Automating 5,000 Compliance Validation Tests

Description

A global provider of a tax reporting service turned to Altoros to simplify maintenance of its proprietary platform without upgrading the existing technology stack, as well as deliver uninterrupted QA testing support.

Brief results of the collaboration:

• The provider ensured continuous delivery/customization of tax report templates—in accordance with the changing regulations—anticipating the needs of 850+ enterprise customers.
• The architectural redesign helped to ease maintenance and optimize performance of the proprietary services suite, saving hundreds of thousands dollars on replatforming.
• The automation of 5,000 compliance validation tests saved up to 90% on QA engineering efforts.

The customer

Based in the UK, the customer is a global provider of a financial platform that automates tax reporting and enables compliance with industry regulations. Founded in 2008, the company has a successful record of investments, raising $6.6 million in total.

The need

Tax compliance regulations differ across countries and industries (e.g., HMRC or ESEF). While the provider's platform automated reporting and validated compliance, the regulators periodically altered the taxonomy. This called for a continuous delivery of new features and adjustments to the the changing regulations.

As the provider was expanding at a rapid face, it faced the shortage of in-house talent to address the needs of the clientele. Relying on .NET development and QA engineering expertise at Altoros, the customer wanted to facilitate the evolution of its Microsoft Azure–based platform and ensure uninterrupted testing of new features.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• A highly regulated tax industry called for platform security enforcement.
• With the changing taxonomy, it was important to constantly add/update report templates.
• The module responsible for converting files of disparate data formats (.pdf, .xls, .xml, etc.) into a regulator-approved .xbrl would not allow to upload files bigger than 40 MB.
• The conversion module also had a single workflow for processing different report types (ESEF, tax, revenue, etc.), slowing down performance.

The solution

Stage 1. After analyzing the requirements, .NET developers at Altoros investigated the platform architecture to resolve maintenance constraints while keeping the technology stack intact. Abiding by the Agile methodology, the developers moved in frequent iterations with daily standups.

First, the engineers reconfigured the way individual modules interacted with each other, as well as restructured Microsoft SQL Server. Then, the team at Altoros identified and terminated a bundle of invalid methods that still made requests to the database. This helped to simplify maintenance and optimize performance.

Stage 2. One of the measures to strengthen security was blocking access to suspicious third-party services.

Stage 3. In the conversion module, the engineers tweaked script methods responsible for processing different report types, enabling parallel workflows. The team at Altoros also reconfigured the module, making it possible to upload files of any size.

Stage 4. To ensure compliance with the changing taxonomy, the developers created 5,000 validation rules and automated their testing by building a pipeline on Azure DevOps.

Stage 5. QA engineers at Altoros provided continuous support around testing. The team created and executed functional, acceptance, GUI, and integration tests.

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the provider ensured continuous delivery/customization of tax report templates, satisfying the need of 850+ enterprise customers. Thanks to the architectural redesign, the organization was able to simplify maintenance and optimize performance of the proprietary platform, saving resources on a costly and time-intensive upgrade of the technology stack. The provider also automated 5,000 tests related to compliance validation, reducing 90% of QA engineering efforts.