Slash

The journey began with the Slash design team digging into the core concepts of what COMO Shambhala wanted the app to be and the value it would deliver to users. The idea centered on a new approach of bringing their premium wellness content to clients wherever they are located rather than just at the hotels.

The product needed to be intuitive and tailored to each user, so the team tactfully placed subtle AI recommendations into the system. This created a blend of wellness content tailored precisely to each user’s needs and preferences. This design led to successful development of the wellness app with a back office to support it and an initial freemium monetization strategy.

Following a successful product launch, the monetization strategy was adjusted from freemium to a premium model. Although this had the potential for greater monetization, the team still needed to figure out how to increase the user base in order to continuously improve the delivered experience.

Soon after, that new strategy brought its shares of challenges.

Metrics to success

Slash jumped in to assist, helping COMO Shambhala analyze their user metrics. It was indeed identified that the onboarding (registration + paywall) was proving to be too big of a barrier for many users to overcome, mostly because they didn’t know what they were registering to or buying. As a result, user cost of acquisition remained very high. The data provided the needed information to formulate a path forward that would lead to where growth was.

After thoroughly understanding the issue, we revert back to a freemium monetization approach with some optimizations, but also to develop further back-office and marketing tools, directly integrated into the system.

Currently in the making, this will allow COMO Shambhala to launch large, wide-reaching campaigns that will be very effective at achieving the needed user growth such a fantastic digital wellness product deserves.

Not every bank has the resources to create the world-class solutions customers demand. To increase customer satisfaction and create lasting competitive advantages, many of the world’s thousands of banks need to rely on solution providers.

EedenBull provides banking-as-a-service (BaaS) products to their partner banks, primarily in Scandinavia. These “made to measure” products allow the banks to retain their own brand and customer service model while benefiting from cutting edge fintech solutions using the latest

EedenBull is led by senior executives and veterans of the payment and banking industry who intimately understand the needs of the banks and how digital tools can benefit them today.

To execute on its startup ambitions, EedenBull sought a turnkey tech partner who could be efficient and yet flexible. Efficient in architecting and building solutions, and scaling the team, and at the same time flexible to adjust to the constant changes in the roadmap of a fast-growing startup.

Project Highlights

• Over a period of almost 2 years, we developed the core banking system for EedenBull and the white-label interfaces, and supported the rollout across 65+ banks in Norway and product enhancements that followed.
• We adjusted the team mix, skills and size based on the priorities (from 3 to 9 FTE).
• We helped EedenBull to build and train their in-house tech team in Edinburgh (UK), and successfully handed over the core system to their team.
• The solution includes the issuing of different types of corporate bank cards for SMEs, card controls, transactions, expenses, accounting, reporting, security and permissions etc.

The demand for digital transformation in Cambodia has been rising, coupled with the need to reduce unnecessary upfront costs. SME Bank was looking for a tech vendor to help plan the infrastructure for a banking API gateway on AWS.

In the second half of 2022, staff from both Slash and SME Bank met at an AWS event, initiating discussions about AWS and the bank’s upcoming needs. After aligning on project goals and expectations, the teams started working together, achieving early successes with proof of concepts that tested crucial criteria such as API availability, server scalability, and web security.

However, as the project progressed, the teams recognized a knowledge gap in building the infrastructure foundation required for their envisioned architecture, which needed secure connectivity to their on-premise core system while ensuring scalability and compliance with local regulations. With a looming deadline and the urgency to implement additional app functionalities, it became clear that SME Bank needed an experienced tech partner to navigate these challenges.

This brings us back to the initial meeting at the AWS event. The engagement began with the Slash team assessing SME Bank's requirements and formulating a clear strategy for the targeted architecture. The teams aligned on implementation expectations and moved to Phase 2: implementing AWS cloud infrastructure across four environments with a defined disaster recovery plan and secure connections to on-premise APIs.

With the support and guidance from Slash, SME Bank successfully completed the project, allowing them to focus on launching new mobile and internet banking initiatives and delivering greater value to their stakeholders and customers.