Future Processing

We first started working with KMD in 2012 when KMD was looking for an outsourcing partner to handle their overhead of work and needed to increase the size of their in-house teams, we have provided the necessary skills and competencies. 

Considering the scale of the cooperation, we were given the opportunity to work on many projects, for different branches: 

• Public sector 
  Online and secure digital mailbox allowing citicens in Denmark, Norway and Sweden to correspond in an official manner 
• Education sector 
  Re-engineering a legacy system responsible for managing registration of children to day cares, calculation of payments for citizens, etc. 
• Medical Care sector 
  A solution aimed at home care and home nursing system. 
• Employment sector 
  A project for employment offices in Denmark. 

On a daily basis, we add new functionalities, in order to improve user experience. Our work for KMD requires knowledge from different domains, therefore we needed to use our depth and breadth of experience and quickly understand our client’s needs. We follow agile methodologies in each project, promoting adaptive planning, evolutionary development, continuous improvement and rapid and flexible response to changes. 

Our engineers regularly discuss new requirements and propose improvements, where appropriate. This flexible approach is delivering rapid, high-quality results.

As the oldest university press in the world, Cambridge University Press is committed to sharing knowledge as widely as possible across the globe.

Cambridge University Press (the Press) is the academic publishing group of Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

A need to drive innovation

In January 2020, the Press approached us to help grow the capabilities of its Academic technology team, in particular to boost its capabilities in managing advanced software development and in developing its enhanced digital products. It was also looking for an experienced, expert advisor that was not afraid to suggest alternative ways of doing things.

Our role

Over time, Future Processing’s experts became a strong voice in changing current systems and designing new ones.

Together, we are exploring new fields and technologies where we can collaborate, like Site Reliability Engineering or User Experience Design.

The team of Future Processing’s engineers continues to support and develop the processes and coding for the different platforms to ensure they remain fully responsive, stable, and intuitive, improving user experience.

Benefits of our partnership

The Press’s ability to meet the changing needs of customers and the requirements of the fast-paced digital world depends on its new products and services.

Working closely with Future Processing has helped the Press to bring its ideas to life, creating and enhancing platforms that are specially crafted to its unique mission and changing customer demands.

The Press has also benefited from new expertise, with the team offering specialist advice throughout the course of different projects.

Future Processing brought a host of technical skills to the table – as industry experts, they helped the Press to make the most of opportunities emerging from software development, advanced software development and improved search engines.

Future Processing and ITV forces joined together to develop a new major iteration of the Planet V ad management platform.

We have provided two cross-functional development teams to collaborate with another two ITV teams using a common backlog. It means we have worked as a single product team without partitioning responsibility around the platform’s architecture, modules, or components. Product, UX, and Platform teams are also part of the client’s team.

The pilot version of the new Planet V was launched on 14 November 2022, allowing the first users to test and give feedback on the platform. Further development continues in 2023.

Right from the start ITV was very keen to promote a one-team approach and culture. The whole team has been incredibly successful in achieving this and the client has a great perception of the Future Processing team.

We have been working with iPsychTec since June 2018 on a new Java-based application we wrote from scratch that will allow conducting diagnostic behavioural questionnaires in a dynamic way.

The solution has to meet high non-functional requirements regarding, among others, performance. Our team is facing a really ambitious challenge, as the application is the basis of our client’s business.

The most important outcome will be improved validity & reduced distortion of the collected data

The application will also bring the following benefits:

Further questions are selected based on users’ answers (dynamic adaptive item response) instead of fixed survey questions.

Currently, it takes 20 min to complete the survey, it will take around 8 minutes less.

Users always need to answer 60 questions for item response theory (IRT) part

With the adaptive approach, users need to answer only from 15 to 30 questions. With the adaptive approach, users need to answer only from 15 to 30 questions.

To build a high-quality product that answers the client’s needs we decided to base it on JAVA.

Our cooperation started in 2008 and since then we grew from an initially small team to the position where we are now supporting various business units in Flowbird.  

In the course of our cooperation, our interdisciplinary delivery teams have developed and enhanced software for a span of platforms, from embedded software on Flowbird’s devices, to back-office systems. 

Some of our projects included solutions helping bus, rail, tram and ferry operators to optimise their efficiency through automatic fare collection platforms, fleet management systems, hosted back offices and real time information technology: 

• there are around 10,000 buses in the UK equipped with Flowbird machines which contain software components developed by Future Processing, 
• 5,000 buses in Sydney are equipped with Flowbird’s Bus Driver Console running on software which also includes components developed by us, 
• we also worked on a project supplying the ticketing system as part of prestigious citywide scheme for Helsinki, including driver consoles, ticket validators, ticket vending machines, inspection devices and a comprehensive back office system. 

Flowbird also wanted to develop the solution using new technologies and architecture, to offer the most technologically advanced, customisable solutions to customers. 

We are now the key partner of Flowbird, providing a significant software development capability. Flowbird has delivered solutions using a range of technologies, in order to meet the needs of their clients.

At the beginning of our collaboration, conducted a series of workshops to gather requirements and design the best possible solution for our client’s business reality. Our recommendations and ideas were well received, and as a result, the project started after successfully transitioning from their previous software supplier. The idea was to clean up and stabilise the existing system and digitally transform it through redesigning existing processes and refactoring the code.

We have taken on the responsibility of supporting and upgrading the legacy solution from one, monolithic application into cloud-based microservices. We also added automated testing and deployment to the process to further optimise the functionalities.  Moreover, we work on quarterly and annual roadmaps for delivering new functionalities and adjustments. Another of our present goals is to re-write and upgrade Adia’s mobile application.

As an HR company, Adia operates dynamically, and our collaboration is based on flexibility and a constant flow of information to ensure the highest possible value of the project. We work together with Adia’s onsite Product Teams on the new features design, architecture, and upgrading the main system to ensure its robustness. Together, we compose a proactive team of experts, who meet regularly, take part in regular discovery workshops and share similar working culture.

HAS Group approached us with a requirement to implement a document management service for their customer base.

One of the challenges was the volume of data that the system needed to support – around 2,500 locations with an assumed number of 1,000 clients each and 10-20 documents per client, meaning the system needed to have the capacity to deal with up to 50,000,000 documents altogether.

The aim was to allow care agency staff to manage important documents such as contracts, care plans, medical records, etc. for each recipient of care services and for each carer.

HAS Technology decided to use SharePoint as the back end storage for the service.

We designed the infrastructure and developed a web service, conducting manual and automatic testing of the service and installed SharePoint and its farms on the client’s servers. We also provided support with adjusting processes to take account of SharePoint.

We have successfully developed a document management service allowing agency staff to effectively organise, administer and control their documentation. Multiple agency users can now upload documents, attach them to a given Service User or Care Worker, as well as download and delete them.

System users can search for and return all records that have been uploaded for a particular person and filter through the results also having the possibility of auditing all document history.

The solution we provided is integrated within CallConfirmLive! which means that users manage their documents through a system they already know and are used to. The service is scalable with the only limitation being the hardware.

Our partnership started in August 2010, when TechSoup was looking for an outsourcing partner outside the USA as a cost-effective use of resources and source of skills.

We have greatly contributed to creating an innovative system aimed at enabling social change and helping contributors understand the NGO sector. Apart from the project work itself, we were also able to refresh TechSoup’s codebase and agree on a plan for further development.

Our team became very knowledgeable within the client’s domain, which allowed us to suggest additional features, agree on specific technologies and propose new solutions. Our ideas regarding improvement on technical and process level, are frequently encouraged and embraced.

Considering the impressive vision of the projects we found that frequent communication with the stakeholders and on-site visits were vital to ensuring a clear understanding. As the various branches were located in different parts of the world, it was necessary to coordinate this communication effectively, taking into account time differences.

We also implemented a robust project management process which ensured visibility of progress at all times. The successful delivery of these projects gives evidence to the fact that location is not a blocker in delivering successful software projects, as long as your outsourcing partner is focused on clear communication and can demonstrate effective project management.

Frequent progress updates were also important to us to constantly gather feedback and analyse it on a regular basis. By doing so, we were able to a better understanding of business needs and we could make sure that the end product would be suited to the requirements.

TAURON Dystrybucja searched for a partner to carry out a project which consisted in designing, building, testing, and implementing a system which enabled advanced analytics for large sets of data gathered on the basis of smart metering infrastructure to support the business processes of the DSOs. 

The first stage of the project was installation of 400,000 smart meters (AMI) in the area of Smart City Wrocław. The objective of the applied solutions was to ensure scalability and flexible architecture. It served as the first milestone in the company-wide deployment. 

As part of the project, we also designed the processes of data gathering, storage, processing, and presentation, the application of the cloud technology, and the architecture and integration with the source system as well as the implementation of mathematical models, analyses, and visualisation tools. 

In order to meet the client’s business requirements, we used the latest technologies, including machine learning, cloud computing, and big data. 

The introduced solution increased transparency to optimise low- and medium-voltage grid management by analysing data collected from smart meters, balancing meters, dispatch systems, and grid assets. The tool combines the newest technological solutions, advanced algorithms, and domain knowledge. 

Demica partnered with us, initially with a requirements engineering process, to identify the needs of new functionality and propose the best technology solution. We created an infrastructure to demonstrate how the software would work, before rolling out various phases of the solution, step by step. 

Through a close partnership between our and Demica’s internal development teams, the platform has been enhanced with an improved architecture that enables over 20 million invoices to be processed each day, as it scales both horizontally and vertically. 

Advanced rules engine algorithms drive preferred outcomes, such as higher advance rates or optimal risk distribution outcomes. While a significantly improved graphical user interface reduces transaction implementation time from weeks to hours. 

The operational agility allows Demica to rapidly scale the team up and down and quickly respond to the client's demands, setting the company apart from its competition in the working capital finance market. 

One of the key benefits was allowing Demica access to specialists with competencies going beyond software development e.g. experienced Security Engineers, Technical Consultants, Data Engineers and Business Analysts.

TrustMark was looking for an IT partner to introduce new functionalities of the service and to make changes in the API interface.

After the first tests and the complete takeover of the project, we recreated the service, fixed bugs and planned the live product migration outside the UK business hours.

Time pressure was of great importance in this project – most of the scope (up to live migration) had to happen in 20 days.

Our experience with Cloud (Azure) and reliable collaboration during the Design phase resulted in discussing a technology partnership – new functionalities of the service, API changes, and migration of the entire infrastructure to a new Azure subscription.