calculations and business rules while eliminating manual steps.
• Provide a single source of truth for data, with full audit trails and reporting.
• Reduce operational risk tied to spreadsheets and ad‑hoc Access databases.

Success would be measured by reduction in manual effort, improved data quality, audit outcomes, and user satisfaction.

Our Approach

1. Discovery and Model Extraction

The first step was to "reverse‑engineer" the living Excel workbook:

• Mapped all input sheets, intermediate tables, and output reports.
• Documented formulas, VBA/macros, and business rules in plain language.
• Identified data entities (e.g. portfolios, positions, limits, approvals) and how they related.

This formed the basis of a clean data model and a clear specification of required functionality, which is equally applicable for Access‑based tools.

2. Target Architecture and UX Design

Next, a modern full‑stack architecture was defined:

• Database layer: Normalised schema to store positions, limits, users, approvals, and reference data, replacing hidden sheets and Access tables.
• Back‑end services: APIs implementing the business rules previously embedded in formulas and macros.
• Front‑end web app: Role‑aware screens for data entry, validation, approvals, and reporting, designed for non‑technical users.

Wireframes were validated with users to ensure that the new interface matched and improved their daily workflow, rather than just "rebuilding Excel in a browser."

3. Incremental Build and Migration

To minimise disruption:

• The core calculation engine and data capture flows were implemented first, then run in parallel with the existing spreadsheet for a period.
• Automated tests compared outputs from the new system with results from the legacy Excel model using historical scenarios, ensuring numerical accuracy.
• Data migration scripts were created to import existing Excel data into the new database with validation and error reporting.

This gave stakeholders confidence that the new system was trustworthy before decommissioning the spreadsheet.

4. Security, Audit, and Reporting

Regulatory expectations were addressed explicitly:

• Role‑based access control ensured users only saw and edited data relevant to their function.
• Full audit trails captured who changed what and when, replacing opaque cell edits in Excel or Access.
• Standard and ad‑hoc reports were built into the application, eliminating manual extraction and manipulation in spreadsheets.

The result was a solution that auditors could understand and rely on, and that internal teams could operate confidently.