How BPI Is Facing Digital Transformation with Front-End OutSystems
Digital transformation is here to stay. Maybe a few years ago this would be a revolutionary, controversial, mind-blowing statement. Nowadays, it’s just a fact. We’re in a state where every company, no matter the industry, must offer the most innovative and convenient service or risks losing its customers.
With almost 40 years of history, BPI knew that things were slightly different from the 1980’s. And it was not only the hairstyles and fashion that had changed. As one of the top players in the banking industry in Portugal, over the years BPI had to to adapt to the new consumer’s habits constantly. But none was as demanding as the new generation.
The thing is, in the digital era, providing mobile and online experience is no longer enough. That’s just banking 101. Today, the difference lies in the details. It’s all about aligning speed and convenience with real, caring human interactions both in physical and digital worlds.
As a bank of reference, BPI was familiar with the pressure to deliver innovative solutions with the right time-to-market. But that created a few challenges to its development team. Because not only they needed to provide functional apps faster, these apps should have the right look and feel, mirroring the institution’s brand.
The problem was that to deliver the apps in the right timing, BPI’s development team had to sacrifice the interface and UX of the apps in order to focus on improving the logic and business rules. And, like it or not, appearance does matter.
So, BPI started looking for a solution that would allow the company to promote brand consistency through the several apps its team was delivering but, at the same time, release the development team from the burden of front-end development. And the solution they found was live style guides.
Say Hi to BPI
Since BPI was investing in the OutSystems low-code development platform, the company needed a team that not only knew its way around CSS, JS, and HTML but also around front-end for OutSystems. And, thus, the story between Hi and BPI began.
The role of Hi Interactive was to set the foundations for style patterns and sample pages to ensure that any new app BPI’s development team delivered was compliant with the bank’s image and brand. How does this work, you ask?
Our experts at Hi, after an in-depth UI and UX analysis, delivered a package of live style guides — which included the visual rules and code elements of customized themes, patterns and sample pages — in an OutSystems app. Then, the development team at BPI could simply copy the sample page, for example, and use their code underneath it. This way, they’d have a fully functional, beautiful and intuitive app without having to rewrite pages from scratch every time they needed one.
As for Results…
By freeing its developers from the burden of front-end, BPI was able to speed up its app development, while creating new functionalities to different devices at the same time, hence, delivering new and innovative digital solutions to the market faster.
With almost 40 years of existence, BPI has been able to survive to the new trends and remained as a reference bank by staying on top of innovation. Just last year, the company won the Best Digital Bank of Distinction and the Best Digital Operational Process awards, while also being a finalist in three categories of the Financial Innovation Awards 2017.
To learn more about our OutSystems Front-end Services, click here. To know how we can help you boost your front-end development, talk with us!
