SWK BANK: Teamwork in a challenging project

Our colleague Thomas Spitzer accompanied the SWK Bank website relaunch as a Fullstack software developer. In this interview he explains which tasks were challenging and what is special about this project to him.

Thomas, in your opinion, what were the special features of the SWK Bank web relaunch?

Thomas Spitzer: All in all, it was a challenging project with a lot of work going into it. There are many interfaces to external systems. We load a lot of data into the CMS and send even more to a certified service provider. The financial sector is quite tightly regulated; data cannot simply be collected and stored by everyone. The cooperation with our partners in the project was great. The design agency mintley from Düsseldorf did a great job. We had decided in advance on the Bootstrap CSS framework for the implementation of the front end, as it brings components that we wanted to rely on. The designers at mintley have developed the design of the website to match the Bootstrap components and have stayed close to the standard. In my experience, not every design agency can do that. For us it was very easy to implement afterwards. The cooperation with the developers at Netempire worked just as smoothly. They programmed the modular forms of the application sections on the website that were developed jointly with SWK Bank.

At this point, the SWK Bank had set high goals: They wanted to implement the most customer-friendly application routes on the web.

Thomas: Yes, that’s true. The loan calculator with the corresponding application routes are the central component of the website. We had the specification from the customer to implement the website on the basis of Ibexa’s eZ Platform. For the loan calculator and the application processes, we have chosen a combination of the form builder from eZ Platform and the aforementioned, specially developed, form construction kit from SWK Bank. For this we had prepared an HTML structure and given it to Netempire. With close cooperation and a lot of coordination, we have achieved the best possible implementation in the interest of SWK Bank’s customers. The old version of the Symfony framework on which eZ Platform runs didn’t slow us down either.

How is the website hosting going?

Thomas: When it comes to hosting, we decided on pure Docker hosting. In this way, we wanted to make ourselves independent of the availability of individual software and installed system components. By opting for Docker, we can now use software that is well coordinated with the other components any time and therefore harmonizes with our solution without excessive effort.

What is your concluding assessment of the project?

Thomas: I think we can be more than happy with the end result. After all, so is SWK Bank. The loan calculator with the associated application sections in the combination of the form builder from eZ Platform and the newly developed form kit, turned out to be a team success. As far as I know, nobody has done it like this before – that was exciting for me too. The increasing conversion rate shows that customers are also accepting the new website.