Design, Development and QA of a 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 needed to be more intuitive; thus, new employees wasted a lot of time onboarding, and current ones implementing 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 to transform it into a true SaaS-CPM (Corporate Performance Management) platform provider. It would help users implement 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 a lack of a testing plan and strategy, with minimal automated testing at the integration and E2E level.

Web application development

We migrated a desktop application developed in Java to an Angular web application, which corporations use for financial reporting based on national and international accounting standards.

The main purpose of the Client’s web application is to display financial data in a tree view. The application includes many capabilities like filtering data, marking appropriate options in check boxes, and 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 is clicked, 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. The application actually runs faster than the speed of the Internet.

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 servers and multidimensional in-memory databases
• Authorization: we have developed a 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 understand the business needs and evaluate 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 were consistent in terms 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
• Presentation of design ideas with the use of high-fidelity prototypes

Product Design 

• Delivering complete screen flows (happy and sad paths, 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 made a test plan and modeled what the tests per project would look like, e.g. 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 which provides a comprehensive guide for software testing professionals and project teams. It introduces 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, and 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 goal was stabilizing the project and the developed system. Our qualified IT specialists paid special attention to creating automated tests and employing Quality Assurance specialists on our Scrum teams. Thanks to this approach, we built a good relationship with the Client based on mutual trust, which positively affected the course and efficiency of work on projects.