Secure Cloud DMS for Collaborative Investment Document Management

About Our Client

The Client is a North American investment company offering asset management services to fund owners and wealth technology solutions to investment professionals. The company serves over 30,000 investment entities in 20+ countries.

Seeking an Apt Development Partner to Build a Specialized DMS

The Client relied on its custom document management system (DMS) to manage investor contracts, operational documentation, and reports. As the Client’s business scaled up, the aging system started experiencing performance issues and was no longer able to handle increasingly complex document management processes. Plus, the solution didn’t provide the collaboration and security features necessary for safe multi-party document creation. For our Client, it meant reduced employee productivity and unacceptable risks to sensitive data.

The Client decided to replace its legacy DMS with a new secure and scalable solution that would provide all necessary automation and creative features for collaborative document management. Due to the lack of relevant in-house competencies, the Client was seeking an experienced technology partner to handle DMS development end to end. ScienceSoft came across as a trustworthy investment IT vendor experienced in creating custom DMS.

End-to-End Development of an Investment DMS

ScienceSoft provided the Client with a team of a project manager, a business analyst, a solution architect, a UX/UI designer, a DevOps engineer, four full-stack developers, two manual testers, and a test automation engineer.

Laying the foundation for DMS development

ScienceSoft's business analyst held a number of interview sessions with the Client’s stakeholders and asset management experts to grasp the company’s needs and elicit requirements for the DMS. As a result, she composed a detailed functional specification for the future solution and triaged features for implementation based on their value for the Client’s document workflows.

In collaboration with the business analyst, ScienceSoft’s solution architect vetted the required features for technical and economic feasibility. The architect proposed several secure options for the DMS architecture and tech stack and pointed out the one best fitting for the Client’s case. Given the growing complexity and collaborative nature of the Client’s document management processes, our architect recommended building the DMS in the cloud to ensure the solution’s easy accessibility and scalability for future needs.

The Client wanted to ensure smooth experiences for all DMS users from the onset, so ScienceSoft’s UX/UI designer joined the project at an early project stage. She analyzed the needs of focus user groups (wealth advisors, investment managers, investors, admins, etc.), mapped intuitive user journeys, and created UX wireframes for role-specific screens.

The resulting DMS concept laid the basis for development project planning. ScienceSoft’s project manager studied the expected deliverables, documented the task scope and required resources, and provided the Client with project cost and time estimates. He also composed a pragmatic strategy to mitigate risks.

Agile development of a tailored investment DMS

ScienceSoft’s team handled the entire investment DMS development process, from establishing DevOps to back-end and UI development to quality assurance. ScienceSoft’s developers followed secure coding standards like OWASP ASVS to eliminate DMS vulnerability risks at the code level. The QA engineers ran the necessary testing procedures in parallel with coding so that developers could quickly fix the identified issues.

The project workflow was organized following the Scrum methodology with 2-week sprints. The choice of the iterative model enabled frequent communication between the project stakeholders and secured swift and agile response to changes.

If the Client’s stakeholders submitted a change request, ScienceSoft’s team evaluated the impact of both scenarios (implementing the change vs. rejecting it) and communicated the technical and economic implications to the Client. This approach allowed us address the Client’s emerging critical requirements while preventing scope creep, delays, and budget inflation.

The development stage resulted in the delivery of an investment DMS with the following major features:

Security features

• Permission-based access to investment documents and document management functions (creation, editing, sharing, etc.).
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA), including biometric authentication.
• Investment document e-signing.
• A complete log of user manipulations with documents.
• Automated document retention and deletion according to corporate policies.
• Automated security checks for imported documents in transmission.
• Data backup and recovery.

Document creation features

• Template-based creation of multi-language digital investment documents.
• Support for multiple document formats: PDF, DOCX, XLSX, JPG, and more.
• Document review and modification via DMS.
• A no-code document template editor.
• Drag-and-drop document uploading and downloading (one by one and batch).
• Applying user-defined document metadata (type, date, subject, etc.) for easy document search.

Collaborative features

• A separated digital space for the Client’s teams and customers to co-create, update, and review investment documents.
• Simultaneous editing of several documents by multiple persons.
• Document version control.

Search and navigation features

• Customizable user dashboards showcasing the recently created investment documents, documents pending review, etc.
• Multi-folder document hierarchies with customizable subfolders.
• Document search by content and metadata.

Automation features

• Automated conversion of investment documents to customizable templates.
• Template-based document generation.
• Document auto-population with relevant investor data from the integrated systems (CRM, investor portal, email, accounting, and more).
• Automated document importing from and exporting to the connected systems.
• Automated document indexing and classification.
• Automated workflow for multi-party investment documentation approvals.
• Configurable notifications to users about document-related events (e.g., uploading, saving, approval status changes, etc.).
• Scheduled reports on the document management KPIs (the number of documents processed by period, average approval time, etc.).

Scalable and Secure Investment DMS Built in 11 Months

In 11 months, the Client received a full-featured investment DMS developed according to its specific requirements. As of November 2024, ScienceSoft is finalizing DMS integration with the Client’s systems and data migration from the previously used software. ScienceSoft’s advice on the optimal feature set and technical design for the DMS helped the Client obtain a comprehensive, tailored solution with minimized investments. Throughout the cooperation, the Client has repeatedly praised ScienceSoft’s mature project management and development practices, which, the Client believes, secured the delivery of a high-quality DMS on time and within budget agreements.

Technologies and Tools

.NET Core 8, Java, Angular, TypeScript, Microsoft SQL Server, Azure, AWS, Terraform, Docker, Kubernetes, Helm, Trivy, Dockle, Checkov, Veracode SAST, Nginx.