ISAAC | Creatief met Techniek

LaSer Services - www.primeline-direct.nl

LaSer Servics is a financial service provider for consumer and retail credit and a Visa licensee for the issuance of credit cards. LaSer Services is a daughter company of the French bank BNP-Paribas and as such is one of the big players in a pan-European network of credit providers.

www.primeline-direct.nl is the Internet retail credit application module that serves many thousands of retailers as the most frequently used means of applying for LaSer product financing for a customer on the shop floor. Each day thousands of requests, for dozens of different financial products, are made using PrimeLine.

The Challenge

ISAAC has worked for LaSer for years providing website development services and Internet access portals to back-end systems (mainframes). One aspect of this is the provision of middleware for establishing links between various systems and from these systems to the Internet. In 2007 LaSer began using a new back-end mainframe system. In terms of appearance and layout, it was desired that the existing retailer application module should be changed as little as possible, but at the same time it had to communicate with the new, much more extensive system.

Approach

LaSer asked ISAAC to maintain the look&feel the retailers were familiar with, while also interfacing the application module to two new back-end systems. These two systems were developed in parallel by an American financial systems provider, Fidelity National Information Systems (FIS). In order to achieve a short time-to-market and minimise the length of the (expensive) migration process, LaSer also asked ISAAC to design and construct the application website link to the back-end systems before the development of those systems was complete.

Advice

ISAAC advised that the American back-end system should be made “leading” in decisions related to the Internet workflow. The reason for this was to concentrate the logic in one location and to simplify maintenance.

Design

In consultation with business analysts for LaSer and the developers at FIS in Atlanta, work proceeded on the design of a technical interface. Leading in this was an existing architecture for application systems from FIS (not directly suitable for Internet use) on top of which ISAAC developed an Internet-enabled middleware layer. Some of the aspects of the project that ISAAC performed for LaSer include:

• The design of a middleware layer based on Java Enterprise Edition techniques in order to allow a large number of concurrent users to perform the application process simultaneously.
• The development of an advanced technique involving background processing, in which the system utilises the time that a user is entering data to process and assess other data for that same user.
• The development of a front end that can not only be used for the retailer application module but also for application modules that the consumer can fill in himself, via Internet. This makes it possible to configure numerous application modules, which each appear to be different, using a single common codebase.
• At the request of LaSer, ISAAC also developed a test model and test script to allow automated monitoring of the performance of the new system throughout the entire development process, from release to release.

Implementation

This implementation process was complex and time consuming. Following approval from LaSer, ISAAC began working directly with FIS in order to work jointly on matters such as improvements to the interface and performance. This was done using an iterative approach in which developments made at FIS were immediately followed by changes carried out by ISAAC. This enabled LaSer to test the combination of back-end mainframe and front-end modules while the development process was still underway.

The implementation was performed using a JBoss-based Java Enterprise Edition running on a Windows Server platform and Microsoft SQL Server-based configuration rules. By selecting technologies with which the LaSer IT department was already familiar, the hand-off of the system at the beginning of the daily management phase was much simplified.

Management

The technical management of the employed web and middleware systems is handled by LaSer, but ISAAC remains closely involved. In consultation with LaSer, regular performance checks are performed, any incidents are resolved, and further improvements are developed. The systems are also regularly modified to comply with new regulations, such as those of the AFM (The Netherlands Authority for the Financial Markets).

Final result

Since the go live of the new application system, based on back-end systems from FIS, more than a million applications have been processed. The number of requests received via the system that ISAAC helped develop represent around 90% of the total number of applications for financing received by LaSer Services. Therefore just 10% still require completely manual processing via a call centre agent.

Since their introduction, the systems have undergone a large number of changes in connection with new legislation and regulations. All these changes have been accomplished without having to alter the basic architecture, which has proven to allow the rapid accommodation of changes.