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Product Innovation

Case study of a product innovation mandate for one of the largest and most dominant pension administration companies in North America.

Photo of men and woman in a board room in an office
November 17, 2022
PROFILE 

Our client is one of the largest and most dominant pension administration companies in North America. Over the past 25 years, they have created the most comprehensive software suite for managing defined benefit pension plans. 

ISSUE 

Its aging technology platform was creating higher integration costs and pushing the company's business out of the mid-market. As a result, the company was forced to focus exclusively on the largest pension administrators, thereby ignoring a market consisting of approximately 2,900 smaller organizations across Canada and the United States. Levio was responsible for designing and creating a next-generation software suite for smaller organizations that would be sold under a SaaS subscription model. Levio used a human-centered approach to design an innovative product that would solve a serious business problem. 

APPROACH 

The product was created using a venture capital partnership model. Levio led the technology and innovation, while the vision was led by the partner client. 

  • Establish a joint governance model to drive a 2-year, $10+ million initial program and drive marketing and sales of the new solution. 
  • Develop a modern future-proof architecture based on C and Java back-end microservices, with Angular 6.0 Google Material design, on a front-end system and Azure cloud hosting to ensure DevOps deployment. 
  • Utilize a new system to immediately support the client's outsourcing activities. 
SERVICES 

Levio provided the following services: 

  • Technical and product leadership 
  • Digital transformation consulting 
  • Customer and partner management 
  • Roadmap, project scoping (objectives), design, architecture, requirements 
  • Project and program planning, full life cycle management 
  • Agile development 
  • DevOps, QA, implementation, deployment 
  • Support and maintenance 
  • Change management and training 
RESULTS 
  • Minimal Viable Product (MVP) tracking and dashboard deployed to client's outsourced operations to manage small pension plans. 
  • Deployment via a hybrid in-house/cloud model where the data layer and related processing components reside on in-house servers and all core application elements reside in the cloud, for the larger outsourcing companies the client does business with. The routing and networking required to make this possible is also handled by Levio's experts 
  • The modern user interface of the product is transferred to the existing version of the company to enhance the user experience of the large enterprise customers. 
ACHIEVEMENTS 
  • The product created in co-investment and venture capital partnership has been a real success. 
  • All the steps of the roadmap have been completed. 
  • Project was completed on time, on budget and within scope. 
  • Seamless collaboration between partner and client teams. 
  • In a company with a rather traditional business model, a new culture of innovation was created. 
  • Levio gained the client's trust and subsequently other mandates.