Symphony Solutions – payments optimization and integration project for Ladbrokes Coral

Symphony Solutions looks back at one of their successful project executions in 2020.  

When Ladbrokes Coral Group, one of the Symphony Solutions’ clients, was acquired by GVC Holdings, one of their initial goals was to try and standardize some of the operations they had. The first on the list of priorities was systematizing payments. 

From a technical standpoint, the project involved the integration on the application level. The earliest steps included the architecture review of Ladbrokes Coral application to see what had to be modified and then adjustment of CI/CD process for successful integration with the part of GVC responsible for payments.  

The results were cutting costs and saving a sufficient part of the revenue. On top of that, the GVC framework offered some additional features and opportunities for application configuration which allowed the Ladbrokes Coral app to customize and add some extra, out of the box components provided by the framework.   

For Symphony Solutions this project meant creating new teams fully dedicated to implementing the GVC framework. The first step was getting on the same page with the GVC side and learning architecture to understand how the product works. Once the general picture was clear and the roadmap was set, new teams had to be assembled that would be fully committed to this project. 

The work involved close collaboration between diverse development teams across several countries: Ukraine, Poland, India, Austria, and UK. GVC team was helping with general architecture and all the implementations, as well as adjusting the third-party components of the application so it met the standards and requirements. From the Symphony side, it was very important to introduce Agile methodology to the project, to make sure that there was clear communication between teams and set up processes in an efficient way to meet the fixed deadline.  

Overall, the project took a bit over a year, from the setting up and getting the main requirements from the architectural perspective to releasing it last month. It proved to be a good example of how the communication had to be build up. Another outstanding achievement was the level of engagement of everyone on the project that made it possible to release both desktop and mobile applications on time. People were extremely involved and motivated to release the best product in the end. They were constantly looking for better, faster and more efficient ways to deliver. 

One of the biggest challenges of this project was creating a steady flow of communication, where everything is relayed properly, and all the tasks and moves are clear for everyone involved. Additionally, the communication flow had to be built in a way that made sure the important message reached everyone who needed to get it but at the same time omitted people for whom it was redundant. To build this communication infrastructure from scratch, various approaches were applied and tested just to find the right one.  

With this successful integration Ladbrokes Coral app received its own payment solution, as well as numerous additional features for their users. For the company, this move meant more security and optimization of work, as well as resources.