Intellias

We helped deliver a smart building solution that relies on extensive IoT functionality and connected sensors. Our client: MCS Solutions, a Belgian company that provides an integrated workplace management system (IWMS) and smart building services for Fortune Global 100 companies, came to Intellias for smart building IoT solutions. Business challenge: Our client organized an internal startup with the goal of developing a new smart buildings solution. The company focused on IoT connectivity that could provide end customers with smart building analytics, enhanced building performance, optimized resource usage, improved mobility, and a better workplace experience for employees. Later on, MCS decided to scale the team and proceed with a more active engineering effort. MCS had already been working with Intellias for four years on other projects related to energy management systems, facility management, and mobile development. So it was no surprise the company decided to extend the cooperation. IoT solutions for smart buildings delivered Within the scope of our cooperation, Intellias engineers have been involved in the development of all infrastructure for the IoT platform, which offers extensive possibilities to collect volumes of data from on-site sensors and store it in data warehouses. Our team has also developed dashboards for data analysis and visualization so that end customers can get valuable data on facility operations and take full advantage of the IoT technology for smart buildings. Use cases of the IoT platform we’ve helped build include: Monitoring air quality and humidity via connected sensors Applying smart rules so that employees can get assistance with fixing or repairing devices and tools at the push of a button Recognizing the need for cleaning services thanks to a door opening counter Counting people entering a building with ceiling sensors in corridors Controlling temperature and detecting hazardous substances in the air Monitoring parking to find free spots in advance Smartly searching for free rooms with a workplace assistant Collecting users’ feedback about a workplace in real time Business outcome The IoT platform is already on the market and MCS already has end customers implementing the solution. This platform works successfully in smart buildings Internet of Things field, and the Intellias team is still growing to provide continuous operations and to improve the product to gain a wider market share. This IoT platform makes customers’ buildings smart through advanced sensor connectivity, an online environment, and big data management and analytics. The following functionality sets our client’s IoT platform apart: Possibility to integrate with HVAC, BMS, IWMS/CAFM, and other systems A capable data warehouse for self-service, data science, and business intelligence Reliable LoRa (low-power, long-range) wireless technology for use in large buildings A scalable big data platform for end-to-end solutions (sensors, IoT connectivity, data management, visualization, and advanced analytics) Smart connectivity that assists users in real time and optimizes the use of space, energy, and other resources Read More

We’re building an intelligent eLearning software platform that delivers comprehensive career training to millions of employees worldwide. Our client: BrainStorm, a leading training development company that provides interactive web and mobile eLearning solutions through its online, cloud-based QuickHelp platform, encountered new technological challenges as demand for their services started growing at an unprecedented pace. BrainStorm’s business challenges From the very beginning of this eLearning website project, Intellias has been BrainStorm’s strategic engineering partner, providing full-scale, end-to-end product development from research to the marketplace. With the platform rapidly making headway in the market, BrainStorm decided to adopt an entirely new business model that required implementing the most up-to-date practices in the development process. Their new competitive strategy called for advanced technological competencies in Cloud, Big Data, and DevOps. Intellias value-added services naturally fit that need and allowed BrainStorm to tap on the benefits of continuous delivery. Implementation of innovative features: QuickHelp is designed to stir users’ desire to learn by providing a constant stream of targeted learning resources in a variety of formats. It uses machine learning to display the most relevant content to users. The platform delivers personalized learning experiences and measures the impact of training with the help of these engaging and interactive tools: Skill paths Gamification badges and ratings Communication tools Performance tracking and engagement reports Development hub We built a strong development organization for BrainStorm, bringing on over 50 senior engineers — and counting. Our five teams provide end-to-end software development services, from requirements analysis and design to production and database management. Team members work cross-functionally, taking on a variety of on-demand roles as the need arises. Overcoming major challenges We handle the most complicated technological and process challenges brought about by the market, BrainStorm’s business needs, and the rapid growth of the QuickHelp platform: Moving from a monolithic architecture to microservices Handling high loads Speeding up production DevOps practices From the very beginning, our team approached the development of QuickHelp with a DevOps mindset. We helped our client cut infrastructure costs by 20% by reviewing resource utilization, optimizing pricing tiers, and setting up auto-scaling policies for resources. We then continued to establish a set of practices to optimize the implementation of our client’s new SaaS platform and built an entire DevOps culture around that process. From the DevOps perspective, our key achievements include: Automated deployment pipeline Infrastructure as Code (IaC) Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) Business outcome After eight years of partnership, Intellias has become the bedrock of BrainStorm’s development. We’ve created a tight bond with our client in working on their flagship product. We’ve developed a productive synergy that has allowed BrainStorm to win such reputable clients as Visa, PepsiCo, and Deloitte. We’ve also implemented necessary customizations to respond to end users’ individual preferences and needs.  BrainStorm has started naturally expanding their presence in the $200+ billion eLearning market, acquiring new customers in Europe, Asia, and Australia. As more and more organizations start to see tangible ROI as a result of the increased professional skills of their employees, the demand for BrainStorm’s custom training solutions is growing. With Intellias vast engineering capacity at their disposal, BrainStorm will continue to surge ahead with their innovative, on-demand eLearning products. Read More

Intellias has built a prototype of a drone farming solution for gathering and analyzing data from fields to get insights on the efficiency of trials. Our client: a multinational agricultural company that supplies innovative drone technology for agriculture enabling farmers and agribusinesses to overcome the most significant challenges of everyday farming operations. One of these challenges is the time-consuming and costly collection, analysis, and transmission of field data on trial plots to get insights on the effectiveness of crop treatments. Business challenge: Farmers required a UAV crop monitoring solution to effortlessly monitor and analyze what approach works best for each plant. Our client had to move fast to develop a prototype, get user feedback, and implement a solution using drones for farming. The client worked with our Digital Lab for agriculture R&D to consult with Intellias experts and develop a proof of concept that will be the foundation for their drone imagery product. Solution delivered The Intellias team started by developing a prototype of drone farming web application, outlining its business logic and gradually moving to user interface design and frontend development. The web app allows aerial data collection of trial plots to investigate crop conditions and homogeneity, getting around the issue of cloud obstruction with satellite observations. Users can easily add new trial descriptions including names, crops, products, and sowing dates as well as all plot details including width, length, and repetitions. After collecting images from fields, drones transmit data via an internet connection or automatically store data and deliver it to farmers in the case of poor connectivity. Once data has been uploaded, the app can analyze drone imagery according to a wide range of parameters including crop variety, yield, type of pesticide or herbicide, etc. The app conducts a thorough assessment based on trial data and matches drone photos with additional satellite images. Finally, the app saves the assessment in an appropriate format, overlays it on the field map as an additional layer, and uploads results to another application with a huge database to compare results and predict growth. Key features: Collect drone images of trial plots to investigate crop conditions Analyze drone photos according to a wide range of parameters Assess crops based on trial data and drone images Business outcome The drone imagery analysis app is just one of several R&D projects we run for our client. After a successful showcase of this drone farming app, our client is ready to start developing a fully working solution for farmers, and our Intellias team is ready to support them. Automated collection of trial plot images using drones for farming is a key differentiator for our client and makes their solution lucrative for customers due to cost and time savings. Accelerated development of the prototype app thanks to Intellias R&D services has already given our client a competitive edge compared to other agricultural companies who rely only on in-house engineering capacity. The next step is to scale the drone imagery solution to provide full functionality and deliver it to farmers and growers worldwide. Read More

We’ve built a BI reporting solution that benefits the iGaming industry with real-time operational visibility for strategic decision-making. Our client: EveryMatrix, a renowned gambling aggregator and a top provider of industry-leading SaaS solutions for iGaming operators, was considering a complete revamp of their legacy systems to deliver top-quality data services for their range of EveryMatrix products. Business challenge: steady annual growth in the number of players, games, and sports events put a heavy burden on this legacy system. Because of serious scalability bottlenecks, it could no longer smoothly process the increasing amounts of data coming from EveryMatrix solutions, customers’ CMSs, and payment operators. Besides, the system was difficult and costly to maintain. EveryMatrix needed a new architectural and technological approach to efficiently manage their 100 TB data warehouse system and ensure sufficient scalability for years to come. Solution delivered As a long-time partner of EveryMatrix, Intellias has helped them with building a sportsbook platform, setting up a payment processing system, achieving PCI DSS compliance, and more. Over six years of collaboration, we have grown the development team for our client to 110 specialists, with several subteams working on different aspects of our client’s business. One of the projects Intellias has been working on is an advanced data services platform offering rich data streaming, processing, and reporting capabilities. To offer real-time, historical, and predictive insights into business operations, the Intellias team built a new reporting solution using the latest business intelligence technologies. This solution incorporates: an in-memory message broker for receiving data feeds from various sources a dedicated data warehouse for storing pre-aggregated multidimensional data a customer-facing reporting interface for building, presenting, and visualizing business data Key features Aggregate and process data from diverse sources Visualize operational data for data-driven decisions Recommend products based on user data Data collection and validation Data integration and processing Data rendering Cloud computing farm Streaming platform Load balancer Prediction and recommendation engine A fraud detection system Business outcome Intellias has made a meaningful contribution to the transformation of EveryMatrix, guiding the company in a new data-driven direction through our engineering and consulting services. Our strong focus on data management and analytics has helped our client understand their customers’ needs and provide better services as well as enable customers to make more informed decisions and build sophisticated systems based on data. The solution we’ve developed brings these advantages to our client: An always-on architecture and a single-source data warehouse that works with the entire EveryMatrix product family The ability to scale tenfold, enabling our client to handle millions or even billions of transactions without increasing the response time for generating reports and performing real-time calculations Improved report runtime performance through data pre-aggregation In-depth reporting with ad-hoc drill-down to the transaction data level Read More

We’ve conducted technology assessment that led to costs optimization, investment attractiveness increasement, and business growth acceleration. Our client: a digital bank headquartered in Abu Dhabi, decided to reimagine their approach to banking by delivering a revolutionary solution for online banking services. This solution is built on multiple integrated components, consists of cloud-native and serverless applications, and has a profound data storage and orchestration layer. Business Challenge The bank aimed to scale. But before taking any steps in that direction, the executives requested a third-party opinion on the maturity of their existing processes, systems, practices, documentation, and policies. Additionally, to ensure all platform components worked flawlessly, it was important to assess their integration and configuration. Solution delivered Based on our client’s requests and needs, Intellias assessed six project areas: IT architecture, business analysis processes, testing practices, DevOps practices, cybersecurity, and operational readiness.  Cloud optimization The Intellias team defined what data could migrate to simpler storage without compromising performance and security. Plus, we developed the cloud optimization roadmap that would make database service costs more efficient. Business analysis processes The provided assessment report showed ways to eliminate the risk of rework thanks to clearly defined requirements, outlined an end-to-end idea validation process, and increased involvement of Product Owners in the business analysis processes. All in all, we created a roadmap for achieving strong business processes to drive an effective strategy and rapid growth. Quality assurance practices As our client’s digital bank platform was built of multiple modules, our experts suggested improving traceability between tests and requirements as well as between tests and software defects, creating a simpler and more user-friendly test reporting solution that provides a single entry point to testing results for relevant stakeholders.  DevOps practices To assess DevOps practices, we used our Enterprise DevOps Maturity assessment matrix. The outcome of this domain assessment is a clear vision of actions needed to make sure software deployment activities don’t impact the business and customer experience. Additional benefits of this assessment included preventing the loss of sensitive data through source code and ensuring faster and safer releases by automating deployment and configuration management. Cybersecurity Implementing improvements suggested in our assessment report helped our client enhance their cybersecurity requirements for various processes and systems as well as reduce their dependence on third-party service providers. This also increased our client’s awareness of system vulnerabilities and led to more precise planning of the resources needed to efficiently detect new vulnerabilities that may arise. Thus, the information security governance of the bank was strengthened. Operational readiness Implementing suggested improvements helped our client define a consistent problem management approach and formalize their release planning procedure. As a result, this procedure became transparent for all involved parties. Business outcome The comprehensive technology assessment Intellias conducted laid the foundation for a high-quality digital banking service. It also provided bank executives with a clear vision of functional areas that were underperforming, performing as required, and overperforming, thereby allowing them to efficiently allocate business resources. Intellias experts assisted our client in determining the needs within their organization, prioritizing those needs by value, and making necessary changes. These transformations resulted in? the decreased risk of cost loss caused by insufficient or failed internal processes and systems, a lack of properly skilled people, and external events. This, in turn, will make investments more efficient and accelerate the bank’s growth. Read More

We’ve built and optimized a consumer engagement platform for data analytics in retail to ensure accurate statistics and data-driven decision-making. Our client: a Fortune 500 multinational retailer with a presence in over 180 countries, was seeking to orchestrate their next-generation consumer engagement ecosystem for selling revolutionary new products. The platform’s microservice architecture and complex infrastructure encompassed numerous independent components built on diverse technologies and developed by different remote teams — and even vendors — across the globe. Business challenge: our client’s Technical Management Department was missing a clear overview of all interactions between separate systems within the complex network of retail data acquisition services. To achieve that degree of visibility, they needed a holistic system that would monitor performance, applications, and infrastructure. They also needed to build a centralized data lake management software for logging and telemetry data as well as develop a set of clearly defined rules for writing and managing logs from microservices. Retail data solution delivered The Intellias team of developers, DevOps, and QA engineers soon got a handle on our client’s business and technical needs and came up with a detailed roadmap for project development. After this roadmap was approved by our client’s Principal Architect, our team set to work, improving, building on, and testing the platform. Data lake We started by building and managing our client’s data lake for collecting, accumulating, and storing telemetry data and logs from the platform’s applications and microservices. The types of metrics gathered ranged from business and sales data to technical information. Logging guidelines Another of our team’s goals was to establish firm practices that would address the lack of a unified approach to logging events from microservices in the data storage. We created a centralized Elasticsearch system for writing logs, defined logging rules, and developed practical guides to be used by all other teams. Data visualization We were also responsible for creating and visualizing interconnections between the platform’s systems to provide our client’s Technical Department with a view of how the platform operates across regions, countries, and teams. Our team empowered our client’s S&M Department with retail sales analytics to keep track of the whole sales cycle, from order to delivery. Using Elasticsearch, we formalized the approach to tracing transactions and implemented data visualization using Kibana. Anomaly detection and an alert & notification system We set up a comprehensive monitoring tool for analytics in retail industry that enables anomaly detection and proactive incident resolution. Incidents are classified according to the seriousness of impact on the system’s performance. In case an anomaly or malfunction is detected, support teams receive a notification and can quickly act on it. DevOps Our DevOps engineers oversaw the whole infrastructure management process, performing deployment activities, implementing a new version of the system, dealing with a number of integrations, and supporting custom retail analytics solutions within our client’s platform. Business outcome Our team provided stability, security, and failover capabilities that our client’s platform was lacking. This allowed our partner to extend the geography of their global presence and accelerate the time to market of their innovative products. We fine-tuned communications between the platform’s scattered systems, built a scalable data lake architecture, and provided efficient visualization tools for monitoring and troubleshooting. One of our main contributions to our client’s business success was in acting as a software vendor inside the organization, delivering multiple out-of-the-box solutions to our client’s internal teams around the world. This initial joint effort between Intellias and our client has evolved into a long-lasting win-win collaboration. The successful outcome of this partnership has resulted in Intellias helping our client with two other large projects. Read More

We’re developing an AWS-based SaaS platform for digital twins that’s integrated with region-specific payment and tax compliance functionality. Our client: a young European tech company, was considering working with an expert in 3D modeling engineering to accelerate their mission to empower enterprises with leading digital twin technology. With products and services focused on filling the long-neglected global demand for quality indoor positioning solutions, our client is among the pioneers who have paved the way for the indoor mapping revolution taking place right now. Business challenge: Our client’s technological approach relies on a compact 3D laser scanning cart, a web solution for viewing and analyzing digitized building panoramas, and an advanced GPS indoor navigation toolkit. Continuously analyzing their audience and anticipating customer needs, our client keeps pushing their solutions forward with changes and innovations. This led to the decision to build a new SaaS solution providing property owners with 24/7, low-latency AWS-based storage and sharing options for their building scans. With pressing deadlines, our client’s lack of 3D model development capacity for the new solution was a major challenge. Solution delivered An Intellias dedicated team has developed an indoor location mapping solution from the ground up in collaboration with our client’s product teams. The back end we developed manipulates cloud storage infrastructure through a corresponding API. To speed up the implementation, our team collaborated with a DevOps engineer on our client’s side who has profound knowledge of AWS. Our solution acts as a middle layer between AWS and users, allowing them to easily manage cloud storage without needing technical expertise. The Intellias team has also developed two responsive UI views, each targeting a specific user group: end customers (property owners) and our client’s administrators. End customers can manage their subscriptions, upload and manage their building scans, generate links for sharing scans with other building stakeholders, and handle their cloud storage resources. Administrators have a wide set of tools for monitoring cloud storage performance and metrics, viewing user statistics, managing user profiles and payments for subscriptions, and much more. Key features: Upload indoor environment scans Share building scans with stakeholders online Manage users, service subscriptions, and invoices ? To simplify users’ lives, Intellias engineers implemented single sign-on technology, allowing users to use the same credentials to securely log in to both the cloud storage management solution and the 3D scan visualization platform. The SSO feature is based on a popular open-source identity and access management solution. Business outcome Verticals of any type and size can benefit from IoT digital twin technology by integrating digital representations of their indoor spaces into their custom software solutions. In fact, Fortune 500 companies in the automotive, real estate, construction, and insurance sectors around the world are already using our client’s building positioning system to scan, map, visualize, explore, navigate, analyze, and optimize their industrial and commercial properties. After a successful final product release, our team is now maintaining the solution’s smooth and continuous operation while continuing to increase its practical value, feature completeness, usability, and performance. Read More

We’re building a series of farm software solutions to promote sustainable farming practices among growers around the world. Our client: a multinational agricultural corporation that empowers millions of growers worldwide to make sustainable and safe use of farm resources, set out to establish a Digital Innovation Lab in Ukraine. Business challenge: The new R&D center was supposed to research and build a suite of farm software solutions to help growers comply with the EU’s stringent environmental regulations and promote sustainable agricultural practices in Europe. The idea behind one of the company’s new products was to create a toolbox of farm management software that would allow growers and our client’s commercial teams to assess environmental and regulatory risks at a glance.  Solution delivered To set up a new R&D hub and bring a comprehensive risk evaluation and analysis solution to market, our client joined forces with Intellias as a reliable partner in agricultural technology innovations. Our product development process is marked by profound user research and iterative design sprints that help us quickly validate assumptions, create prototypes without having to gather requirements for months, and ensure only tested ideas make it to delivery. We also provide DevOps, UI/UX, QA, and location-based services, which are the essential drivers for the project’s success. The platform is composed of two major systems: Risk self-assessment and analysis The web-based soil management application allows farmers to evaluate the conditions of fields and potential risks for the ecosystem, including landslides, groundwater contamination, draining of natural resources, land degradation, and soil erosion. On the other hand, the application helps our client’s internal teams understand the adverse effects of growers’ activities on certain areas and come up with proactive educational and sales strategies to avoid legislative bans and customer churn. Sustainability toolbox for sales strategy and planning Our engineers are developing a suite of digital services encouraging growers to apply sustainable farming practices and adhere to farm legislation and policies. The toolbox allows manufacturers of crop products to assess the disruptive effects of chemical misuse and plan for updated marketing strategies to ensure sales success. The system generates reports with risk scores, suggestions for mitigating risks, and recommended alternative products for farmers. With product strategy mapping, sales reps can perform future portfolio screening and build their sales plans. Key features: Assess field conditions and environmental risks Generate recommendations for sustainable growing methods Provide insights for sales strategies and planning Business outcome Within several months, we strengthened our client’s R&D capabilities with a newly established Innovation Lab that has become a hotbed of web, mobile, big data, VR, and IoT agritech solutions. This partnership accelerates crop protection innovations targeted at enhancing the prosperity of farmers and achieving agricultural sustainability. Our R&D teams build technology that helps growers boost farm productivity and efficiency, use agricultural resources more sustainably, ensure safety in growing and harvesting produce, and maximize yields. Read More

We’re improving the vehicle retail and servicing system of a global automotive player to enhance the buyer journey. About the client: Our client is a world-renowned car manufacturer that’s been listed among the 100 Best Global Brands by Financial Times for the past six years. The company’s car service platform, which integrates with the customer management systems of over 200 repair centers throughout Canada, called for significant improvements to effectively cater to their customers’ retail and maintenance needs.  When our client came to Intellias, their system was buggy and slow at times, lacked useful functionalities, and needed considerable optimization to cut costs and expand database capacity. Solution delivered The system we’ve helped our client develop is an all-in-one platform for end users, on the one hand, and a handy tool for service consultants, technicians, and dealer managers on the other. While testing the platform performance, our team found and fixed numerous bugs and made several configurations to the system. In keeping with our client’s vision to enrich the platform with new functionalities, we’ve added a number of features and customizations: Transportation options Online service booking allows car owners to inform a dealer whether they’ll wait while the vehicle is being serviced, collect the car later, or need a temporary car. In turn, dealers can choose to limit the number of waiting customers to reduce wait times. Cutting load times As the databases grew in size, the mobile app load time was two minutes. Our engineers shortened the loading time through a stored procedure, and it now takes less than a second to load the app. Speed optimization and cost reduction Without changing anything in the code, we added missing indexes to the database and managed to triple its speed and ease the load from 80% to 40%. Health check Our team has written scripts to automatically send notifications to users in the event of failed synchronization as well as to analyze the number of and reasons for unsuccessful appointments. Business analytics dashboards We’re now working on business analytics for our client’s top management that will visualize financial indexes, KPIs, information for every dealer, quarterly data, etc. We’ve also added an exit service module to collect customer feedback, email send-outs to alert administrators of possible employee account locks, a special offer function for additional discounts, and chat functionality. Business outcome Partnering with Intellias has marked a new milestone for our client in achieving their goal of providing customers with an exceptional level of service through a vast network of authorized dealerships. We’ve refined the customer management system to create a unique one-stop shop for maintenance and repairs. Consumers can now have their vehicles serviced to the highest standards by factory-trained technicians that use up-to-date diagnostic equipment, special service tools, and genuine parts. But we haven’t only made our client’s system more convenient for users. With all the adjustments and improvements our team has made, our client is now reaping the benefits of the new version of the platform, including reduced load times, cost efficiencies, and business analytics capabilities. Read More

We helped the first digital bank in Germany integrate a custom mobile banking system for their end client. About the client: Our client is Germany’s first fully digital bank, providing core banking platforms, online payment processing system, and innovative applications. As the first adopter of Open Banking principles and an API in Germany, our client has set the pace for next-generation mobile banking software and the entire FinTech industry in the DACH region. Challenge: Hit by global digitalization, both financial and telecom companies are striving to stay up-to-date and gain a competitive edge with the help of advanced payment processing technology. One of these companies, a broadband and mobile telecommunications provider in Germany, recognized the value of tech-powered solutions and decided to embrace a user-centric culture. Our client needed help developing a mobile system that focused on the frontend experience.  Intellias developed a mobile banking system for painless payment processing Together with our client’s team, Intellias experts focused on developing the backend of the mobile application for the end client, the provider of mobile telecommunications services in Germany. Aiming to develop a white label bank, we used emerging Banking as a Service (BaaS) business model. We built the entire microservice architecture in Ruby on Rails. Online accounts for bank users During our partnership, we helped to develop an application that lets users set up private online accounts on their smartphones with the Digital Mastercard/Visa card services. Secure and easy to manage, these accounts offer a mobile record of all user transactions and allow users to make in-app payments, transfer money, and process repeat orders fast and without fees. Money transferring The Intellias team implemented a 60-second P2P Instant Transfer feature so that app users can transfer money to phone, social media, and email contacts. We also enabled a personal financial management system with real-time analytics and visualization of spending. The application categorizes expenses automatically, providing users with live insights into their spending behaviors and saving opportunities. Banking app features The application also allows overdrafts, emergency loans, and long-term loans (installment loans), as well as cash withdrawals in over 10,000 partner branches. Plus, users get 1 MB of high-speed data on their mobile contract for every Eurocard purchase. Data security We partnered with our client’s team to prevent any malfunctioning in the solution performance and safeguard users’ data. We ensured secure card activation/deactivation, geolocation for “find my phone” services, SIM card blocking, and real-time push notifications to track cash flow. To protect data, users can set up fingerprint login or a pin code for their accounts. There’s also a web portal for consumers who don’t used to mobile applications. We’ve achieved great results together With the help of Intellias, our client managed to develop an excellent mobile application for their end client that contains all administrative tools for support teams. Together, we helped the end client expand their telecommunications offering and set the standard for the future of mobile finance. Now, the Intellias team is responsible for implementing new features (mostly integration with other services) on the server side. Read More