The Client
Enkel Backoffice Solutions is a fast growing Canadian financial services firm that offers a monthly fee based all inclusive accounting services to small and medium sized businesses. They work closely with over 200 small to medium-sized businesses and non-profit organizations across Canada, to manage their bookkeeping, payroll, accounts payable and accounts receivable
The Business Need
Enkel uses over 100 accounting and productivity applications to serve their clients. The company started with many of its processes in Google Sheets, and data capture eventually became a cumbersome process. They required a software that streamlined the process, and their primary need was a minimum viable product (MVP) with a single sign-on (SSO) layer for all their productivity and client apps. Process automation was their second-most necessary MVP.
Enkel needed a product that would afford them end-to-end ownership, and they required a partner that could deliver it. The Optimus team helped the client optimize their business processes in terms of:
- Performance
- Cost
- Usability
- Availability
- Security
Enkel ultimately needed a product that would provide an SSO Identity Provider (IDP) layer to automate the login process and manage passwords across their 100+ applications. The company also required a dashboard that could display key performance indicators (KPIs) for their business.
The Challenge
Choosing an IDP based on Enkel’s requirements led to a need for significant research and innovation (R&I). The Optimus team gathered requirements during initial meetings, and R&I was concurrently conducted. Enkel also required assistance from a data security standpoint, an operational workflow standpoint, and a data aggregation standpoint for clients.
Multiple meetings were required to establish requirements and to assess use cases. It was important for Optimus to ensure the final product provided the best fit possible. QA and DevOps strategies were employed to provide as smooth a development process as possible, and Optimus also had to assist Enkel’s team in making the transition to a new platform.
The Optimus Solution
The Optimus team determined that an Azure architecture was the best solution for a cloud-based system, encouraging client success. Enkel was introduced to a variety of Azure-based cloud computing services, including:
- App Services
- App Insights
- AzureSQL
- Azure Boards
- Azure DevOps
Optimus created a single sign-on (SSO) portal connecting all their applications using several Azure services. We defined their processes and helped the Enkel team get up to speed on working within the Azure environment. The team at Optimus employed industry-standard practices to perform QA manually and validate functionality based on agreed-upon criteria. Using DevOps pipelines we provided detailed reporting regarding application health. We also used PowerBI to provide reporting capabilities to clients based on Enkel’s KPIs.
We are moving Enkel from Okta to Azure AD, to manage their SSO and user authentication to maintain an all Microsoft Azure stack. Lastly, test cases were also executed to ensure application functioned the way it should and eliminate edge cases. Below is a high-level architecture diagram of our process.
Technologies employed in the solution include:
- C#
- .NET Core 3.1
- Entity Framework Core
- Angular 8
- Azure App Service
- AzureSQL
- Azure Application Insights
- Azure Boards
- Azure Pipelines
- NUnit
- Azure Monitor
- Azure Key Vault
The Result
A more-effective system was put in place which put all their required tools within one cloud native platform. The result of this has been an improved operational efficiency by 50% and easy scalability. Several manual processes were automated, and cloud services significantly increased usability and availability.
The company has successfully wrangled its complicated collection of applications and services into a client portal. This streamlined framework now allows Enkel to present their business offerings in a better light to their clients.
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