OVERVIEW

Migrating legacy BI applications to cloud comes with its own sets of challenges that require an innovative customization approach to embed desired functionalities that can offer a seamless and engaging user experience.  

A leading pure play payments company based in the US faced similar issues during its migration of on-premise BI application to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). Bitwise helped create a customized solution on top of Looker and GCP that powered the client’s ‘cloud-first strategy’ goal with a best-in-class customer engagement platform to enable secure, self-service analysis in real-time along with other functionalities. 

CHALLENGE

As a global payment processing company, the client serves merchants across the globe with a broad range of innovative software and services which involves securely handling large volumes of data. To improve customer experience, the client made a strategic decision to migrate all its on-premise applications to GCP including its legacy BI application for merchants to reconcile payments using various tabular reports and dashboards which also helped in making business decisions. 

The client’s existing legacy BI application posed various challenges in terms of costs, performance, and user experience which required a custom reporting and visualization tool which helped its customers to better manage their accounts and deliver an omnichannel experience. 

Now, building this customized tool required solving the following challenges: 

• Align the solution with CIO’s goal for a ‘cloud-first strategy’ and ensure it fits well in GCP strategy 
• Meet stringent business timelines for migration 
• Create a best-in-class engagement platform with embedded BI for customers  
• Employ a multi-cloud strategy, but use GCP for the embedded solution
• Select a non-batching option for disparate data sources and real-time data  
• Create self-service for their customers 

THE CLIENT PERSPECTIVE BEHIND THE PARTNERSHIP

The client looked for a technology partner who had a rich experience in offering complex data and cloud solutions with a nuanced understanding of security practices to manage such highly confidential data.  

Bitwise with its extensive expertise in data management and data security built a custom app that successfully enhanced the client’s cloud migration goal with a custom functionality to help customers easily and quickly understand different transactions. 

Here are the core advantages that were considered: 

• 22+ years of strong experience in Data & Cloud 

• Expertise in legacy migration and modernization  

• Agile methodologies 

• Expert talent 

• Strong customer experience insights

OUR APPROACH: ENABLING A SEAMLESS MULTI-CHANNEL EXPERIENCE

Bitwise built a custom reporting and visualization app on top of GCP and Looker that enables a superior engagement platform with embedded BI for the end-user merchants.  

The solution worked in the following manner: 

• It streamed data from BigQuery to customers in real-time scale and used custom tokens to deliver the right data to the right user depending on company and persona 
• It enabled different functionalities for different departments 
  – Accounts use card summary reports to address escalations as total sales are easily identified by card brand 
  – Money room managers use the merchant portal to help quickly identify transitions and improve their team’s operational efficiency 
  – IT managers find customer reports useful for identifying sales vs. refunds. It improved query performance and time with custom partitioning for BigQuery  
• It stored and retrieved data with BigQuery nested table 

HOW THE BITWISE SOLUTION ALIGNED WITH THE CLIENT VISION

The solution designed by Bitwise met the client’s stringent business timelines, offered an evolved customer experience and powered the cloud migration goal with complex customized features. 

The key benefits that were identified: 

• Improved scalability for all segments, from SMB to Large enterprises  
• Secure self-service analysis in real-time 
• Embedded BI 
• Improved operational efficiency  
• Omnichannel user experience through smart UI/UX 
• Comprehensive reporting 
• Support for highly customized APIs for everything  

TRANSFORMATION THAT FOLLOWED

The customized solution by Bitwise delivered exceptional customer experience, eliciting 5/5 customer ratings along with spontaneous appreciation from merchants. It also helped achieve the client’s vision to facilitate cultural change among end-users adapting to the new cloud-based application. 

TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW 

Intranet being the glue that can bind all stakeholders of the company, Bitwise designed a solution for the client that optimized and upgraded this relatively undervalued channel to develop robust collaborative capabilities across the enterprise. The intranet bridged the collaboration and communication gaps across departments and geographies, providing varied functionalities to usher in the great transformation in the collaborative capabilities of the organization.  

The solution was to soon become one of the most crucial systems in the company with the investment paying for itself multiple times when the enterprise-wide collaboration for remote working became the need of the hour in the next few months of COVID-19 outbreak.

CHALLENGES 

Being one of India’s largest General Insurers, the client faced these inadequacies with its existing system: 

• As an insurance company, the company required high levels of security and accessibility control. 
• The intranet, usually a relegated system in the larger business ecosystem, was seen at most as an employee engagement tool and was severely under-optimized. 
• While common enterprise collaboration tools seemed like they could be plugged in, the need was that of a complete overhaul and revamp to bring a new lease of life to the system. 

Owing to the growing business requirements for scalability and productivity, the client required a collaboration system that could enable deep collaboration, tracking, oversight, reports and dashboards, enterprise and departmental workflows, breaking down silos, self-sufficient teams and an effective engagement tool for both clients and employees.

THE CLIENT PERSPECTIVE BEHIND THE PARTNERSHIP 

The client had varied collaboration requirements that needed to be embedded in a comprehensive, enterprise-wide solution and it needed to be achieved within a short time. This called for a value partner with deep and multi-faceted expertise in collaboration platforms, productivity and enterprise reporting and dashboard tools. One that could not only build and integrate dynamic requirements (such as various dashboards and employee engagement practices outlined by the client) but could also achieve quick deployment of the same.

With over two decades of domain experience in providing versatile solutions to various industries, Bitwise was able to fill the role of an efficient value partner who could help the client fulfill its vision successfully. 

The core advantages that were considered: 

• Expertise in collaboration platforms such as Microsoft Office 365 
• Deep understanding of user pain points in terms of productivity and efficiency
• Business intelligence expertise  
• Industry insight 
• Rich domain experience  
• Technology partnerships 
• Quick building and deployment capabilities 

OUR APPROACH

Better interconnectivity to increase efficiency

The project began with the conceptualization of the intranet as an upgrade to the existing one but with a completely new vision of bringing efficiencies across the organization. Based on the requirements, Bitwise suggested Office 365 as the platform to build on. 

Bitwise constructed a solution that provided a versatile set of utilities across the enterprise, enabling efficient task management, intelligent dashboards, and ease of communication. 

• Seamless communication: With deep interconnectivity, the client was able to incorporate better communication within and across teams, allowing employees to share information and data, and discuss opinions and preferences with ease. The solution also enabled UI/UX device-agnostic tools for better information sharing. 
• Tools for decision-makers: The big ask was to enable complete and seamless access to organizational dashboards and reports which was effectively fulfilled.  
• Collaboration: Bitwise solution offered interconnectivity which enabled smooth collaboration across departments, and also retained a sense of organizational hierarchy by providing crucial tools for project and workflow management, task management, dashboards, enterprise risk management, as well as interdepartmental ticketing. 
• Broadcasting tools: These features included emergency broadcasts as much as the nuanced broadcasts ranging from business highlights & achievements to birthdays & anniversaries. 
• Information security: Using robust access controls such as allowing certain data to only be accessible within the office premises, the Bitwise solution ensured that data security was not compromised in any case. 

HOW THE BITWISE SOLUTION ALIGNED WITH THE CLIENT VISION 

The Bitwise solution met the client’s objectives most efficiently with the following key benefits: 

• A scalable and secure enterprise-wide platform 
• A versatile set of collaboration capabilities 
• Increased visibility and insights through dashboards and reporting features 
• Advanced productivity and governance metrics in place 
• Increased self-sufficiency of employees 
• Manageable costs 
• Quick deployment in 4 months 
• A high level of stakeholder engagement  
• Better user experience driving efficiency 

THE TRANSFORMATION THAT FOLLOWED 

The project commenced in 2019 with a clear set of objectives and was completed within four months, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world. With complete control over data and information, the intranet went live a month before the social distancing began. 

So, when the lockdowns started, the organization was ready to seamlessly shift their workforce to the work-from-home model within a matter of days. Based on the governance and productivity metrics, productivity was up to 92% within a week. 

TECHNOLOGY 

OVERVIEW

With Bitwise as the value partner, the client was able to unlock huge business potential across the entire organization by successfully building an Enterprise Data Warehouse & Data Lake solution on hybrid cloud. The solution enabled the client to build advanced Business Intelligence through data visualization and analytics capabilities for better visibility in key business areas along with establishing effective data governance practices.

CHALLENGES

The client had been facing multiple challenges that centered around limited visibility in its existing reports and the limited insights thereof.

The key challenges were:

• Limited reporting and data views lacking insights
• Scalability issues in terms of a new source addition
• The need to embark on a holistic analytics journey

THE CLIENT PERSPECTIVE BEHIND THE PARTNERSHIP

The business leaders of the client company identified the need for a partner who could design and deliver an enterprise-level solution that ensured smooth migration to cloud, met the budgetary requirements and maximized ROI. With its niche technology experience for over two decades, Bitwise was well-positioned to help the client achieve its short term and long term objectives.

The core advantages that were considered:

• Relevant expertise
• Niche technologies
• Bitwise accelerators
• Proven methodologies
• Technology partnerships
• 20 years of Enterprise Data Platform experience

OUR APPROACH: CREATE ‘A SINGLE VERSION OF THE TRUTH’

Bitwise proposed a solution that not only addressed immediate challenges identified by the client but also considered the long term goal of establishing Customer 360°.

• We proposed a solution of an Enterprise Data platform comprising of ODS (Operational Data Store), EDW (Enterprise Data Warehouse) and a Data lake.

• It comprised of creating a Data Integration layer from all sources feeding to ODS, EDW and Data lake. The proposed system architecture was designed to meet all Data Governance requirements. 

• The Enterprise Data Warehouse & Data Lake addressed the existing challenge of not being able to cater to evolved BI and Analytics needs to realize cost/effort savings and efficiencies while also offering a platform providing Data as a Service to business applications creating a single source of truth.

HOW BITWISE SOLUTION ALIGNED WITH THE CLIENT VISION

The important factors that determined the success of the project were:

• Quicker turnaround time
• Best of breed and extensible BI platform with analytics
• Data management and governance creating a single source of truth for data across enterprise
• Increased data security
• Increased scalability
• Increased operational efficiency

TRANSFORMATION THAT FOLLOWED

The journey that started with a Reporting challenge, paved the way for a much bigger transformation.

Designing an Operational Data Store, Enterprise Data Warehouse & Data Lake yielded impressive immediate results such as increased operational efficiency and data insights, and it also opened doors to new possibilities powered by Customer 360⁰ approach.

As a result, the client now has a high visibility into product parameters, customer service & experiences, sales lifecycles, and campaign performances to serve the most important goal of managing customer expectations, with a clear way forward.

TECHNOLOGY

OVERVIEW

Indian health insurers are swimming in the vast streams of data, pouring from different data sets associated with each claim. Over the years, data quantity has become too vast to be stored and processed by on-premise systems, posing the need for efficient data storage and data management solution on cloud.

One of India’s leading health insurers serving customized insurance offerings to corporates and individuals decided to leverage the abundant data at its disposal to power its customer 360^o vision for improving customer experience and realigning sales strategies. 

Bitwise proposed and built a Data Lake on Cloud and Logical Data Warehouse (LDL) solution that helped the company efficiently manage volumes of data across enterprise and leverage insights for better decision-making.  

CHALLENGES 

The company planned to utilize all its data to create reliable customer golden records that could be leveraged for better analytical insights, data-driven decision making, and a solid foundation for digital initiatives.  

This meant solving the following challenges: 

• Migrating all enterprise data to a central location on cloud for easy access, efficient management, and further processing 
• Intelligently integrating both structured and unstructured data for reliable insights 
• Establishing data governance parameters to ensure high data quality & security 
• Enabling flexibility and customization through user-friendly dashboards 
• Creating data-driven customer 360^o profiles 

Bitwise suggested a two-phased approach with Data Lake on cloud in the first phase and Logical Data Warehouse with Customer 360^o in subsequent phase(s) that served more than a solution for these challenges and paved a way for a long-term data strategy. 

THE CLIENT PERSPECTIVE BEHIND THE PARTNERSHIP

The company looked for a technology partner with strong hands-on experience in solving data challenges and deep insights into the Indian business ecosystem.  

Bitwise’s expertise and experience in data & cloud solutions made it a perfect value partner who could design and implement the right solution quickly and efficiently. 

Here are the core advantages that were considered: 

• 22+ years of strong domain experience
• Deep expertise in data & cloud 
• A comprehensive suite of data engineering solutions 
• Agile methodologies 
• Expert talent  
• Strong customer experience insights 

OUR APPROACH: “HARNESSING CLOUD”

The solution designed by Bitwise helped the company harness the full potential of data and cloud to advance its data objectives.  

The roadmap of this solution was as follows:  

• Bitwise recommended and enabled a cloud solution to solve the central data challenge. 
• The solution included a Data Lake on cloud and a Logical Data Warehouse with a centralized data integration layer, implemented in phases. 
• The core steps included building a data lake environment, migrating on-premise data to cloud, establishing data quality framework and enabling data virtualization for advanced analytics. 
• The solution ensured maintainability using generic utilities for core operations, automatic data lifecycle events, and exhaustive metadata management. It also ensured that future needs regarding unstructured data like call logs, emails, social media feeds would be catered for. 
• It had scalability built into the solution, with considerations for data cleansing, encryption, high availability and disaster recovery. 

HOW BITWISE SOLUTION ALIGNED WITH THE CLIENT VISION

The solution helped the company create a better data management initiative along with basing its business decisions on a well-governed data strategy. 

It ushered in the following advantages:  

• Reliable data insights  
• Faster and data-driven decision making 
• Customer golden records 
• Improved customer experience 
• Increased sales through efficient customer targeting 

TRANSFORMATION THAT FOLLOWED

Data lakes on the cloud are proving to be quick and efficient initiatives to get the best out of data for most insurance companies in India and around the world. They are also the most efficient way to build reliable customer golden records and lay a robust foundation for deeper digital transformation.  

The company leveraged the Bitwise solution to realign its sales strategies by utilizing customer 360^o and strengthened the foundation for its move to digital.  

In the months after the deployment, the company went on to experience a significant increase in sales with effective targeting and reliable analytical insights, while simultaneously exploring how digital technologies can be best utilized to power business goals with a renewed confidence in its own data.

TECHNOLOGY

KEY OUTCOME

CHALLENGES

• The existing technology stack not compatible for Migration
• Identify new technology stack that betters capabilities of existing stack on the cloud and convert to target platform

ROAD MAP

• Hydrograph, a Bitwise ETL product more than satisfied the need  and is built for cloud
• Bitwise’s proprietary ETL converter brings in automation, accuracy in meeting demanding timelines for conversion

TECHNOLOGY

KEY OUTCOME

CHALLENGES

• Old baked and brittle system to be migrated to cloud
• Cater to new and ever-changing business rules
• Handle exponential increase in workload
• Data Security as per PCI compliance needs

ROAD MAP

• Re-architected the system for Cloud
• Reengineered the system to leverage IaaS, PaaS and SaaS offerings of cloud
• Introduced a comprehensive business rules engine
• Comprehensive data security overhaul

TECHNOLOGY

Challenges

• Lack of real-time identification and assessment of risk profile of customers’ devices used to interact with Account Center (online and mobile channels)
• Lack of global device black-list and detection of spoofed IP Addresses
• Negative impact on customer experience in terms of out-of-band challenge rates.
• Limited capability to write fraud rules based on device profiling

Solution

• Design and development of reusable service interface to ThreatMetrix APIs which is consumed by various lines of business Card, Bank and New Accounts.
• Analysis of existing client applications to determine the impact and cover all scenarios  to prevent leaks that could lead to fraud.
• Use and implementation of best practices such as Test Driven Development and Pair Programming
• Performed extensive load testing to ensure optimal performance of the system resulting in a better customer experience
• Performed extensive log and data analysis to gauge the performance of the service in terms of throughput and response times.

Technology

CHALLENGES

• Implement modern data processing architecture using big data technologies.
• Reduce the cost by replacing existing ETL tool Ab Initio due to associated licensing cost.
• The target ETL tool needed to provide an easy-to-use development environment that required minimal retraining for developers, while delivering robust capabilities for matching the performance of Ab Initio.

SOLUTION

• Bitwise provided Hydrograph, an ETL development tool designed for the big data ecosystem that provides a GUI environment with Drag-and-Drop functionality that developers are familiar with
• The solution was developed to run on On-premise cluster with Hive as the target Data Store
• Solution provided performance matching the Ab-Initio with reduced cost and ease of use

TECHNOLOGY

CHALLENGES

• Delay in delivering product, due to unavailability of multiple teams on daily basis (BA, DM, SME, Business)
• No ETA was known for resolving the concerns
• No sustainable existing framework/model in place to address developer/tester concerns
• Tracking of issues/defects and resolving them as soon as possible

SOLUTIONS

• Scrum team involved the Product Owner (PO), Scrum Master, onsite and offshore developers and associated SME’s involved in delivering the request
• Consolidated the requirements and groomed user stories for each
• These requirement was prioritized with the help of the PO and used for Sprint Planning sessions and were listed in Rally as per the priority
• Daily stand-ups and collaboration helped in resolving concerns
• Sprints time-boxed at 3 weeks each
• Retrospectives held after each sprint helped entire team to progress better
• Product Backlog was revised after every sprint with PO

TECHNOLOGY