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Cofidis Launches New Consumer Credit Product in Five Weeks

In only five weeks, OutSystems delivered Cofidis’ new transactional website, which allowed for near-constant change with a short turnaround and low cost; the ease of use of the new site also simplified management of the site’s dynamic content, enabling non-technical business departments to handle these tasks without involving IT.

The Challenge

Cofidis, a leading company in the indirect consumer credit market which provides personal loans over the phone, wanted to be able to change their website and systems quickly and efficiently. Their product offering requires regular changes to be made to the systems including the Cofidis website, in order to ensure they are aligned and provide the necessary support to the business.
Cofidis needed to have more control over its website and internal systems, particularly when it came to making changes to better align IT with business goals, with one of the biggest being to implement a “get-a-loan” process on their corporate Website for the European market.

It was important to have full online support to the "get-a-loan" process. Originally, they had a static website where customers and prospects were able to obtain information regarding the company and its products, like loan amounts, monthly payments and instructions on how to obtain loans, but prospects could not actually submit a loan request (proposal contract applications could be downloaded, but not submitted).

“In the financial market, the time it takes for new business ideas to be supported by our internal systems is critical. With OutSystems we can expect aggressive time-to-market in both creating new web business applications and adapting existing ones. This not only makes our IT organization highly effective, but also ensures that our company stays ahead of competition.”
Nuno Miguel, Cofidis' CIO

Cofidis was looking for an agile technology with the ability to constantly adapt the systems to meet new business requirements. The selected technology would be used to implement a new transactional website that would support the launch of a new European product offer.

Why OutSystems?

Cofidis selected the OutSystems platform to build its new Website based on the solution’s ability to better align IT and the business-at-large, providing:

  • Fast time-to-market;
  • High flexibility and easy-to-change to face constant business changes;
  • Login as customer to access private data and transactions;
  • Integration with legacy and back office systems;
  • Strong technical support to guarantee high SLAs;
  • Support for workflows;
  • User friendly interfaces to allow the business to maintain its own content and free IT resources for system administration tasks. 

The Solution

Cofidis selected OutSystems to build a new and highly collaborative and transactional website, supporting the launch of a new business channel:

The existing systems for credit and customer analysis were integrated using Web Services, allowing the automatic evaluation of credit applications;
Applications for the product "Dinheiro Já" are filled in by potential customers and submitted through a web interface. The submitted information is immediately integrated in the central systems;
Customers have access to a Customer area, where they can track their application process online; checking if their loan has been approved, refused or is still under evaluation;
A back office was created to manage all the dynamic content of the transactional website. The interface's design was simplified so that content could be directly managed by the Marketing Department.

Project Card:

  • Timeline: 5 weeks

Functionalities:

  • Fully transactional website with Public, Customer and Partner Areas, and online simulators

Integrations:

  • Internal customer and credit analysis systems, via Web Services

User Profiles:

  • Prospect; Customer; Employees

The Benefits

Beyond delivering the new site, OutSystems provided Cofidis with a flexible, scalable development tool that supports not just the business’ current needs, but also provides for future goals; beyond the transaction site, Cofidis has also employed OutSystems to launch several additional applications to better serve their customers and meet market demand:

  • The built-to-change support provided by OutSystems allows Cofidis to easily maintain their transactional website at any stage of its life cycle and keep it aligned with business evolution. Adapting the website structure, content or interaction with legacy systems can now be done very easily;
  • The user-friendly interface of the back office allows the Marketing Department to fully manage all dynamic content without the intervention of the IT department, freeing up IT resources;
  • The central monitoring functionality offered by OutSystems provide vital information for the IT department to manage all systems, ensuring high service levels;
  • The short learning curve required for IT resources to master OutSystems creates immense opportunities for Cofidis to continue creating innovative applications that meet users' needs. This has already allowed Cofidis to create several new applications and make them available in their transactional website.

5 weeks time to production
3 profiles 
including prospects and customers
2 integrations 
with existing core systems
Short 
learning curve

  • Short learning curve
  • Completely streamlined process of online credit application;
  • Customer Area with login to access private data and transactions;
  • High SLA compliance due to platform centralized monitoring;
  • Highly user friendly interface that allows business to maintain its contents and free up IT resources;
  • Constant tuning and change at very low cost;
  • Easy-to-change back office workflows and rules.