Insignia Financial’s legacy developers get a new lease on life

Challenge

Big on modernization plans. Short on modern development skills.

Insignia Financial has grown through mergers and acquisitions. For every new organization it acquired, it also acquired the administration platforms that came with it—which led to a complex IT landscape.

To stop the madness, Insignia gathered its top talent to build a microservices-based business administration platform—ASIS—and consolidate all these technologies. But a new problem arose. “ASIS is Insignia’s priority project, so most of our IT resources are dedicated to it. As a result, the other business areas weren’t getting the support they needed,” explained Steph Catena, Software Development Manager.

But where some saw a problem, Insignia saw an opportunity. This consolidation project would also free tens of other developers—mostly without up-to-date technical skills—who maintained the old and discontinued systems. Getting them up to speed with the latest technologies would be slow and expensive, so Insignia researched how low-code could help.

Solution

Time for some healthy competition

After analyzing the leading analyst reports and vendor's capabilities, Insignia chose OutSystems. “The one-click deployment and the .NET-based code, which matches with our IT infrastructure, were two main reasons we chose OutSystems,” said Steph.

Now, it was time to get the developers’ buy-in. To do so, Insignia challenged them to pair up with less technical colleagues and build a solution of their choice within a week. The best app would win a $1,000 prize. And it was a success.

One of the winning apps was a solution to track an individual’s expenses. This concept spawned the development of Insignia’s first production application, created for a subsidiary company that manages royalties owed to indigenous communities by Insignia’s customers.

“This expense tracker app started by replacing 5,000 spreadsheets,” described Steph. “Today, it integrates with other back office systems, and we’ve also built a mobile app for external clients to submit invoices for payments, and check the approval process, as opposed to having to ring the call center.”

The app was so successful that when the subsidiary it was developed for was sold, the purchasing company requested that the app be included in the deal.

“The app’s functionality was one of the reasons they decided to buy the organization. They’ve set up their own environment, so OutSystems also got a new client out of it,” concluded Steph.

Insignia has since developed various applications that would otherwise not see the light of day as they didn’t fall under the ASIS project but are still vital for running the business. The list includes:

• Several online referral portals for capturing new business opportunities;
• Data quality app;
• Client risk rating app;
• Know Your Customer refresh register, to maintain legislative compliance;
• External portal to allow industry users to submit Design Distribution and Obligations (DDO) and complaint data;
• Several apps that allow business users to interface with databases and data warehouses in a user friendly and secure way.

Results

Breathing new life into developers’ careers

Since adopting OutSystems, Insignia has upskilled 16-20 developers who transitioned from legacy maintenance to full-stack development. “The systems these developers looked after would soon be gone, leading many to consider leaving the organization because they felt they couldn’t add value anymore. OutSystems gave them the opportunity to stay,” Steph shared.

Today, OutSystems is the prime candidate for developing any solution outside the ASIS project. “Our team’s scope has grown thanks to word of mouth,” said Steph. “A business unit shows a system we built, and soon, someone is knocking at our door with a new idea. And we always say yes.”

On average, Steph’s team delivers new apps two times faster than if it used traditional technologies—which is a critical competitive advantage in the industry. Often, financial services companies have a very short time frame between the release of new legislation and the adaptation period. With OutSystems, Insignia can build the necessary solutions to comply with new laws.

“A good example was the design and distribution obligations requirements,” said Steph. “We launched an app for fund managers and financial advisors to provide the needed information in record time.”

When asked about the return on investment of OutSystems, Steph replied: