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Rewriting legacy FinTech software to improve business outcomes

This payment processor was already successful, but needed to introduce a template for emergent change to meet the demands of the future.

case study setup
Situation

Modernizing customer loyalty software

One of the largest payment-processing corporations in the world came to Sketch to incrementally modernize and renovate its consumer rewards web experience. Before Sketch engaged, the platform already hosted an experience for issuers of merchants’ branded loyalty program.

Challenge

Rewriting legacy code without interrupting operations

case study challenge

The client provided a list of pain points, compiled from within their own organization, as well as feedback from their customers and cardholders:

Legacy code problems

  • Time and difficulty involved in launching, and making changes to, the website
  • Limited flexibility around content and presentation
  • Lack of a stable, user-friendly solutions for managing site content
  • Absence of key consumer features considered standard for rewards
  • Customization via our existing content management tooling
  • The current system does not provide smart recommendations or personalization elements to improve user experience
background scribble 3

Feature enhancement and system rewrite

In addition to the features and enhancements listed, the client needed to plan for an eventual full rewrite of the legacy system. They wanted Sketch to design and implement a strangler pattern that would be used for all new features, as well as to replace the remaining system features incrementally over time.

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Enter Sketch

Solution

Iterative custom software development

case study solution

Sketch offered an iterative approach using systematic feature prioritization to ensure the most important improvements were addressed first. This agile approach to software development allowed flexibility for priorities to emerge as the work was completed and demonstrated. Throughout this engagement, we were able to do all of the following:

1. Improve UI with custom React development

Established an interactive modern user interface, seamlessly integrating the client’s existing application with enhanced components built with ReactJS

2. Improve UX with better product ownership

Enhanced the user experience by building exactly what the client’s design team envisioned, leveraging modern web technologies

3. Custom content management software

Created content management enhancements to enable customizable content while keeping it translatable to multiple languages

4. Organize the codebase

Organized the code in a mono-repo using a build framework called Nx, which provides many benefits for the platform

5. Build automated tests

Automated user interface tests with Cypress

6. Improve scalability

Seamlessly integrated new technology with the existing legacy system in a pattern that could be repeated to incrementally rewrite the entire system
case study results
Results

Over-deliver on a tight timeline

During this engagement, Sketch was able to address the client’s vision for reviving their application while simultaneously allowing for new ideas and changes in priority. Even in a short engagement, we had time to complete the core work from the original roadmap. We also completed work that was not captured on the original roadmap, which is a major benefit of using agile software development processes instaed of locking into a fixed scope.

CLIENT FEEDBACK

“Sketch was awesome! We really enjoyed our partnership and look forward to working together in the future.”

Director of product development

Global finance enterprise

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If you're interested in modernizing legacy code while adding new features, we'll tell you how to do it without bringing down prod. The first few hours of consultation are always free.
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