Software Modernization For a CX Company

Software Modernization For an Ultimate Market Leader Among Personalization Engines

How switching from deprecated AngularJS to up-to-date React and crafting a custom UI kit helped a global SaaS customer experience (CX) company facilitate maintenance of their personalization engine and speed up design-related tasks.

Industry:
Technology

Legacy Software Modernization

Home / Israel

Business challenge

Understanding that nothing lasts forever helps ambitious SaaS companies truly excel. Organizations pushing their field’s boundaries can’t peacefully rest on laurels. They have to put a premium on constant product evolution, spanning three areas:

Building a unified tech stack
Ensuring the code aligns with the current best practices
Enriching the product’s features

Focusing on the above-the-surface part, or implementing new features, to win and retain customers, companies tend to neglect the technical foundation that can spell significant trouble without essential upkeep.

The aging heterogeneous tech stack was the only vulnerable spot of our client – an unbeatable market leader among SaaS personalization engines. They have already blazed a trail in customer experience (CX) solutions with their cutting-edge personalization engine, which empowers B2B and B2C companies to reach their potential customers across any channel and device with highly targeted offerings. However, their core products’ front end in AngularJS:

Didn’t match the client’s current tech stack in React
Complicated software maintenance as support from Google ceased in 2018

To eliminate these hindrances, the client decided to migrate legacy AngularJS code to cutting-edge React.

Additional benefits of switching from AngularJS to React included:

Flexibility in organizing the software code as React is a UI-focused library, while AngularJS is a model-view-controller (MVC) framework with a set of predefined design patterns.
Accelerated performance thanks to React’s reliance on the virtual document object model (DOM), which allows changes without updating the entire page.

The client has already started code migration from AngularJS to React but soon hit a roadblock: their in-house team has neither time nor capacity to juggle both feature development and legacy modernization. Therefore, the client decided to hand over the migration part to a tech partner.

However, finding an ally they could trust wasn’t a walk in the park, as the client previously had a negative experience with an outsourcing company, making them cautious this time around. Determined to avoid the same pitfalls, they came up with strict technical and soft skills-related requirements for the future partner so that only the best would make the cut:

Battle-proven expertise

in both AngularJS and React

Accurate planning

and sticking to the outlined timeline

Proactiveness

in decision-making to strengthen their core team

Top-level soft skills

for swift communication and synergy with their in-house team

ISO certifications

namely ISO 9001:2015 and ISO 27001:2022

According to the client, *instinctools turned out to be the perfect fit. How did the migration go and what were the extra efforts we put in?

Solution

The client had already outlined an overall migration strategy and prepared the infrastructure, so our team picked up the code migration while perfecting existing functionality and fixing bugs.

Replacing a rigid legacy tech stack

We were responsible for rewriting several solutions within the client’s software ecosystem. Some of them raised notable challenges, such as their legacy customer journey mapping platform.

The client’s system was a sore spot because of its:

Fragmentation. The platform consisted of six sub-systems, each written by different developers at different times.
Documentation void. Without system documentation or knowledge keepers left in the company, rewriting the solution became a daunting task.

We had to replace this ticking time bomb with a single user-friendly React solution. To achieve this goal, our team:

Analyzed the platform’s code to figure out the best way to rewrite it
Prepared updated software architecture from scratch
Selected Nx library for collecting code from different microservices and a Vite bundler to set up a development environment for React
Replaced six disconnected microservices with a monolith
Migrated libraries from AngularJS to React

On to new challenges

Six months after the start of our cooperation, the client trusted our team enough to delegate the tasks beyond the migration. That’s how we started working through their overall backlog and participating in R&D activities.

Taking on the primary stage of their research efforts

The client wanted our team to join their ongoing in-house research dedicated to creating a custom UI kit:

Explore and examine current best practices in crafting compilations of UI components
Draw up suggestions for their custom UI kit

Impressed with the proactiveness of our team, the client asked us to join the UI kit development.

Assisting in crafting a custom UI kit

Just as with the AngularJS to React migration, the client had already invested efforts in building UI components in line with the company’s brand book. And much like switching to the more up-to-date tech stack, they also needed reliable, high-qualified partners to carry out the UI kit development.

Before our team knuckled down, the client got tangled up in their existing visual components, such as buttons, checkboxes, widgets, etc., scattered across various sources.

Here’s what we did to help the company stop wasting their time and effort:

Created a single library for all UI components to enable simple reuse across all the client’s current and future products
Collaborated with their in-house design team to create and implement a multitude of UI elements, enhancing consistency and efficiency

Before

Heterogeneous tech stack of their SaaS CX solution
Challenging product maintenance because of six siloed microservices
Absence of a robust UI kit
Massive backlog
Lack of experts to run technical research

After

Unified tech stack for the client’s SaaS personalization engine
Simplified product maintenance thanks to monolith architecture
Solid custom UI kit
Reduced backlog
Support of dedicated experts in R&D activities

In our client’s words

Frontend Guild Manager on the client’s side outlines their impressions of cooperation with *instinctools:

NFT Marketplace Development For a Fintech Company

How developing an NFT platform allowed a global Fintech company to increase its annual revenue by 34%, rack up the number of B2B clients by 47%, and wipe out the risks related to intellectual property when selling and buying patents all over the world.

Industry:
Fintech, Intellectual property

Team:
team lead, BE engineers, FE engineers, business analyst, project manager, QA specialist, UI designer

Home / Israel

Context

*instinctools was approached by IPwe for assistance in revamping their marketplace for monetizing patents encased in non-fungible tokens or NFTs. Their goal was to make the intellectual property market more transparent, liquid, and accessible to every stakeholder interested in patent acquisitions or sales. The key requirements for the IPwe Platform were the following:

a clear and transparent structure
information accessibility with equal opportunities for both patent licensors and licensees
an intuitive interface for fast and easy transactions.

Challenge

The primary purpose of the project’s first stage was to construct the core application for market launch, allowing new users, customers, stakeholders, and investors to gain a better understanding of IPwe’s products and their features. The *instinctools team was challenged to cover the following tasks:

Designing a web interface with an intuitive user experience.
Developing a web application with extended functionality, including secure transactions, real-time dashboard visualization, and personal user accounts.
Creating an interlayer for efficient blockchain operation and enabling smooth connectivity between the front-end and back-end.

Solution

The key component of the project was finished and released on time thanks to the smooth collaboration of *instinctools professionals working alongside IPwe’s team.

“We have delivered the core web application functionality meeting all client’s requirements for the platform, and now we actively continue to bolster it with new features. The IPwe team clearly knows what they want, and we always have ideas in our stash on how to meet their needs.” – Alesia V., Account Executive at *instinctools.

The NFT marketplace platform is a complex solution consisting of several components delivered by the *instinctools dedicated team: web app, user account, and a Smart Pool system.

A web application with an admin role on the backend allows for controlling and managing user activity and operations with tokens. In particular, a database administrator can manage and optimize requests coming from IPwe Platform users to add new assets as well as the structure and aggregate databases for further processing with an inbuilt artificial intelligence tool.

A user account with a dashboard view of various assets, patents, and trade secrets with issued tokens (NFT). The total number of active licenses the company bought or is currently selling, transaction status feed, and notifications.

Smart Pool system for a group of patents united by one technology and establishing a pool with members and patent owners. Through IPwe’s Smart Pool technology, members can access the tools they need to improve their patent portfolio.

Patent owners can add their assets to the IPwe Platform according to the privacy levels they wish to apply to their tokens. There are two types of privacy for the assets: “private capture” and “strictly confidential.” Private capture allows users to add trade secrets with related documents and send them to the blockchain. Strictly confidential implies the same procedure except that the files that a particular person signs are hashed and not stored in our backend. Though the user still can save the original file name or hash it.

Currently, the *instinctools’ team is enriching the application with new functionality and maintaining the stable operability and security of the platform.

Key features

Stable and secure platform providing different levels of access and personal accounts functionality
Smart dashboards that visualize all the user’s data and assets
Reach and fine-tune notification functionality
Smart Pools that unite assets with similar technology and reduce transactions costs

Business Value

The NFT marketplace for selling and buying patents helps businesses increase the value of their assets, establish new partnerships, and mitigate risks related to intellectual property. With this solution enriched with new functionality, our client is expanding their B2B service offering, bringing revenue and added value to the business.

Technologies

EMR Platform For a European Hospital

How refining the electronic medical records system and developing iOS and Android mobile apps allowed an Israeli hospital to put an extra coat on sensitive data security, ensure real-time patient-doctor communication, and provide personalized health records.

Home / Israel

Challenge

The main challenge was to design digital records the way that they could be securely and safely accessed by both medical practitioners across the institution and patients. The system should comply with the demands of consistency and guarantee total data safety.

The existing version of the EMR didn’t comply with all hospital practitioners’ needs. They lacked quick and convenient access to the patients’ data, effective patient-doctor communication.

Solution

Along with upgrading the existing record system, *instinctools offered to create a mobile app and integrate it with EMR system. The main goal was to make a space for doctor-patient real-time communication and give the patients full access to their health data. Security level was achieved through QR-code scanning for patient identification. UX designers simplified system’s interface to make user interaction more intuitive and enjoyable.

Technologies

Key features

The client has obtained a stable version of the platform together with the build products, as well as an option to solve integration issues quickly and at a low cost in the future.

Quick operations with large volumes of information

Integration with the client’s server to establish an automatic match to the local records at the institution

Advanced security and user access control

Patients’ full access to their health information 24/7 through mobile app

Personal health notes: daily sleep duration, physical activity, stress, alcohol consumption, weight

Patients’ easier making an appointment with the doctor

Reminders of taking pills according to doctor’s prescription

Effective real-time patient-doctor communication

Daily health insights according to personal health notes

Scan a verification QR-code from smartphone

User-friendly interface

E-Learning Solution Upgrade For a Software Company

How enriching their existing e-learning solution in the field of software security with an audit layer and reporting helped a software company hone performance monitoring for their customers, leading to greater user satisfaction.

Home / Israel

Challenge

By the time the customer contacted *instinctools, they had already had a complete solution and only needed to maintain it and add some new features. All the aspects of the working process were highly formalized due to the elevated security level of the project. The developers had to coordinate their actions with several executives to get permission to make any changes.

Solution

*instinctools team worked on the creation of a special layer for the audit of potential unwanted actions.

The developers also created a new type of report which allows the companies that use the customer’s eLearning product to monitor the developer’s performance.

Key features

The list of implemented features included, among other things, the following features:

24x7 Unlimited On-demand Access

Individual & Group Reporting

Knowledge Checks and Final Exams

Optimized Content Update Process

Results

The customer is pleased with the team’s performance, process and the quality of deliverables. We fulfilled SLA compliance up to 99,9%. The fruitful cooperation on this project resulted in the implementation of several powerful features which improved the quality of the solution and
its value for the end user. After receiving an additional round of funding, the customer plans to return to *instinctools for further product development.