Softjourn

Case Study: How a Leader in Fintech Gained a Competitive Edge by Integrating Services

Our client wanted to keep up with the competition by integrating with popular payment services. Working with a partner helped them avoid common pitfalls during tricky integrations.
ABOUT THE CLIENT:
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Project:Integration of New Services
Date_iconClient since:
2011
The Challenge

Our client knew how complicated integrations can be, and to make sure that they would be set up for success, they decided to request our assistance.

The Solution

Softjourn is well-versed in integrations and API development services, and we know exactly what documentation is needed and what enhancements must be done to one's own system to perform a successful integration.

The Benefits

Through having a business model that includes purposeful integrations, the client ensures their business’s growth and longevity. Plus, relying on a partner allowed our client to focus their valuable time on other projects.

The Challenge

Our client is a global leader in expense management and AP automation solutions, based in the US. They are trusted by millions all over the world to make users’ businesses better through their offerings of automating and streamlining accounts payable processes, increasing productivity by automating expense control, and enforcing compliance.

Our partnership began in 2011, and since then, we’ve worked together to update the client’s existing iOS and Android apps, design and develop a white label mobile app, upgraded their version of Elasticsearch with a customized comparison tool, and worked on a variety of other projects with their internal teams.

As a fintech company - especially one specializing in expense management - it was necessary for the client to integrate with numerous services, such as banks, data aggregators and analytics platforms, and payment processors.

Our client knew how complicated integrations can be, and to make sure that they would be set up for success, they decided to request our assistance.

Softjourn is well-versed in integrations and API development services, and we know exactly what documentation is needed and what enhancements must be done to one's own system to perform a successful integration.

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Depending on the solution a client’s web application provides, integration with existing systems is pretty much inevitable. There’s hardly a web development project today that doesn’t have some level of third-party vendor integration. And when it comes to Expense Management companies, the level of integrated services needed is often twofold.

Integration is a vital part of business strategies to ensure a company’s longevity. In 2018, 97% of businesses said they were undergoing or planning to implement new technology initiatives, but 84% of them were set back by integration challenges. Companies often face the following difficulties when performing integrations:

Time Consuming

Integrations can take an incredible amount of time, often totaling months, or even years. Putting your team to work on integrations can cost a business many hours of valuable labor and money. 

Managing the Workflow

Big projects, like integrations, take big discussions on how the work should be split and how best to manage a very intricate and long-term workflow. 

Having Solid Architecture

One of the hardest parts of many integrations has to do with the status of your current architecture. For many businesses, a lot of work usually needs to go into improving your system so it can support the new service.

Different Service Requirements

Just because your APIs work with one service, does not mean they will work with another service. A big part of completing multiple integrations is tweaking and modifying your API so it is adjusted properly for each new integration.

Effort Intensive

If you care about users having a consistent and good experience, then your integrations must be done meticulously. Before a deployment, everything must be modified and fixed as needed so nothing breaks. Similarly, after an integration, monitoring is important to make sure everything works as expected.

Properly Securing Data

For fintechs, most of the services they integrate with deal with customer data, personal data, and transactional data, so it is extremely important for companies to follow rules, validations, and any other compliance needed by the service companies, and the law in general.

Working With Outdated Services

While everyone hopes to integrate with the newest and best services, sometimes you will need to integrate with old services that come with unique blockers.

For this particular client, they faced nearly all of the challenges listed above because they needed to integrate with a variety of services, and their system needed improvements to be able to integrate with these platforms. Specifically, they wanted to integrate with services from US Bank, Wise, and Finicity.

There were some particularly tricky parts that this client faced. First, to integrate with Wise, a lot of work needed to be done in the client’s system to store all the payments, support many currencies, and add validation, before even sending a request. 

Second, when integrating with a data aggregation service or open banking platform, like Finicity, it is essential for the client to consider what customer data they are passing through other services. For our client to integrate with Finicity, data security and compliance were important aspects to consider.

Last, and perhaps most difficult, is that the client’s architecture needed to be restructured and redesigned because it was written over 10 years old and was not compatible with the APIs of the services they wanted to integrate with. If they didn’t modify their own architecture, they would likely run into difficulty testing and come across other blockers on even the simplest tasks.

Between all of these challenges, integrations for the client would take an enormous amount of time and energy, so they decided to partner with Softjourn to make sure the integrations would go smoothly and quickly as possible.

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The Solution

By working with a service provider, the client was able to offer a seamless experience for their consumers, while saving time, effort, and money.

We helped map the client’s architecture, found the gaps, added and tweaked all that needed to be modified, and then performed the rest API calls. This was a very time-consuming process especially since each of their three required integrations required different APIs and service requirements. 

Our experienced teams maintained many aspects related to the integrated services and made sure everything was perfectly designed to be successful before each deployment. This way, the client’s users would not have any issues or disruptions using the site or its services. 

We were able to integrate even old services by taking the time to study and restructure them as needed for integration. Additionally, we assisted with exporting, transforming, storing, and processing all the customer expense transactions. 

The Benefits

For our clients planning to add new services, we encourage them to have a defined plan for integrations. We are experienced in financial projects and bank & payment system integrations, so we know the importance of deliberate planning and adequate documentation.

When building a house, you wouldn’t build without a well-defined plan. In much the same way, we find that the process of software integration should be carefully considered. In this vein, for each integration we helped this client prepare for, Softjourn considered and advised on the following: 

The Use Case: What solution will the integration provide? Understanding this was the key driver for the rest of the integration planning. We use diagrams, flows, and discussions to understand exactly what they want from the service.

The User: What are the user types who will make use of this integration? Together with the client, we answered this question to drive the purpose of their application.

Embedding: Keeping a user on a site or application creates a frictionless experience. However, choosing to not embed means less maintenance work for a team. We asked our client how important they felt embedding was before proceeding with the integrations.

Automation or Interactivity: With automation, integrations are limited to governance rules. Interactivity offers more flexibility for users. Since either can be limited by a team’s development resources, we made sure to discuss the client’s budget and goals to help them come to a smart decision.

The Needed Services: We laid out and discussed the advantages and disadvantages of different services, to provide guidance to the client. We have worked with this client for over ten years, so we knew what services would help them grow the most. 

Future Activity: We know there isn’t a one-size-fits-all roadmap for integrations, so we made sure to consider deeply the client’s initial goal, what would create value for their business, and what would attract and retain customers for them over the long term. We also considered what maintenance the client would need in the future regarding the services.

With many exciting new services they can offer, such as US Bank and Wise, our expense management client will be able to stay competitive by offering great features to their users.

Through having a business model that includes purposeful integrations, the client ensures their business’s growth and longevity. Plus, relying on a partner allowed our client to focus their valuable time on other projects.

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The Result

The client and Softjourn have successfully integrated US Bank and Wise, and are finishing up integrations with Finicity currently, as well as integrating some additional features from Wise, like different credit card types and more currencies. The client was very positive about working with our team and was pleased that the integrations were successfully completed within the timeframe and budget we set together.

If you are interested in integrating new services, Softjourn is here to help. Our experience working in the expense management & finance industries allows us to bring well-informed guidance to your project and our talented teams are eager to help you with even the most difficult integrations.

We offer project-specific solutions or augment in-house tech teams to help our clients stay relevant and competitive in areas such as expense management, prepaid cards, payments processing, and integration.

Partnership & Recognition

Softjourn's IAOP 100 award
Intix Member
Microsoft Gold Partner
Xamarin Authorized Consulting Partner
Monax Parntership
Softjourn in the Inc. 5000 list

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