Using Cloud Technology to Rebuild Business Applications

Challenge

A non-profit, global leader in education needed to reimagine and rebuild a critical business application utilizing technology. Specifically, our client needed to:

  • Redesign business processes to improve speed and efficiency
  • Replace on-premises Oracle and Java-based legacy applications
  • Update legacy architecture to meet new cloud-centric standards and modernize the technology stack
  • Improve user experience and reduce complexity
  • Meet a firm deadline to release the new product
  • Manage a diverse set of needs across external customers and internal constituents

Solution

Designed and built an AWS-based business application with a serverless architecture leveraging microservices, which included:
  • Conducting user research to establish a product vision, roadmap, and product backlog
  • Employing UX best practices to simplify transaction flow
  • Creating a technical design utilizing client standards for serverless AWS architecture, microservices, asynchronous data transfer, and data security to protect students’ personally identifiable information (PII)
  • Following an agile process to iteratively implement the product and adapt to feedback from internal and external constituents

Outcome

Delivered a transformational digital product that resulted in:
  • Increased satisfaction from system users
  • More efficient internal operations resulting in significant cost savings
  • A streamlined technical architecture, decoupled from enterprise legacy systems, that reduced both infrastructure and licensing costs by more than 50%
  • A roadmap and associated UX designs to inform future releases of the product and drive consistency in user experience across a family of digital products
Published January 28, 2022