Hexaview's comprehensive solutions empowered the client to maintain the quality and reliability of their Fintech software

About the Company

Our client provides trade order management and portfolio rebalancing for investment professionals. Their Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform empowers clients with scalable and flexible modeling, tax optimization, cash management, trade compliance, and real-time electronic trading. Our client also provides seamless integration to leading portfolio accounting and reporting systems, back-office outsourcing providers, and multiple custodians. Headquartered in Chicago, the client works with wealth managers, investment advisors, multi-family offices, digital advisors, and industry partners to deliver industry-leading solutions.

Business Goals

The client's primary business goals revolve around delivering a comprehensive and cutting-edge Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform for investment professionals. Their objectives include providing scalable and flexible tools for trade order management and portfolio rebalancing, optimizing tax strategies, efficient cash management, ensuring trade compliance, and facilitating real-time electronic trading. Additionally, they aim to seamlessly integrate their platform with leading portfolio accounting and reporting systems, back-office outsourcing providers, and multiple custodians. Their overarching goal is to empower wealth managers, investment advisors, multi-family offices, digital advisors, and industry partners by offering an industry-leading solution in the financial services sector.

Challenges

The client encountered several significant challenges:

• Firstly, the need to introduce automation testing into the project and run test scripts as part of the Continuous Integration (CI) deployment posed a fundamental challenge. This transition aimed to ensure more frequent changes in the application wouldn't inadvertently break critical features. The task of automating these crucial modules was complex but essential to maintain product stability. Secondly, as the development team engaged in major refactoring efforts, they faced challenges when essential features began to break. This highlighted the importance of having automation scripts in place to facilitate easy and rapid testing during such extensive code changes.
• Moreover, while striving for performance optimization, the client encountered another challenge. This endeavor introduced new bugs into the system, necessitating careful testing and debugging to maintain product reliability.
• Lastly, trading errors emerged as a recurrent challenge, emphasizing the critical need for robust testing and automation to avoid severe defects in the product. These challenges underscored the client's commitment to enhancing their testing processes and automation capabilities to ensure the integrity and stability of their software solution.

Solutions

Hexaview provided a range of effective solutions to address the testing challenges faced by the client in their Fintech project.

• First, Hexaview meticulously designed and optimized test cases, ensuring comprehensive coverage of critical functionality. Secondly, they strategically structured the test cases to support parallel execution, optimizing testing efficiency.
• Hexaview's expertise extended to tackling complex components of the Fintech system, such as Rebalancing, FIX Trading, and Reconciliation, by designing specialized test cases that could effectively validate these intricate functionalities. To streamline testing processes, we implemented a scheduled job for running regression and sanity test suites overnight, facilitating timely bug detection and resolution. We leveraged cloud platform Saucelab for executing test scripts, enhancing scalability and flexibility in their testing environment.
• Crucially, Hexaview's solutions included a robust validation framework for trade orders, meticulously verifying trade amounts, quantities, and other critical entities like portfolio market value. This meticulous validation ensured the accuracy of backend calculations, addressing potential issues related to trading precision and data integrity. Overall, Hexaview's comprehensive solutions empowered the client to maintain the quality and reliability of their Fintech software.

Impact

The implementation of automation testing using Saucelab has significantly impacted the client's business operations. By executing approximately 700 test cases within an 8-hour timeframe, a remarkable efficiency boost has been achieved. This increased testing throughput translates to approximately 109 hours saved in manual testing efforts, a substantial resource optimization.

Key Benefits

The key results achieved by Hexaview for the client are:

• Hotfix Reduction: Automation significantly reduced the need for hotfixes between development sprints.
• Early Error Detection: The client can now spot minor calculation errors or changes in core rebalancing logic early in development.
• Fewer Critical Defects: This proactive approach resulted in fewer critical defects, leading to smoother development and release cycles.
• Quantifiable Impact: The reduction in hotfixes quantifies the effectiveness of the solutions.
• Time Savings: Automation not only saved time but also minimized disruptions during development.
• Efficiency and Quality: The client's software development process became more streamlined, proactive, and efficient, ultimately improving product quality and time-to-market.