SPD Technology

SPD Technology has worked with Blackhawk Network since 2016 (following BHN’s acquisition of Nimble Commerce, a company SPD had supported since 2008). A team of around 10 engineers was assigned to this specific initiative.

Business challenge

BHN needed to streamline how new merchants joined its Original Content Program (multi-merchant gift card programs such as Spafinder, Wayspa, and Entrée Card).

Before the project, onboarding was largely manual: sales teams collected merchant information and created leads in Salesforce by hand, making the process slow, costly, and difficult to scale.

Objectives

SPD was tasked with creating:

• A Merchant Portal (AMP) — a self-service, white-label, geography-flexible platform for merchant registration and onboarding.

• An Admin Portal — for internal management of merchants, listings, subscriptions, and approvals.

• Automated compliance checks (OFAC, SSN/EIN).

• Automated Salesforce integration for lead creation and processing.

• A data migration mechanism for existing merchants.

Key technical challenges

The project involved:

• Coordination across multiple distributed teams (Kyiv, Cherkasy, Pleasanton, Miami, and other BHN teams).

• Migrating legacy Nimble Commerce merchant data to a new system.

• Handling complex regional rules, multiple integrations, and varied onboarding scenarios.

• Deep Salesforce integration requiring specialized expertise.

• A strategic decision to build a new platform instead of extending the legacy Nimble system.

Solution approach

The team used a hybrid Agile approach (SCRUM + XP) with rolling-wave planning and multi-team coordination.

Core deliverables included:

1. Merchant Portal

   • Self-registration with legal checks (OFAC, SSN/EIN).

   • Listing management (photos, services, schedules, pricing).

   • POS terminal registration with virtual VISA card generation.

   • Subscription selection integrated with BHN’s Payment+ system.

2. Admin Portal

   • Salesforce lead automation.

   • Merchant and listing management.

   • Subscription tier management.

3. Data Migration Tool

   • Migration of existing merchants from Nimble Commerce.

   • Data transfer for Spafinder, Wayspa, and Entrée Card.

   • Creation of white-label sites for each program.

Technology

The platform was built on AWS (EC2, Lambda, RDS, S3, CloudFront, Redshift, CloudFormation, Service Catalog), with Angular.js on the frontend and Java/Node.js on the backend. Google Analytics was used for tracking.

Outcomes

• Onboarding time reduced from ~7 days to under 24 hours.

• Lower operational costs due to automation and reduced manual work.

• Scaled platform adoption — over 8,000 merchants migrated within ~2 years, including launching a new Entrée Card program.

The platform became the standardized way for merchants to join BHN’s Original Content ecosystem.

SPD Technology has been a long-term custom software partner for Morningstar, Inc., delivering three major product initiatives: an AI/ML-powered Web Crawler application, a Data Collection application, and the cloud modernization of the Kessler investment platform.

Scope of engagement

SPD supported Morningstar in:

• Automating large-scale financial data collection from hundreds of web sources

• Extracting, prioritizing, and streaming relevant data for distributed analytics teams

• Replacing a low-performing legacy Data Collection MVP with a more reliable system

• Modernizing the Kessler application through cloud migration and serverless architecture

• Integrating Kessler with internal account systems and Stripe

• Enhancing investment analytics, search (Screener), and portfolio tools

Approach & delivery

• Work began with the AI/ML Web Crawler, staffed by an engineering manager, full-stack developers, AI/ML specialists, and QA.

• Machine learning techniques (Doc2Vec/Word2Vec, AWS Comprehend) were used to filter noise, prioritize relevance, and reduce manual workload.

• The Data Collection app was audited, re-architected, and rebuilt with improved validation, annotation, and an Excel-like UI.

• The Kessler platform was fully migrated to AWS, redesigned for high-load performance, and extended with new analytics features.

Technology

The work leveraged a broad stack including AWS (Terraform, Docker, Jenkins, Spinnaker), Java/Spring Boot, Node.js, PostgreSQL, React/Vue/Angular, WebSockets, and Crawler4j, with testing via JUnit, Selenide, and Allure.

Outcomes

• Automated data gathering from 500+ websites

• Faster and more stable data processing compared to the prior system

• Reduced storage costs and manual analysis effort

• A rebuilt Kessler platform designed to support up to ~1 million daily users

The engagement remains ongoing, with SPD continuing to support and evolve Morningstar’s platforms.

Legal Shelf engaged SPD Technology to modernize its legacy PHP-based product by rebuilding it on a modern technology stack. The project started with a fixed-fee assessment phase in which SPD reviewed the existing system, documented user stories, created wireframes with a designer, and estimated delivery effort. After prioritization and release planning, SPD delivered a rebuilt product within three months and has continued to support Legal Shelf with a smaller maintenance team in an ongoing engagement.

The new system was built using React and React Native on the frontend, Spring for middleware, and AWS Lambda for infrastructure, with an additional iOS application developed in Swift. The product now functions as a digital legal document library that includes digital signatures adapted for Latin American regulatory requirements, document storage, search capabilities, metadata management, and usage reporting.

The project team included a project manager, an analyst acting as product manager, designers, frontend and backend developers, an iOS developer, and a lead architect. In maintenance mode, the core team consists of an architect, analyst, project manager, one frontend developer, and one backend developer.

Project management was conducted using Shortcut for tickets, GitHub for code repositories, and daily communication via Slack and Google Meet. 

The client engaged SPD Technology to develop their software, help visualize their product roadmap, and act as a thought partner for technical ideas behind their mission to create precise digital addresses for anyone and anything, anywhere. SPD was selected based on a referral and a pricing model that fit the startup’s budget.

Working with a small team of 2–5 specialists, SPD has been continuously delivering agreed features, consistently meeting scoped timelines and budgets for each task. The client highlights this as a significant step up compared to previous vendors.

Project management is singled out as a major strength: he is deeply engaged, provides clear viewpoints, aligns stakeholders, and maintains a visual roadmap that keeps everyone on track. Communication has primarily taken place through virtual meetings.

The client praises SPD’s efficiency, speed, adaptability to change, and strong communication skills, particularly in working sensitively with an early-stage startup. They report no areas for improvement and express a clear intention for a long-term partnership.

The Space Needle partnered with SPD Technology to modernize its ticketing ecosystem, including rebuilding the ticketing admin system, developing new kiosk interfaces, and creating new website front ends. Chosen as a long-term partner for its strong culture fit and good value, SPD assembled a team of around 15 specialists to deliver a centralized, scalable platform that streamlined ticketing, pricing, promotions, and channel management.

The solution introduced real-time configuration capabilities, a robust promotions and coupon system, a flexible roles and permissions framework, partner integration tools, and reporting-ready data outputs—all built on a future-proof architecture designed for long-term growth. Deployment was phased over the year, rolling out core capabilities first before integrating all front-end and admin functions.

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After its acquisition by Morningstar, SPD Technology remains a partner in product development and support.