Profinit

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and position.

I am the Head of Digital Transformation of Berenberg

Describe what your company does in a single sentence.

Berenberg is one of Europe’s leading private banks, with a history dating back over 400 years. We specialize in private banking, investment banking, asset management, and corporate banking. I am the Head of Digital Transformation at Berenberg. In my role, I am responsible for overseeing the digitalization efforts across the bank, ensuring we leverage modern technologies to improve our services and operations.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What specific goals or objectives did you hire Profinit to accomplish?

• Learn more at https://bigdataforbanking.com/success-stories/nearshore-software-development-berenberg

SOLUTION

How did you find Profinit?

Referral

Why did you select Profinit over others?

• Close to my geographic location
• Great culture fit
• Good value for cost
• Company values aligned

How many teammates from Profinit were assigned to this project?

2-5 Employees

Describe the scope of work in detail. Please include a summary of key deliverables.

The scope of work included the following steps:

• Initial Team Building: Both teams met in person at Berenberg’s office in Hamburg and Profinit’s office in Prague to establish a solid working relationship.
• Architecture Design: We designed a modular architecture that simplifies development and deployment while ensuring maintainability and future scalability.
• Development: Profinit’s team developed new modules for client classification and a business requirement-specific dashboard.
• Migration to Cloud: We migrated the application from on-premise to Azure DevOps, enhancing our infrastructure’s flexibility and efficiency.
• Daily Collaboration: We employed agile methodologies, including daily stand-ups via video calls, to ensure continuous collaboration and progress tracking.

The key deliverables were a cloud-based, modular application ready for microservices, and the successful implementation of new functional modules. The technologies used included Kotlin, Spring, JPA/Hibernate, Angular, Oracle Database, Azure Kubernetes, and Azure DevOps.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What were the measurable outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

• See https://bigdataforbanking.com/success-stories/nearshore-software-development-berenberg.

Describe their project management. Did they deliver items on time? How did they respond to your needs?

Profinit’s project management style was highly collaborative and agile. They utilized daily stand-ups, video calls, and other agile practices to maintain continuous communication and ensure timely delivery of project milestones. Their use of Azure DevOps for project management and deployment was instrumental in keeping the project on track and within scope.

What was your primary form of communication with Profinit?

• In-Person Meeting
• Virtual Meeting

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

What stood out the most about Profinit was their ability to function as an extension of our team, despite the geographical distance. Their commitment to understanding our business needs and their proactive approach to problem-solving were particularly impressive. Additionally, their expertise in modern technologies and agile methodologies ensured the project’s success.

Are there any areas for improvement or something Profinit could have done differently?

While the project was highly successful, occasional in-person meetings could have been increased to further enhance team cohesion and communication. Overall, however, Profinit met and exceeded our expectations in most areas.

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

I'm working as a Security Product owner (Security Monitoring department) in the largest Czech bank.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Profinit, and what were your goals?

In order to comply with banking regulations, it was necessary to build one unified repository for various audit logs. Unify the logs into a unified structure. Logs of int/ext applications, infrastructure, network.. Ensuring the storage of the original message, message hash, immutability, anti-readability.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

Six-month tender process was held between several suppliers. The price was crucial.

Describe the scope of work in detail, including the project steps, key deliverables, and technologies used.

1. 3 month analysis of our requirements and data with architects.
2. 2 months POC - WMWare test environment
3. Purchase of physical HW
4. Integration with 90 source systems and tests (data loss, recovery, secondary tape backup and recovery, AVAST penetration tests).
5. Migration of older logs from the original RDBMS solution
6. Commissioning and subsequent prophylaxis after 6 months of operation

How many people from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

• 4 developers
• 3 architects (oponent)
• 1 external architect consultant from ORACLE

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any measurable outcomes of the project or general feedback about the deliverables?

We were satisfied with the delivery, which met our requirements for a favorable price solution. There are currently 2 separate Cloudera Hadoop solutions in HA mode. 48 physical servers

Describe their project management style, including communication tools and timeliness.

Both the analysis and the subsequent implementation were conducted properly and in a friendly spirit.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

Quick response to specific bank entry - designing solutions and internal POC for demonstration and cost estimation in a short time.

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

Nothing:-)

BACKGROUND

Please describe your company and your position there.

Ceska sporitelna, largest bank in Czech republic, 4,5 mio clients. My position is Tribe lead responsible for data management and analytics.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

For what projects/services did your company hire Profinit?

Antifraud of payment transactions operating in real time ... so called OLIN ... on-line monitoring ... solution is prepared based on big data technologies (Cloudera Hadoop). Profinit delivered consulting, expert and development services on Hadoop technologies ... Spark, Hive, Python.

SOLUTION

How did you select this vendor and what were the deciding factors?

We decided for Profinit due to demostrated experties in Hadoop technologies and positive experience with Profinit services in another projects within Ceska sporitelna (e.g. application development). Profinit was able to propose team of experts (5 people) with expected background and experties.

Describe the project in detail and walk through the stages of the project.

Aim of project was prepare data integration for source of payment transactions, collect all relevant data in Hadoop based data mart and building analytical model up on those data to identify fraud or suspicious transactions. In next phase were those models integrated into on-line transaction monitoring front-end application. Profinit helped us to set up overall governance and analytical model lifecycle management.

How many resources from the vendor's team worked with you, and what were their positions?

5 FTE (architect, big data expert)

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Thanks to projects deliveries we realized significant decrease of fraud transactions and improve clients NPS ratio.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

Absolutely effective. Profinit dispose with culture of self managed teams led by senior consultants or architects.

What did you find most impressive or unique about this company?

I was impressed by their culture of self-managed teams. Optimal mix of senior and junior people. High level of effectivity (we realized cost savings in projects in comparison to original estimation).

Are there any areas for improvement or something they could have done differently?

No idea in this moment

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I'm an IT manager at a private bank. We're one of the largest private banks in Germany. 

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Profinit?

When I started with the company in 2017, I was asked to set up software development. Usually, we use standardized software solutions. However, our head of IT wanted to develop customized software solutions in special cases to assist our back office because sometimes the solutions we needed weren't available in the market. 

We didn't want to hire software developers, so the idea was to look for a partner who could do the development for us. The work had to be carried out in our Java environment.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Profinit provides us with a team of developers who do custom software development for us. They work in a Java environment. Initially, we had them do a pilot project; we gave them requirements to deliver a software solution. 

Currently, they help us with projects when there's a requirement on our business side. First, we give Profinit basic information. Then, we have a kickoff workshop for each project, which usually includes them coming to Hamburg for 1–2 days. Our business and IT departments participate in the workshops, and the Profinit team asks for detailed requirements.

From there, they create a solution design and provide a specifications document with cost and effort estimations. If the project is approved, they move on to development. So far, we've done a couple of projects together. 

What is the team composition?

We have a fixed team of 3–4 developers. Depending on our demands and requirements, extending the team to up to 10 people is possible. The minimum team size is 2–3 people from Profinit. There's always a senior developer heading the team who is our main point of contact.

How did you come to work with Profinit?

I checked the market and got in contact with many providers. Profinit was looking for clients in the German market, and they were already in contact with our head of IT, who put them forward as a potential contact. We had very good conversations, so we invited them to come to Hamburg to have a kickoff workshop. We were happy with the results, so we decided to work with them. 

How much have you invested with them?

We've spent between €800,000–€1 million (approximately $815,000–$1.1 million USD).

What is the status of this engagement?

We started working together in January 2018, and the engagement is ongoing.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

Profinit delivers high-quality work. We're really satisfied with the software they've developed so far; it's state-of-the-art, scalable, and very stable. Moreover, they have good response times, delivering bug fixes within a day. Our business side has also given good feedback. We plan to continue our cooperation with Profinit.

How did Profinit perform from a project management standpoint?

The team delivers within time and budget. We usually do weekly status meetings. Additionally, we appreciate that we have a fixed team because we don't have to explain everything repeatedly. Typically, one person from the business department is involved, and someone from our IT department coordinates. However, we've established such a good relationship with Profinit that sometimes our IT department doesn't need to get involved, and our business department talks directly with the Profinit team.

What did you find most impressive about them?

We appreciate that Profinit aims for a long-term partnership with us because this is also our objective. We needed a provider we could rely on and trust, and we've established that relationship with the team over the years. Moreover, they deliver what they promise. For example, they make very realistic effort estimations because they consider that there will be many change requests during the project.

Are there any areas they could improve?

I don't think there's anything they need to change; we're very satisfied. At first, we had a brilliant main contact, but it was clear that Profinit couldn't guarantee that they would be working for us exclusively after the starting phase. There was a reallocation, and we got a new contact, but our business department wasn't satisfied because this person didn't have the same competence level and didn't have the best English. I talked to Profinit and explained the issue. The team understood and introduced a new contact within 3–4 weeks. Since then, the situation has improved, so we're satisfied again.