Design, Development and QA of the Financial Platform

The Client is a company headquartered in Germany and operating worldwide. Its platform works as financial performance management software for the B2B sector automating processes and presenting financial data in a transparent, easy-to-understand way.   

Application upgrade 

The Client recognized the need to change the software architecture due to usability issues in the existing version. The system could have been more intuitive; thus, it took time for the new employees to be onboard easily and for the current ones to implement changes.

UX/UI Design 

The Client wanted to increase the level of usability and make the system more intuitive. The main focus was to make accessing the software easier (via browser instead of installation) and become a true SaaS – CPM (Corporate Performance Management) platform provider. It would help users in implementing changes, and it would also make the onboarding process more manageable.

The goal was to deliver UI/UX adapted to web capabilities while retaining features that customers appreciate, aligning with the latest standards and requirements.

Quality Assurance 

The Client asked us for further consulting; therefore, we prepared a workshop examining the current state of their QA process. During the workshop with the Client, we discovered that their software development process had long neglected structured testing due to insufficient human resources. There was also lack of testing plan and strategy, with minimal automated testing at the integration and E2E level.

Web application development

We were responsible for a migration from desktop application developed in Java to the web application in Angular for corporations to manage subsidiaries in the area of financial reporting based on national and international accounting standards.

The Web Client application’s heart is to aggregate financial data in a tree form. The application includes many capabilities like filtering data, checking appropriate options in check boxes, displaying charts. To optimize data handling, we use lazy loading; for example, we do not load the entire great table at once, only a fragment that clicks, and then the data is downloaded from the backend.  This approach speeds up the loading of views and reduces memory consumption in the browser.

Nowadays, a web application is able to work very smoothly with thousands of rows and hundreds of columns. It runs faster than the speed of the Internet, which is slower than running the application.

Main features of the platform: 

• Speed and performance
• Smooth performance despite huge volumes of data
• Rich access to large volumes of different charts
• Utilization of cutting-edge technologies: In software development we base on the latest and most powerful technologies, such as financial OLAP server and multidimensional in-memory database
• Authorization: we have developed centralized user management system ensuring that only the administrator has the authority to manage access rights
• Security: We prioritized data security and encrypted it via SSL. With our password management, an admin can define company-specific password assignment guidelines
• Cross platform development: The platform allows easy access to data and its flexible visualization on tablets
• The open architecture of the client platform simplifies integration into any system landscape

UX/UI Design

Our design team started the project by thoroughly analyzing the existing Client’s system and software. This stage was conducted with the help of a Business Analyst to fully understands the business needs and evaluates the software’s usability.

To enhance our collaboration with the stakeholders, we decided to conduct a series of discovery workshops where we discussed the system architecture and key visuals. As a result, changes to the architecture and iconography were implemented.

To make sure that all Client’s products are consistent in term of design, we created a dedicated design system to provide the developers with clear guidelines and ensure smooth communication. Besides creating a new design, we also focused on improving the microcopy used in the interfaces to make the functionalities simple and self-explanatory.

The tools used during the process are Figma, Angular, Nebular, Quarkus.

Our scope of work contained: 

Product Workshops 

• Verification of the requirements in terms of meeting the industry standards and users’ needs
• Collaboration with a Business Analyst and Software Developers to create an intuitive and user-friendly system
• Presenting design ideas with the use of high-fidelity prototypes

Product Design 

• Delivering complete screen flows (happy and sad path, errors, validations, corner cases) with technical specifications when needed
• UX Design – Conducting Usability Tests to validate all design decisions
• UI Design – Ensuring design consistency across all products (typography, iconography, color palette, etc.)
• Reviewing implementation in terms of accuracy with prototypes and completeness of the flow.

Development 

• Front-end development and maintenance of the Design System

Quality Assurance

Discovery Workshops 

We prepared a workshop, to examine the current state of Client’s QA process, and built a testing strategy where we outlined the basic assumptions about testing in a given company. In order to see the quality we needed to provide the appropriate metrics; we created custom data visualizations to show a clearer picture of the current product status. We were able to provide traceability of requirements across the SDLC. Furthermore, we combined requirements management tools with testing frameworks to make all quality information available in one place and accessible to all stakeholders.

Planning 

Then, based on the strategy, we could proceed to make a test plan and model what the tests per project will look like, e.g., what is within the scope of testing, responsibilities of the relevant roles in the project, QA risks, for example – did developers test their code or tools.

Working with the client, we have developed a complex and professional QA process, documented in the QA Handbook that provided a comprehensive guide for software testing professionals and project teams. It introduced best practices, approaches and techniques for testing different types of applications, such as web or desktop applications.

Execution of the strategy  

After preparing the QA documentation, we proceeded to implement the policy and plan. This included analyzing and validating requirements, creating and executing test scenarios and test reports.

Client was satisfied with the outcomes of our work because we took proactive care of the quality of the entire software development process. The primary focus for us was reaching the stability of the project and the developed system. Our qualified IT specialists paid special attention to creating automated tests and employ Quality Assurance specialists in our Scrum teams. Thanks to this approach, we built good relationships with the Client based on mutual trust, which positively affected the course and efficiency of work on projects.