Updating Legacy Systems: Continuous Optimization vs Replacement

legacy software

Legacy software refers to outdated applications based on obsolete technology and standards. Avoiding legacy software is typically very difficult; it’s the result of past technology choices. Outdated applications do pose a growing problem for many companies. Applications should be able to last for decades, but in practice, they are only modern for three years and can then […]

Legacy Application Modernization in the Financial Services Sector

legacy app modernization

Legacy Application Modernization in the Financial Services Sector

Project Description

Mantrax was engaged to modernize mission-critical applications and infrastructure for a business management company in the financial services industry.

The client had a monolithic application built using a PHP framework that was abandoned years ago. It was not maintained by anyone and the developer who built this system had abandoned them to seek a full-time opportunity elsewhere.

To make things worse, they were running off a decades old database technology that was not supported and was very poorly designed.

The Problem

Business Stability

With such legacy systems, there is a lot of resistance to change. It was natural for our client to feel anxious about making drastic changes to existing systems. There was a fear of a scenario where the legacy application modernization won’t go smoothly and their business processes would come to a screeching halt. 

Technical

These types of applications could abruptly stop working if any of the system administrators updated the operating system or even applied a patch without understanding the consequences. Even worse, this software system did not receive any security updates for years and was vulnerable to various cyber-attacks. 

The Solution

One ideal approach would have been to go through a complete redesign of the application including re-architecting the database. However, given the tremendous amount of stress our client was enduring, and budget considerations, we took the “good solution today” approach.

Assess
Decide on the new technology stack which was best suited for their business.
Plan
Create a list of all database objects (tables, stored procedures, user-defined functions) which needed to be migrated.
Develop
Have a senior developer work on this project - one who knew the PHP framework as well as the new framework chosen for this application (Angular / Express JS)
Build
Rebuild the application one screen at a time (to get a realistic estimate of time and effort remaining). In parallel, migrate the database objects to a newer supported platform.
Maintain

Maintain the current production application to ensure business continuity.

Ready to Digitize Your Business, 
but Don’t Know Where to Begin?

Let us help you with first steps. Contact us today!

Custom Self Serve Analytics Dashboards for Multiple Enterprise Clients

data analytics

Custom Self Serve Analytics Dashboards for Multiple Enterprise Clients

Project Description

Our clients’ requests ranged from optimizing existing dashboards to launching a company-wide analytics culture.

Our clients required company-wide performance improvements involving delivery timelines and budget achievements. In particular, efficiencies were needed regarding company-wide information dissemination and manual report generation.

After gathering information from stakeholders who were responsible for reporting and analytics, we discovered that the underlying issues were typical of the following:

  • Reports were not available on time
  • On-demand reporting (self-serve BI) was seldom an option
  • Changing the report structure or making enhancements was too difficult or not possible
  • ETL processes or aggregations failed without notifications to the end users

As a result, the broader user base was not always finding these reports very useful, or there was an impediment toward making insightful decisions.  

Project Description

Our clients’ requests ranged from optimizing existing dashboards to launching a company-wide analytics culture.

Our clients required company-wide performance improvements involving delivery timelines and budget achievements. In particular, efficiencies were needed regarding company-wide information dissemination and manual report generation.

After gathering information from stakeholders who were responsible for reporting and analytics, we discovered that the underlying issues were typical of the following:

  • Reports were not available on time
  • On-demand reporting (self-serve BI) was seldom an option
  • Changing the report structure or making enhancements was too difficult or not possible
  • ETL processes or aggregations failed without notifications to the end users

As a result, the broader user base was not always finding these reports very useful, or there was an impediment toward making insightful decisions.  

The Solution

Our Solution

  • Alignment of vision and objectives – A series of workshops with key stakeholders were conducted to help streamline the business plan and increase its transparency across the organization.
  • Internal and External Benchmark Research – To identify realistic long term and short term goals, benchmark analysis was conducted for key KPIs across the industry, competitors and internal landscapes.
  • KPI funnel with the right balance of leading and lagging measures – Through an iterative process, strategic, engaging, and actionable leading and lagging KPIs were identified. The KPIs covered all cross-functional groups and increased transparency and accountability amongst organizational members.
  • Selection of the right BI tool – We created a comprehensive BI tool selection criteria checklist and worked with internal reporting teams on proof-of-concept projects to try out different tools before making the final selection.
  • Integration with FP&A – To engage stakeholders with analytics vision, specifically users in the realm of financial planning & analytics, we streamlined existing scorecards and monthly reports with the updated business plans and KPI funnel. 

The Results

  • Revived business plan with strategic KPIs – A centralized and accessible business plan for all departments with focused objectives and ownership clarity. 
  • Identification of realistic targets – Following an analysis of industry and competitor data and an internal profitability review, mid-term profitability and interim milestones were defined. 
  • Cross-functional KPI funnel – A centralized KPIs funnel with primary, secondary, and supporting measures was implemented across the organization.
  • Delivery of automated dashboards – We provided leadership and expertise at each stage of the report automation process including vendor and BI tool selection, functional specification development, mock dashboards, and data automation project management.
  • Streamlined processes – To make the adoption of analytics seamless, we helped integrate KPIs into regular business operations. Areas addressed included the annual budget revision process, forecasting, product costing review updates, continuous improvement project tools, and cadence and streamlining project management tools. 

What We Did

  • Full Stack Development
  • Strategy
  • Implementation Consulting
Assess
Decide on the new technology stack which was best suited for their business.
Plan
Create a list of all database objects (tables, stored procedures, user-defined functions) which needed to be migrated.
Develop
Have a senior developer work on this project - one who knew the PHP framework as well as the new framework chosen for this application (Angular / Express JS)
Build
Rebuild the application one screen at a time (to get a realistic estimate of time and effort remaining). In parallel, migrate the database objects to a newer supported platform.
Maintain

Maintain the current production application to ensure business continuity.

Ready to Digitize Your Business, 
but Don’t Know Where to Begin?

Let us help you with first steps. Contact us today!

ES6 Array Methods – A Quick Summary

Love it or hate it, JavaScript is everywhere As software consultants, we work with multiple programming languages at a time, JavaScript being one of our main languages. We often find it hard to remember the API details for the language we are working with. Here is a list of JavaScript (ES6) array methods that developers […]