Building the Self-Service Portal

Problem: DirectAxis wanted to give their customers the ability to securely access their products and manage their personal information.

Solution: Create a facility on the DirectAxis corporate website where customers can securely register and log in, access the products they have with DirectAxis, request statements and update their contact details, banking details and debit order dates.

Project Overview

After the successful launch of DirectAxis’s new website on the Sitecore 8.2 platform, and the subsequent addition of DirectAxis Pulse, DirectAxis approached NML to implement a self-service portal on their website.

The self-service portal was built on top of DirectAxis’s existing Sitecore implementation (which NML also developed) and runs alongside their Pulse product.

Feature highlights:

• Industry-leading security, requiring users to be logged in/registered with their identities verified in order to access the portal
• A fast and responsive user experience that renders well on mobile devices
• Personalisation:

Utilising Sitecore’s ability to personalise and adapt user experiences, the dashboard adapts to user-specific needs, such as only displaying tiles relevant to the current user. For example:

Customers who have not yet joined Pulse will see a “Join Pulse” tile; whereas those who have joined Pulse will see an active Pulse tile instead.

Customers who qualify for a specific loan amount will see a detailed loan offer tile. Customers who might qualify for a loan see a more generic loan offer tile, and customers who will be declined will not see a loan offer tile at all:

Customers in the process of completing a loan application will see a tile giving them the option to continue their application:

Customers with an active loan will see a corresponding tile:

Technology Used

The following technology was used in forming the portal:

• Sitecore 8.2 Experience Platform
• SQL Server
• MongoDB
• ASP.NET MVC

Rather than developing a separate application for the DirectAxis self-service portal, we chose to integrate it into the existing Sitecore implementation. This gained us the following advantages:

• Getting to market quickly as page designs, styles and assets could be reused on the pulse front-end
• Seamless customer journey between the corporate website, Pulse, and the self-service portal
• Sitecore’s built-in analytics capabilities can be used to track behaviour with their self-service dashboard, and this behaviour can then be seamlessly used elsewhere on the corporate website to personalise and adapt user experience
• Integration with DirectAxis’s API layer was extremely simple as Sitecore is built on .NET and was an excellent fit for our .NET expertise.

Architecture

Like Pulse, the self-service portal is fully integrated with DirectAxis’s existing enterprise API layer, with all requests to DirectAxis’s API layer happening server side behind their secure firewall.

The following features are in place:

• Users must be registered and authenticated in order to access their details
• During the registration process customers are asked to verify their identity by confirming an OTP sent to their cell phone

Once authenticated, user can perform the following self service functions:

• View status of their DirectAxis loan accounts
• Update personal details, banking details and debit order dates
• Request settlement letters on fully paid loan accounts
• Apply online for other DirectAxis products
• Join Pulse to view detailed credit health