The client is a leading bank in the US, providing commercial, real estate, equipment, and railcar financing. The client, with approximately $50 billion in assets, also provides consumer and retail banking, mortgage and SBA loans. Now over a century old, the client had a rail e-portal providing customized solutions to the rail car leasing sector in North America. However, the portal had rudimentary functionality and needed urgent improvements to incorporate advanced functionality, enrich user experience, deliver superior performance, and provide availability on mobile devices and tablets.
The self-service portal is an important aspect of the client’s business. It provides information related to lease agreements, fleet of rail cars, invoice status, mechanical and location information of rail cars. This information is dynamic in nature and the portal required additional improvements to respond with related dynamic industry updates, push notifications/ alerts, advertising campaigns and a visual dashboard to track KPIs for better management. If client did not re-architect its legacy portal it was at risk at the hands of deteriorating customer satisfaction.
Getting up to speed with new features and superior performance
As the client did not have a set of documented business requirements, Mindtree set about evaluating the gaps and improvements required. Based on a set of approved requirements Mindtree developed UI mockups, in line with the client’s brand guidelines, for each workflow. The mockups presented solutions aimed at improving user experience. Functional gaps that needed to be bridged, such as an administration module, were also integrated into the solution. A new UI was developed using Responsive Web Design (RWD)providing compatibility with mobile devices (Android and IOS) and multiple browsers (IE 9 and above, Chrome and Safari).
A host of new features and functionalities were added to the portal. These included meta-data driven configuration of KPI parameters, advertisements, surveys, alerts and reports. A dashboard with dynamic content based on admin configuration was integrated and the data access layer was rebuilt to address performance issues.
Some of the best practices from Agile have been followed to deliver the upgrade. For example, features with a high business value were delivered in the first release allowing the development team to get early user feedback. Mindtree also conducted four customer demos to get feedback and actively engaged users to avoid roll backs and risks at a later stage.
The tools and technologies environment for the engagement covered:
- Angular 4.
- HTML 5
- Typescript
- Angular Material
- ASP.Net core Web API
- Entity Framework
- SQL Server
The engagement comprised 15 on-site and offshore resources of which 50% were cross-skilled in .Net and Angular. The project was delivered with a total effort of ~2,000 person days.
Zero disruption, 100% on schedule and on budget
The ease of access of the portal over multiple devices and browsers has been the first step towards creating a better user experience. The client has also improved customer connects and relationships because the portal is aligned with their brand guidelines and features easy configuration of new users, surveys, advertisements and industry updates. A dashboard provides access to important KPIs, allowing management to monitor performance and target further improvements.
The engagement was completed by Mindtree without slippages in schedule or budgets and saw zero P1 tickets across four internal releases and one production release.
Customer/ user experience has become a driving factor for banks in the age of digital. It is an integral aspect of providing service, without which no bank can hope to survive. This is where battles for customers can be won and lost.
