BFS have a highly bespoke inhouse system built on MS technologies and supported internally. Their longer-term strategy is to move away from the in-house solution to a “Commercial-Off-The-Shelf software supported, as far as reasonably possible, by the vendor.

Recognising the in-house bespoke solution would be required for some time due to its complexity and highly specific BFS functionality, it was decided to appoint a partner with a strong track record in supporting and evolving bespoke applications to deliver this as a more cost effective and flexible option.

Having worked alongside members of the BFS senior management team in the past, EC became the trusted partner.

Elemental Concept’s approach was to audit the software, environment and processes required to support the agreed SLA, then pilot for 3 months to ensure assumptions made were correct, before moving into the BAU support contract. The application is now fully supported by a team at EC, ensuring that there is the flexibility to scale as demand requires, there is cover by having no single point of failure, and that the business gets the assurance of expertise available as and when needed.

To date we have:

• Run a series of application audit workshops with the key technical teams (development and support/DevOps)

• Reviewed and enhanced the existing system documentation. 

•  Worked in parallel with the existing development team to handover on-going development projects and successfully launched a significant system upgrade in the first month of the pilot, addressing stability and performance issues as well as introducing new functionality.

EC is now working with BFS not only to introduce new functionality but also on the long-term planning for the replacement platform, architected more suitably to support the business strategy and open-up new opportunities to utilise their data

• Subsequently EC have also been engaged across multiple areas of BFS to assist with the creation of new systems or assisting with the migration of data to new COTS applications to replace legacy bespoke systems.