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Solarisbank + Atlassian

How Solarisbank is reshaping financial services with the structure, speed, and visibility of Atlassian


Solarisbank logo
Industry

Financial services

Locations

Berlin, Germany

Company size:

300

Number of Users:

300

Solution Partner
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In an industry full of established players and regulatory roadblocks, it can be difficult for innovators to break in and truly make a difference. Fintech pioneers like Solarisbank are rising to the challenge to make banking simpler for companies and their customers.

As a tech company with a German banking license, Solarisbank offers a completely digital banking-as-a-service platform, which their customers (who they call “partners”) can leverage to spin up custom financial solutions for their own users, without the usual red tape. For example, if a retailer wants to give their customers the option to finance a big purchase or buy a gift card, they would normally need to work with a bank to do so. Most traditional banking institutions move slowly and have predefined offerings that are hard to customize. The process often takes many months or even years and results in a shoehorned solution. Alternatively, the retailer could connect to Solarisbank’s flexible, modern platform and build their own customized, compliant banking products in a fraction of the time.

With such an innovative concept and entrepreneurial culture, which encourages everyone to take responsibility for helping the bank grow and evolve, it’s no wonder the company has attracted investors like VISA and BBVA, signed dozens of new partners around the world, and grown to over 300 employees in just four years. Scaling so quickly puts stress on even the most experienced teams, and when they’re working with some of the world’s biggest brands, there’s no room for error.

In the beginning, Solarisbank employees were using multiple tools for communication, documentation, and development. This led to inefficiencies, as they were spending valuable time switching between systems and finding the right information.

To solve their immediate challenges and lay the foundation for scaling even faster in the future, Solarisbank centralized onto the Atlassian platform and hasn’t looked back. Since onboarding the entire company to Atlassian solutions, the bank has increased efficiency, streamlined communication, and put professional structures in place to raise the bar for their customers and the entire banking industry.

The key reason to use Atlassian products is the connectivity. You have your documentation, you have your boards, you have your customer support, and everything is interconnected.

Connectivity is key

Running a firm like Solarisbank isn’t like running most businesses. While many companies have the freedom to make their own rules, the bank operates in a highly regulated industry (financial services) and area (Europe). Auditors and investors need documentation, partners need compliance and constant support, and it’s difficult to meet those needs with unclear processes and siloed systems.

It’s our number one tool for everything content-related, everything documentation-related. We spend hours in [Confluence] per day. If you want to learn anything about this company, you go to Confluence. Everyone always knows where to find what.

“You can use four or five tools, but they’re hard to use together,” says Senior Productivity Manager Fabio Morena. “It’s also hard to release code for a banking platform. We have to be 100% sure the code has been reviewed properly, that all the right people took a look at it, and that all the right people signed off on the code that’s rolling out to production.”

Solarisbank also needed to build up formal systems for customer support and project management. To address this challenge, the team began looking into several technology solutions. While each one had advantages, Atlassian rose to the top of the list because of the team’s familiarity with the platform and its integration. “We already worked with Confluence, so it was a no-brainer that we use more Atlassian tools,” Fabio explains. “The key reason to use Atlassian products is the connectivity. You have your documentation, your boards, your customer support, and everything is interconnected.”

A secure and customized body of knowledge

他们选择了自己的解决方案后,Solarisbank 就向 kreuzwerker 寻求实施方面的帮助,以及持续的培训、指导和管理。他们共同配置了 Jira Software、Confluence、Jira Service Management 和 Statuspage,以适应每个团队的独特需求和工作流程。出于安全性和合规性的考虑,他们为与员工的内部协作和与合作伙伴的外部协作设置了单独的实例。

许多员工已经在以这种或那种方式使用 Confluence,因此 Solarisbank 和 kreuzwerker 从那时起就开始使用 Confluence,并认为这是团队的唯一事实。新员工入职、合作伙伴的信息发生变化,甚至是危机来临时,每个人都转向 Confluence。“它是我们处理与内容相关的所有事物、与文档相关的所有事物的首选工具。我们每天在 [Confluence] 上花费几个小时,”Fabio 说。“如果你想了解这家公司的任何信息,那就去 Confluence。每个人都知道在哪里可以找到什么。”

That includes key players outside the bank, like auditors, whom the team must provide with updated records of every change made to their core product. Thanks to this living body of documentation, employees, partners, and regulators can always quickly and easily find exactly what they need.

An integrated ecosystem for speedy service and delivery

除了集中化文档外,Solarisbank 还需要更好的方式在产品开发和客户服务方面进行协作。这些流程以前比较慢而且更复杂,但是通过在 kreuzwerker 的帮助下实施 Atlassian,技术和非技术团队都能够展开协作,以获得更好、更快的服务和交付。

Solarisbank’s Technology team uses Jira Software to collaborate with their partners on product development, issue management, and code releases, which are executed with a click of the mouse. “As soon as a release is rolled initially, a Jira ticket is created, and when it’s dragged into the release column, this release is kicked off by someone authorized to do so,” says Fabio. The new release is then logged in Confluence for audit purposes.

When Technology is working on incident management and maintenance, Statuspage is invaluable. It’s integrated with Solarisbank’s alerting tool, so any time an incident is reported or maintenance is scheduled, an update is automatically posted to Statuspage. That way, Solarisbank’s partners are aware of any potential disruptions, and engineers can work quickly to address the issue. The Statuspage updates have been particularly helpful for saving time, building trust, and keeping partners happy.

We can track the number of tickets that come in and are resolved, working time, and the eventual outcome of each ticket. That way, we can understand how to optimize our workflow and if there are better ways of handling customer requests.

Solutions tailored to each team

As non-technical teams saw how Technology was using Jira Software, they started thinking about how they could leverage it too. Groups across the organization, including Finance, Accounting, HR, and Marketing, now rely on the platform for task tracking and project management, in addition to other department-specific needs. For example, Finance turns to Jira Software for reporting, while HR uses it for onboarding and payment and compensation requests.

Jira Software plays a key role in managing internal service requests too. Each team has its own board, so whenever an employee needs support from the Technology team, such as asking Information Security for new permissions or leaders for a report review, that person opens a ticket in Jira Software. “Then we’re able to turn a support ticket into feature tickets for the Tech teams. Jira is really sewn into our daily processes,” Fabio says.

We are working in the fast fintech business, so we need to be fast in structuring our daily work. With the permanent integration of Jira, we are way faster and more aligned than before.

虽然 Solarisbank 在内部使用 Jira Software 处理基本服务请求,但其外部合作伙伴的请求更为复杂一些。为了满足他们的需求并确保安全,该银行使用 Jira Service Management 为合作伙伴提供支持。如果请求需要错误修复、功能请求或其他文档,员工可以将工作单链接到 Jira Software 和 Confluence,这有助于他们在应用之间快速切换并协作解决问题。

Jira Service Management 和 Jira Software 还为 Solarisbank 提供了新的数据可见性,以便他们能够跟踪和提高绩效。使用 Jira Service Management 获得合作伙伴支持的信用分析师 Constantin Mirow 解释说:“我们可以跟踪收到和已解决的工作单数量、工作时间以及每张工作单的最终结果。这样,我们就可以了解如何优化我们的工作流程,以及是否有更好的方法来处理客户的请求。”Fabio 补充说:“对于我们的开发人员团队和敏捷教练来说,重要的是要报告事情的完成速度。例如,通过 Jira,我们可以跟踪我们在看板中的移动速度以及部署新版本的速度。”

With greater visibility and reporting, Solarisbank is more equipped than ever to make fast, smart decisions and continue to grow.

Scaling fast with purpose and professionalism

在 kreuzwerker 的支持下,Solarisbank 完善了流程,实现了系统标准化,并根据每个团队的需求定制 Atlassian,整个公司的团队都看到了速度和可视性方面的显著提高,这两项关键因素之前曾帮助他们快速成长,并为未来扩展奠定了基础。

“We are working in the fast fintech business, so we need to be fast in structuring our daily work. With the permanent integration of Jira, we are way faster and more aligned than before,” Fabio says. Financial Analyst Jordi Vilalta adds, “In Finance, [Atlassian] has helped us get really structured to centralize communication channels, avoid losing track of information, and be more efficient.”

The bank’s team is also expanding to new locations and facing new challenges, such as doing more remote work, so they rely on Atlassian to maintain efficiency and transparency when collaborating from afar. “Many of us are working remotely now, so we’re highly dependent on having transparency into what everyone is working on,” Fabio explains. “We have daily meetings via Zoom where we look at our dashboards and say, 'Today I’m going to work on this topic, and my colleague is working on that topic.’ That helps a lot.”

In Finance, [Atlassian] has helped us get really structured to centralize communication channels, avoid losing track of information, and be more efficient.

Constantin agrees. “Transparency is one of the biggest advantages [of implementing Atlassian],” he says. “Everyone is aware of the topics coming every day, so we can split the daily business up equally and stay aligned on what needs to be done. We can also measure at the end of the day if we actually achieved what we wanted to do.”

There’s no doubt Solarisbank is achieving everything they wanted to — and more. In less than three years, the team has almost quadrupled in size and far exceeded their goals for partnership growth. And this is only the beginning. Now that they have more formal processes, centralized communication, and a core set of collaboration tools, Solarisbank feels confident they can continue scaling rapidly with purpose and professionalism.

“Our company is getting bigger, and our partners are getting bigger...We were 80 people at the end of 2016. In early 2020, we were 300 and still growing,” Fabio says. “When a company grows fast like that, you have to establish standardized processes and professional systems to serve big financial players. You need to keep everything in one place and help everyone stay up to date. You need transparency so you can be efficient and make decisions faster. You need to grow fast and professionally. That’s what Atlassian is doing for us.”

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