Work

Building familiarity into a fresh new platform

The Opportunity

Part of the challenge when replatforming is that users like to use the tools they are comfortable with. Resistance to change can be an impediment to any transformation project. So if you can introduce the new and improved while retaining some of the friendly and familiar, the transition will be smoother for everyone.

The ABI, who represent more than 300 providers, collect statistical data from over 700 members to inform its lobbying activities and to produce market information for the benefit of members. A new web portal needed to handle complex Excel spreadsheets their members used to input data into, streamlining data collection at speed while maintaining security of sensitive financial information.

Our Approach

Building the platform around a centralised Azure SQL data warehouse we designed it to integrate seamlessly with Microsoft Excel enabling teams to use familiar and powerful tools and allowing live-editing and rich ad-hoc analysis of submissions through the web view. Optimisation across the whole platform and the scalable design allowed hundreds of concurrent users to log in and edit their data.

The Impact

After a rigorous security audit, our platform was successfully rolled out on-time and on-budget, with the end-to-end build process lasting just over 4 months. Since launch it has significantly streamlined the end-to-end process for the ABI’s data team and has also helped the ABI address data quality issues, by automatically flagging errors on submission, and providing workflows to resolve them. Meanwhile, the submission process is easier for the member organisations, reducing the overall burden on the ABI. We continue to fully support the system for the ABI and its members.

“Softwire exceeded our expectations in being able to deliver the scope on-time and on-budget; when you’re doing custom development, this is usually unheard of. They displayed extremely strong technical capability and guided us through the process, enabling us to make informed decisions every step of the way. Softwire is a partner we can really trust with our IT – one of our top suppliers.”

Daniel Sadler, Senior Data and Analytics Advisor, ABI

“ Softwire exceeded our expectations in being able to deliver the scope on-time and on-budget; when you’re doing custom development, this is usually unheard of.

Daniel Sadler, Senior Data & Analytics Advisor, ABI

Our Work