The situation
A membership organisation with 10,000 members was preparing to launch financing agreements for a new product line. The plan was to integrate with their existing operational lease partner's loan management system, giving members live status updates through the organisation's own app.
During the integration work, it became clear that the partner's legacy system couldn't support the data flows or the level of transparency the product required. The integration wasn't just difficult — it was architecturally incompatible with the member experience they needed to deliver.
The decision
Rather than compromising the product around the limitations of a legacy system, the team made the call to build a replacement. Not a full loan management platform — but the specific capabilities the business actually needed: interest calculations, payment plan generation, refinancing logic, and agreement document generation.
For the parts that didn't need to be custom — ledger accounting and invoicing — they integrated with an existing ERP system. Build what matters, reuse what works.
Build what matters, reuse what works.
Why this path
Building a replacement sounds risky. But the alternative — wrapping a legacy system in workarounds — would have created a fragile foundation for a product that needed to scale. The real risk was in staying.
The team started with the most critical path: the ability to generate and sign financing agreements. That went live first. From there, they built forward along the process — always ensuring the next step in the member journey was working before it was needed. Each piece proven in production before the next was built.
Delivery sequence
Week 1–4
Agreement signing
Generate and sign financing agreements. Live in production.
Month 2
Loan calculations
Interest, payment plans, refinancing logic — the custom core.
Month 2–3
ERP integration
Ledger accounting and invoicing via existing ERP. Reuse what works.
Ongoing
Member experience
Live status, transparency, self-service — built on proven foundations.