Agile Design Sprint for COVID19 Proof Cloud DMS

Hercules Capital (NYSE: HTGC) is a leading financial firm that provides senior secured venture growth loans to VC-backed companies in a broad variety of industries (technology, life sciences, sustainable and renewable technology...). Hercules Capital, having committed more than $10.5 billion to over 500 companies, was seeking ways to overcome critical operational inefficiencies and improve their overall document management experience.

Strategy: Design thinking with fast prototyping

We started our Design Sprints by interacting with the real stuff (like paper, pens, and sticky notes) and team members (e.g. financial controllers, administrative users, and IT). SEIDOR Opentrends Design Sprint method distills essential business needs and focuses on detecting and removing pain points. Together, we shaped a first paper prototype to make the interaction experienceable and tested it with other Hercules Capital team members for validation. We always include technologists in the Design Sprint team (not just moderators); this way prototypes make working sense from the start.

It took just ten days to complete the Design Sprints with a valid prototype and a backlog of all user stories. Our Design Sprints do not require the client’s team full-time involvement. We set up a double agenda: a technical and support one. The technical agenda is run by a small portion of the client’s team who are involved full-time in the Design Sprint sessions; the support side of the agenda runs only in the morning and includes the rest of the client’s team. This double agenda system allows us to keep the focus on the Design Sprint sessions. That's important in order to minimize external intrusions and avoid possible team discomfort and isolation.

"We felt that SEIDOR Opentrends´ design sprint approach had a very clearly outlined path, and made every piece of the process very manageable. It enabled us to think outside the box." shares Christian during an interview with our business development lead.

Methodology: Being Agile

SEIDOR Opentrends’ expertise in Agile development allows moving from design to deployment very quickly. With the Design Sprint’s Backlog in hand, we only needed four software development iterations before rolling out the first usable version of the DMS. All the scrum rituals were held in smooth collaboration between the product owner, Hercules Capital, and SEIDOR Opentrends as developer. The development progress was updated on a daily basis by every participating team member and published in the Design Sprint dashboards. Our client had the opportunity to monitor the exact developmental stage of the project at all times. 

‘’Agile methodology was a new approach for us, and in our experience actually a very positive and good one; it proved to be very efficient.’’
Christian Follmann, Head of Operations @Hercules Capital

Technology: The Power of the Cloud

At first, it can be distressing for a financial company to have valuable documents outside their premises.  However, that concern is quickly alleviated once the great benefits of using a secure cloud system are evidenced: all documents are accessible 24/7 from anywhere to the permitted employees, automatic regulation compliance with the highest security levels, and API is available for integration with legacy systems or accessory tools. 

In partnership with Box, one of the more evolved and mature players in the business cloud storage segment, SEIDOR Opentrends designed the architecture and developed a custom and highly differentiated document management system. 

"Before we started the project with SEIDOR Opentrends, approximately 30% of our IT infrastructure was cloud-based, now we’re at 60% - 70% overall. We’ve made substantial progress with the SEIDOR Opentrends team."
Christian Follmann, Head of Operations @Hercules Capital

SEIDOR Opentrends implemented a robust architecture to integrate the built-in Box features with the indispensable legacy software. We chose the Box Java SDK, a provided component, to develop a bridge between the existing .Net software and the Box API tools, along with an administration console designed to perform a high frequency of operations. 

Hercules Capital trusted SEIDOR Opentrends for their flexibility, high technological knowledge, and multidisciplinary teams with many viewpoints, backgrounds and experiences. Those were considered key by Hercules Capital when thinking of a comprehensive solution to their problem.