Phase 1:

The BDP solution was built using C#, .Net, CAB/SCSF, DevExpress and SOAP Webservices technologies. BSG’s primary focuses in developing the solution were: 

• Ensuring seamless integration with existing Cobol-based legacy systems
• Integrating independent product siloes into a uniform sales and maintenance infrastructure

The BSG team was the lynchpin between the platform development team and the architecture team, working collaboratively to provide insights and recommendations regarding the evolving technology landscape. The biggest challenge facing the team was to ensure effective integration into the legacy Cobol-based systems. Although BSG was not directly involved in the “wrapping” of the Cobol-based systems, the team influenced the interfaces to ensure they worked seamlessly with the BSG designed processes. Additionally, there were new Java-based web services created to cater for data storage at various points in the process, which needed to be integrated into the workflows. 

Phase 2:

After successful implementation of Phase 1, BSG undertook to enable paperless onboarding, including document scanning, storage and retrieval, electronic contract signing and biometric customer verification via a link to the Department of Home Affairs. 

Phase 2 presented significant technical complexities as a result of the data security and privacy, and systems integration requirements. Phase 2 comprised of four new systems:

• A document aggregation system
• A case management system
• A central electronic document storage system
• Architecture components to control physical devices

By redesigning and encapsulating the various functionality into reusable components, the team was able to deploy these reusable components across other workflows to more rapidly improve the existing application. The deployment was planned in stages, with rollout to pilot branches first. Additionally, the hardware rollout was secondary to the software rollout and it was necessary for software to be able to be rolled back, if necessary, should hardware fail or select services be offline. To ensure this was possible, BSG created independently operating “functionality components”, which could be decoupled as necessary throughout the process. 

In addition to delivering the overall system, BSG introduced Agile practices and methodologies into the programme management and software delivery landscape at the bank. The success of this incremental value delivery has seen Agile practices firmly embedded in the bank’s subsequent way of working.