Case Study: Sure Deposit

URL: http://www.suredeposit.com

The Client: SureDeposit is an alternative risk management tool that vastly improves upon traditional security deposits by replacing them with a financial guarantee surety bond. The first of its kind, SureDeposit is the market leader in the emerging industry of security deposit alternatives, with more than 1,000,000 apartment units under agreement in nearly 3,300 communities nationwide. And that means money in the bank for the real estate and financial community as well as SureDeposit itself.

The Challenge: SureDeposit had to get a job done in a hurry. They had a growing supply of customers and they wanted to be sure to meet their demands. They needed to automate and simplify many of their processes, create simpler lines of communication with clients, decrease the amount of time spent on simple common administrative tasks, and increase customer satisfaction. And did we mention that there was no room for mistakes?

It was a tall order that had to be met in short order. A Client Extranet had to be developed that would facilitate all of the company’s requirements. This Extranet needed to be secure, easy to use, and fully integrated with the company’s in-house database.

The Solution: Oxclove Workshop (O\W) launched a rigorous discovery phase and created a comprehensive set of requirements. The resulting “Use Case modeling” of the application described exactly how the site would function and how users would experience the site. It became a pattern that the team used to bring the site to life. This upfront modeling is part of the Oxclove typical planning process and serves to facilitate every subsequent step thereafter. Once the Use Case models were completed and approved by SureDeposit, O\W used them to drive the development of a full UML model—a model the O\W development team used to create the application to the exact specifications agreed to by SureDeposit. The UML model would also allow O\W to easily and efficiently maintain and upgrade the application later on, regardless of personnel changes within the team.

The site was programmed using the best available server data base. Daily and weekly data synchronization with the offline database became fully automated, an approach that was state-of the-art.

The Result: A fully functional Client Extranet which greatly reduces the amount of time and effort to perform most common administrative functions. The site is user friendly, will grow with the client, and is easy for SureDeposit to use — thanks to extensive staff training by Oxclove. Additionally, O\W created an XML gateway which allows partners, such as RentPort, to offer SureDeposit to renters through their online interface. Applicants never have to leave the partner’s site to receive a SureDeposit bond application, which is supplied in the form of a fully populated PDF. The applicants are also tracked to allow SureDeposit to input them into their system with a single click once payment is received. In the end, the client has the highest technology that actually works to make work easier. The technology is no longer the exclusive domain of one person within the company. SureDeposit has all the keys to its current and future use…but they also can depend on Oxclove to act as a kind of “in-house out source”, always available for consultation and further exploration as the company grows.

previous SureDeposit Case Study