A financial services initiative needed to connect mobile applications, field operations, customer management, credit rules and enterprise integrations into one working platform.
Over six months, Rootstone provided architecture and engineering leadership alongside a delivery partner’s approximately 20-person team. Release 1 reached user acceptance testing on schedule.
The platform was designed to help financial service providers and microfinance institutions reach underserved and unbanked communities.
Providers needed to configure financial products for different customer groups, receive applications through multiple channels, assess eligibility using available financial history and progress lending decisions. Field teams also needed to work where reliable connectivity could not be assumed.
Delivering that journey required several systems to work together. Building every component from scratch would add development effort, while using separate products without sufficient integration would leave users navigating a fragmented experience.
The engineering challenge was to combine suitable existing capabilities with custom development and deliver a unified platform within the project’s constraints.
Rootstone took responsibility for technical direction, architecture refinement and guiding engineering execution through the first release.
The work included technology selection, shaping team composition and refining requirements with product owners and client stakeholders. On-site collaboration helped resolve feasibility questions and connect business requirements with implementation decisions.
The delivery partner supplied and managed the engineering team. Rootstone worked directly with those engineers to establish implementation approaches, review designs and guide execution across the platform’s components.
The approach combined established open-source and third-party components with purpose-built services.
Capabilities such as customer management, workflow orchestration and data capture were reused where they fit. Custom engineering focused on the platform’s specific financial services requirements and the connections needed to make the components work as one product.
Technology choices therefore considered more than individual features. Integration effort, delivery cost, maintainability and the user experience all influenced the design.
Field workflows could not depend on a continuous internet connection.
Rootstone used proofs of concept to evaluate offline data capture and synchronization approaches before committing the team to implementation.
An existing synchronization capability was selected so engineers could concentrate on field workflows and business functionality rather than building the synchronization mechanisms themselves.
Different providers needed different lending processes, eligibility rules and external connections.
The architecture separated workflows, credit rules and integration logic so changes could be handled in the relevant component. A dedicated integration layer connected internal services and external systems.
This was designed to accommodate variation without embedding provider-specific logic throughout the applications.
Rootstone developed proofs of concept to test assumptions and establish approaches the team could implement.
Design discussions and technical code reviews helped engineers resolve component-level questions while maintaining the overall architecture. Work with product owners and client stakeholders kept requirements, dependencies and delivery priorities connected.
The responsibility continued through the first release, bridging the gap between an architectural design and working software.
Release 1 reached user acceptance testing on schedule, with the platform’s major workflows ready for field testing.
Their implementation demonstrated that the selected technologies and architecture worked together in practice, supporting the approach taken for the first release and subsequent development.
The engagement brought architecture, technical decisions and engineering execution together through a concrete delivery milestone.
“For an enterprise financial services platform intended for large-scale use in highly regulated environments, choosing the individual technologies is only part of the job. The harder task is making them work as one system—with security, auditability and data governance built into the design. We reused established components where they fit and built where the requirements demanded it, balancing delivery cost with long-term maintainability. Our responsibility was to make that architecture work in practice and deliver business value through sound technology choices that could support growth and adapt as requirements changed.”
Next case study
Build · Media & broadcasting
Combining Computer Vision and DSP to Verify TV Ads
AI-powered verification combining visual models, audio fingerprinting and temporal analysis to identify TV ads and check their delivery.
View case study: Media IntelligenceTechnology leadership & engineering
A 30-minute conversation about the technology decision, delivery challenge, or investment question in front of you.
