Application development for Albis Leasing AG

From the freezer cabinet to the cash register system, from the shopping cart to the delivery van: Thanks to ALBIS Leasing AG's new leasing portal for the Edekabank, EDEKA retailers can for the first time quickly lease new business equipment and keep their stores up to date at all times. This was not always the case, because the longer processing times of the past could make life difficult for the independent retailers if a defective POS system or cooling unit, for example, hindered operation over a longer period of time.

Elias Ammon, Director Business Development and Information at ALBIS Leasing AG, was firmly convinced that this would have to be simpler, faster and smoother, and he wanted to see results quickly.

And he was to have them for thanks to our many years of experience in agile development methods, we were able to present him with a functional software version at a very early stage. This we then extended and refined step-by-step until the final version. Quality assurance played an important role here: With monitoring tools and automated tests, for example, we were able to continuously check the availability of interfaces and backend systems in order to be able to proactively intervene quickly in the event of faults or modifications. For the customer, this also had the advantage that he was transparently involved in the project at all times, even without additional IT resources. 

Mobile leasing in seven seconds

Today, Edekabank's corporate customer service agents access the ALBIS leasing portal from their tablet or laptop via a web browser and can complete the leasing application directly on site at the Edeka dealer, choose between different leasing options and download the finished contract immediately as a PDF file. Thanks to the portal's high degree of automation, all approval, creditworthiness and credit processes are completed within 1 to 2 days when a decision is made. Ideally, the whole process takes only 7 seconds: A real advantage for service agents and retailers!

Leasing from Edekabank:
Through ALBIS Leasing's portal, Edekabank offers independent EDEKA retailers financing models for areas such as reverse vending machines, shopping carts, freezer cabinets, cash register systems, alarm systems and motor vehicles.

In order to achieve such high speed, we designed the leasing portal application with web browser support: The application only exchanges a small amount of data with the backend for execution and is optimized for ease of use on mobile devices. For security reasons, we inserted an API as a "thin" intermediate layer between the JavaScript front end and the complex Albis back end, which only provides the functions that are directly required for the application process. The layer translates all the functions and parameters for the Albis backend. In addition, plausibility routines are used to check data entries immediately. The very slim API offers potential attackers only a small surface and can be extended or changed very quickly if required.

We implemented the Albis leasing portal with Amazon Web Services (AWS) as a cloud solution: "We don't need our own servers for the portal, which gives us advantages in terms of availability and scalability. It also allows us to separate new business models from the infrastructure, which we can use for new sales concepts," explains Elias Ammon. The cloud solution reduced the administrative effort for hosting the software and established a high security standard as an added benefit.

Fast and secure web application

Albis Leasing rates the development project very positively. The leasing portal provides a quick overview of the status of the applications, and the previously manual processing steps up to the release of the leasing contract have been largely automated, making them less error-prone and considerably faster.

Elias Ammon summarizes: "We have benefited from the cooperation with Infopark. Concluding a leasing contract has become much easier. The application is very powerful, mobile, and the customer service agent receives feedback on the application during the customer appointment. Thanks to the agile development method, we received high-quality results much faster. And it's really fun working together!”