Fintech company modernizes customer experience with a partner—not a vendor

Case Study
 

“Celsior was selected for the project primarily because we approached the project as a problem to be solved together—not as a vendor with an implementation to sell.”

Requirements

A rapidly growing fintech organization was working to build new generation, cloud-native technology that would help community and regional financial institutions to innovate faster and differentiate strategically through better serving the needs of their account holders. One important aspect of this was making it easier and faster for the customers of banks and credit unions to open new accounts.

Fundamentally modernizing the user interface was a top priority for the business, but no IT resources were available to apply to the project without stopping work on other critical functionality improvements.

The old user interface required too much time for users to open and fund new accounts. It had an old, inconsistent look and feel compared to the rest of the user environment. More importantly, it had poor usability and required user input of information that was not always relevant to the users’ particular situation—the sort of experience that causes user frustration

Solution

Celsior was selected for the project primarily because we approached the project as a problem to be solved together—not as a vendor with an implementation to sell. Right from the beginning, we white-boarded together on how to modernize the user interface using a fully collaborative approach.

During the transformation journey, the firm greatly appreciated Celsior’s full transparency. This was absolutely key to the relationship. If there were issues, we got them out on the table as early as possible so they could be resolved and so we could move on together.

To meet requirements for collaboration, communication, and cost, Celsior proposed a right sourcing approach using a combination of personnel from the U.S. and India. Most importantly, the project was handled with a single-team approach regardless of company or location.

Implementation was done using a DevOps approach with Agile pods using Scrum methodology. Quality assurance was fully integrated into sprints using automated and manual testing techniques. QA included functional testing, regression testing, and reporting.

Following security standards provided by the firm was definitely important. Furthermore, documentation and knowledge transfer were key for both new team members and longer-term application support purposes.

The project was completed within 13 months—when it could have faced extensive delays if it had to be done with existing resources.

A representative at the company said that Celsior “did not feel like a separate organization.” In contrast to a vendor who competes only on price, Celsior felt like a partner that was working to help them resolve issues and achieve what was important to them. Joint teams worked hand-in hand to make the project successful

Result

As a result of this application modernization project, the bank and credit union customers using the fintech company’s software now enjoy an improved experience. The new user interface helped to simplify and elevate the customers’ experience thus speeding the opening and funding of new accounts. In particular, customers can now open new accounts within 4 to 5 minutes— approximately half as much time as it used to take. From the perspective of the banks and credit unions, efficient funding of new accounts is paramount in today’s deposit hungry environment.

From an IT perspective, the project set a benchmark for transparency that is now being reflected in the transparency that the firm’s management expects out of internal projects.

Most importantly, the project allowed IT to simultaneously invest in both functionality improvements and user interface modernization—doing two major projects concurrently.

Based on the success of this project the firm has engaged Celsior for additional projects

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