IT Consulting Archive

Next generation cloud-based asset management

With about 475 employees at locations in Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands and Switzerland, the vwd group (today part of Infront) is an internationally active collection of companies with strong roots in the local financial markets.

The vwd group offers customized information, communication and technology solutions for financial services providers, companies, media operations and private clients.

xitee was building the next-generation cloud-based asset management solution, which replaced the current desktop application (VWD Portfolio manager). The vwd portfolio manager is the perfect portfolio management solution for Private Banking and Wealth Management. The system supports all process steps in portfolio management, from planning through implementation to controlling. It gives the user the benefits of a standard software solution which can be scaled to the needs of the user as required very flexibly, quickly, and cost effectively.

The new platform fully adopts microservice architecture and is part of a larger ecosystem where it also collaborates with numerous other microservices that make it easier for the users to interact with their customers in compliance with regulatory requirements.

xitee was responsible for development of both back-end and front-end part of the system. The back-end team oversees building Position, Transaction, Risk and Performance services which provide data from various existing systems to new web-based front-end.

And the front-end team was building brand new Angular Dashboard & Widget based application to display various information useful for individual investors.

Technologies: Java, Spring Boot, Hibernate, Swagger, Gradle, Docker, CockroachDB, Flyway, Prometheus, Asciidoc, Angular, PrimeNG, RxJS, Highcharts, Sass.

xConvertor – hub for establishing a connection to exchanges

vwd TransactionSolutions AG is a financial brokerage company, which develops, operates and offers financial securities trading and distribution systems. With several important in-house systems, vwd is a key player in the financial brokerage and market connectivity on the European stock exchanges.

The overall focus is on the operation of securities trading centres in a wide variety of forms:

off-exchange
on-exchange
limit trading
request-for-quotes
matching systems

xConvertor is a B2B connectivity solution providing customized access to many different stock or energy exchanges as a primary connection for trading. It connects brokers with markets and market makers and converts their communication (e.g., orders, quotes, etc.). The conversion is not only covering different technical interfaces (e.g., various FIX dialects, JSON, etc.), but it also provides business logic conversions. As an example, we compensate differences in message workflows, map and convert differently generated IDs and do other content conversions of the messages.

Application architecture was decided to be a point-to-point bridge with inner routing and generic, highly configurable conversion engine. Specific type of routing differs between plugins. Application supports multiple connections in a single instance and multiple instances running in parallel.

Technologies: Java 11, Spring, QuickFixJ, Log4J, Gradle, Oracle SQL, Git

.NET platform for financial data permission management

The vwd group offers customized information, communication and technology solutions for financial services providers, companies, media operations and private clients.

Our team was responsible for the architecture, development, and maintenance of a core system, which handles permission requests of 100.000+ client terminals downloading the financial data every day.

One part of the system is a web-based application providing a complete setup and maintenance of permissions to financial data. The other one is a very sophisticated back-end engine which allows small crew to very efficiently manage permissions of large pool of clients’ terminals.

The main challenge was to find a solution, which satisfies needs of operations for efficient management based on patters with needs of business to adjust the setup to a specific contractual arrangement of individual customers. This was successfully achieved by using highly sophisticated template engine which we designed. The system also created input data for other systems, for example, the SAP-based accounting applications.

For the back end, we used .NET technologies and Microsoft SQL Servers and Angular for the front-end.

PropTech B2B platform

Reesca AG is our PropTech client with an innovative B2B market place for commercial real estate finance and adjacent services. Large supply of high-quality projects and high demand for professional investors meet there. It is the future of commercial real estate financing.

We are talking about a concept that did not exist in the market for commercial real estate financing and transactions. xitee developed this technology-based B2B platform and Reesca now can be digital, fast and efficient. It is a disruptive PropTech with a distinctive USP and well justified monetisation model, reaping the benefits of a PaaS business model. The goal was to provide proprietary software which offers a wide range of functionalities to support borrowing and lending clients. Real estate developers present their projects to investors who seek opportunity for a good investment. For both client groups, there are unprecedented benefits that go beyond the obvious advantage of a quick borrower/investor matching. The right match of a project and investor is guaranteed through match engine. Reesca’s mission is to minimize transaction costs, speed up processing times and increase market transparency for investors and developers/owners alike.

Platform use Azure AD B2C for Identity and access management, .Net for backend, Angular for frontend and Ionic for cross-platform mobile development. Application consists of many complex workflows, search engine and user screens for 5 different roles.

Technologies:

Backend: .NET 5, Entity Framework, MsTest, Automaper, Swashbuckle, Moq, Swagger

Web/Mobile: Angular 11, Material library, Karma, Jasmine, Figma, Anima, Ionic 5

Other: Azure (Azure SQL Databaes, Azure Blob Storage, Azure AD B2C with Custom Policies,..), Multitenancy, Docker, Zabbix, FluentEmail

Online face-to-face consulting platform enabling online deal-closing

Since the pandemic situation of Covid-19, digitalisation has become more important. Companies are now facing the questions such as how to provide personalised and confidential advice online? How to close a valid contract directly during an online meeting? What does the customer really expect during an online advice session?

Even before the pandemic, there was already a large number of online services, but only 34% of customers really preferred these services. Today, twice as many customers prefer them than before the pandemic. Digital interaction with customers has also increased dramatically. It doesn’t matter whether it’s the older or younger generation, ultimately everyone has been in a certain way forced into digital change. Companies are of course aware of this trend and know that they have to adapt to customer expectations.

However, it is important to mention that while on the one hand the use of online services is increasing, on the other hand consumers prefer human interaction more than before. Today, 83% of consumers prefer human contact, which is a higher percentage than before Covid-19. Moreover, customers prefer online services only in situations involving less important matters. If they need advice on complex decisions they seek face-to-face meetings.

For these reasons, there is a need to combine services offered online and face-to-face contact. Switch from purely online services to virtual face-to-face advice. This is what customers expect. According to Accenture, the linking of physical and digital experiences called “phygital” is becoming a standard. The competitive advantage in 2021 is end-to-end customer service platform that creates a secure and personalised dialogue between customer and advisor. This is why we are entering the Czech market with the LiveContract solution. Advisors can share real-time documents, videos, configurators with customers in an easy and fast way without prior registration/authentication/downloading an app. This enables online consultation without loss of personal access. The platform allows the customer to make an instant purchase decision and sign the contract directly during the consultation without any interruption, in a legally binding manner according to the EU eIDAS regulation on any end device. What will not change in the future are the demands for simplicity, speed, accessibility and customer convenience.

If you too want to increase your close rate and offer your customers the best experience read more here or book a demo here.

Support and new development of T7 and FIX protocol

Wiener Börse AG operates the stock markets in Vienna and Prague and provides IT services for exchanges in Budapest, Zagreb and Ljubljana. The core trading system used is Xetra^® T7 from Deutsche Börse. Wiener Börse operates its own software providing connectivity for Xetra^® T7 to enable members a simplified connectivity using FIX interface (CEESEG FIX).

This solution further provides the Xetra^® T7 market data feed to the data dissemination system ADH (Alliance Data Highway) of Wiener Börse. Monitoring and data analysis tools are also part of the system.

An additional service is TTR II (MiFID II Post trade OTC reporting).

The xitee team is responsible for maintenance and further development of these Software solutions.

Expansion of the digital customer portal ” Meine Gesundheitswelt” (My Health World)

The HBSN group of companies supports the AOK Saxony-Anhalt in the conception, technical development and implementation of a form center – “Formularcenter” within the digital customer portal ” Meine Gesundheitswelt” (My Health World).

“Meine Gesundheitswelt” has been available to AOK customers since February 2020. Within this portal, customers can get additional services which they used reimbursed by the AOK via their individual “Gesundeskonto” (health account) and submit their receipts and invoices for any advance services digitally for billing purposes.

The web-based application “Formularcenter” is another building block in AOK Saxony-Anhalt’s digital customer service offering. With the “Formularcenter”, the AOK offers its customers a large selection of ready-made forms for applying for health insurance benefits, such as the request for care or for the reimbursement of travel costs in medical treatment situations. The corresponding forms are now made available to the insured via the customer portal “Meine Gesundheitswelt”.

woman sitting and holding white Acer laptop near brown wooden wall

With this digital customer service, complicated bureaucratic hurdles are removed for the insured and the application process is made simple, fast and customer-oriented. At the same time, AOK Saxony-Anhalt is fulfilling its legislative obligation to provide administrative services digitally to the citizens in accordance with the German Onlinezugangsgesetz – Online Access Act (OZG).

Insured persons can access the form centre (Formularcenter) directly online via their individual customer account and apply for benefits for themselves or for their family members. The forms are largely pre-filled with the insured person’s already known data. Integrated help functions, explanations in the form of text and sample images for necessary attachments per application and a dynamic behavior of the forms avoid contradictions when filling out the forms and make it easier to apply and check the completeness of the documents. An integrated upload function for necessary attachments to the application is also provided.

These help functions support not only the insured but also the employees of the AOK Saxony-Anhalt in the further processing of the forms. After digital dispatch by the applicants, the forms are automatically forwarded to the oscare® inventory system. For each form, the distribution is individually defined by the AOK and thus the forms are automatically sent to team mailboxes, to the e-file or to the oscare® APD for a direct case creation, depending on the configuration.

The requirements for the application in terms of process flow, data flows and technical implementation were developed and refined by HBSN Consulting together with AOK Saxony-Anhalt. The individual programming and technical implementation was carried out by the xitee team. For the operational monitoring of the system and customer support, the third member of the HBSN group of companies, Health-IT Services, now takes over the maintenance and support of the web application “Formularcenter” together with xitee.

Technologies: Angular 11, RxJS, Jasmine, JIRA, Confluence, Bitbucket, Apache httpd, Selenium, SonarQube

System for scheduling, correspondence and digital transmission of reports

MEDICPROOF is a subsidiary company of the PKV-Verband and provides the assessment of insurance cases for people insured under one of the private insurance companies. MEDICPROOF guarantees that all assessments are done according to the laws and regulations, and done while upholding the same standards for all cases.

To streamline their work, there are many systems used by the employees and assessment experts.

One of these systems is called ProofCenter, which is the system our team was helping to develop, and maintain. ProofCenter is a system that supports the insurance experts in the scheduling, correspondence and digital transmission of their expert reports to MEDICPROOF.

ProofCenter is directly or indirectly used by all other applications in the MEDICPROOF ecosystem. The application consists of Backend and Frontend (ProofCenter Client).

Technologies: Intellij IDEA; SQL Management Studio, JBoss / Java, EJB, Spring, JAVA EE, Hibernate, REST, Git

Quality assurance

There are six foundation blocks (Version control, Continuous integration, Issue tracking, Unit tests, Reviews, Code analysis) that ensure the quality of the software and therefore of the product itself. Various synergies between the specific parts enable transparency and maintainability. At the same time these components work as a toolkit for every single software developer.

Through the usage of a version control, each modification of the code is comprehensibly documented, and each version can be restored at any time. This grants flexibility to the development and allows a precise analysis of all arising errors of the software.

The use of a continuous integration (CI) system allows a controlled compiling of new software versions as well as continuous reporting for the developers regarding any arising errors during the compilation. Additionally, automatically elicited key figures, which display the state of the product, can be generated and reported. Features and bugs, as well as milestones and project tasks, are managed through the Issue tracking system (JIRA and / or Confluence). This creates traceable and transparent development from requirement analysis to delivery and allows the creation of relationships between individual tasks or features.

The Interaction between these three systems (Version Control, CI, Issue Tracker) as well as the interaction of the developers with them provides additional benefits, which increase the quality of the products even more. Any changes only need to be documented once, since the version control, issue tracking and CI systems automatically transfer the modifications. Because of this automatic transfer to the Issue Tracking System, every change is assigned uniquely to one requirement, which provides complete traceability to each action. The developer gains quick feedback through the CI System, since each change in code automatically generates a new software-version.

The usage of Unit-Tests and the integration of these tests into the CI System allows a quick identification and debugging of errors, even while the software is still in development.

Additional to this, reviews ensure that at least two people view and test the code before a component is cleared for further testing.

Electronic appointment service and vaccination appointment service

kv.digital GmbH is the innovative competence center for the digitalization of medical care in private practice. The company develops innovative platform, web and app solutions – for instance for the connection of doctors with each other, for the connection of doctors with their patients, for the provision and booking of medical appointments or for information about emergency practices.

There is a platform (Electronic Appointment Service ETS) for booking medical appointments for persons with statutory health insurance. This is a highly distributed system. Individual microservices handle various tasks. The services communicate via a message broker; the frontend is supplied via REST.

The goal of this project was to extend the system with functional requirements, to normalize it technically and to optimize the architecture in parts. The tasks included:

Implementation of individual features incl. unit and integration tests.
Planning and conceptualization of technical tasks
Checking and optimizing code quality

Scrum was used as the development methodology.

person in white long sleeve shirt holding gray pen

A sub-project of the ETS was Impfterminservice (ITS), where one can book the appointment for the coronavirus vaccination.

Technologies:

Backend: Java, Spring / SpringBoot, Hibernate, POI, SolR, Liquibase, Freemarker, Resteasy, TestNG/Hamcrest, Mysql, Couchbase, ActiveMQ, Docker, IDEA

Frontend: Angular (for patients), AngularJS (for doctors)