Scaling a Revenue-Critical Digital Automotive Finance Platform Without Compromising Stabilit

Customer Snapshot

Industry: BFSI, FinTech

Region: South Africa

Platform: QuickApp - Digital Vehicle Finance Pre-Approval Platform

Engagement Model:

• Platform Build
• Stabilisation & Preventative Maintenance
• Ongoing Engineering Support

The Challenge

QuickApp is a consumer-facing digital platform at the heart of Volkswagen Financial Services South Africa’s customer acquisition and finance approval journey. As adoption increased, the platform became both a growth engine and a potential risk surface.

Key challenges included:

Scaling a revenue-critical digital platform

• QuickApp directly influenced vehicle finance conversions and dealer enablement
• Platform stability and performance were non-negotiable
• Any regression risked revenue, compliance, and customer trust

Technical risk areas

• Slow database queries impacting response times
• 403 errors in third-party insurance integrations
• Missing events in data pipelines affecting analytics and reporting
• Growing technical debt requiring structured intervention

Perceived value vs maintenance model

• A shift to a more task-driven maintenance model (fewer meetings, reduced PM touchpoints) was not clearly communicated
• This created pricing sensitivity and concerns such as: “We are now paying more, but the value feels lower.”
• Risk of renewal despite strong engineering outcomes

Enterprise governance complexity

• Global HQ dependencies slowed certain decisions
• Changes required careful coordination across product, engineering, and compliance stakeholders

The Goal

• Maintain and improve platform stability under growing usage
• Optimise performance without disrupting live operations
• Reduce technical debt through preventative engineering
• Improve analytics and customer feedback visibility
• Deliver measurable business impact while navigating enterprise constraints

Scrums.com Solution

Scrums.com applied a preventative, data-driven enterprise engineering approach, balancing delivery excellence with governance realities.

Key components included:

Platform stability & revenue enablement

• Incremental stability improvements across frontend, backend, and infrastructure
• Careful change management to avoid regressions
• Continuous monitoring and rapid issue resolution

Performance optimisation

• Identified and benchmarked slow database queries
• Implemented targeted query optimisation
• Measured before-and-after performance metrics to validate improvements

Preventative maintenance & technical debt management

• Introduced Rubber Ducking Self-Assessment (RDS) sessions
• Ensured at least one actionable technical debt item per sprint
• Implemented recurring frontend health checks using Google Lighthouse
• Proactively refactored deprecated frontend APIs
• Shifted delivery from reactive fixes to preventative engineering

Customer feedback & analytics enablement

• Designed an API-driven customer feedback system
• Integrated Trusted Shops into the customer journey
• Ensured compatibility with Salesforce and AWS
• Enabled feedback capture at key conversion points to support UX optimisation

Risk management & communication discipline

• Explicitly logged pricing, renewal, and satisfaction risks
• Maintained transparent issue tracking and delivery visibility in ClickUp
• Continued structured retrospectives and sprint planning
• Increased accountability and responsiveness even as meeting frequency reduced

Results

• R19 million in monthly sales processed through QuickApp in July 2025 - the strongest month since launch
• ≥20% performance improvement on critical database queries
• Improved platform reliability and response times under load
• Reduced risk through systematic technical debt management
• Strong operational stability during peak usage periods
• More resilient integrations and data pipelines

Despite commercial sensitivity, the platform continued to deliver clear, measurable business outcomes.

Why This Matters

For automotive finance platforms, digital reliability directly impacts revenue.

Volkswagen Financial Services South Africa achieved:

• A stable, scalable digital finance platform driving real sales volume
• Measurable performance gains without risky rebuilds
• Preventative engineering discipline for a revenue-critical system
• Improved customer feedback and analytics capability
• A clear view of risks, trade-offs, and future opportunities

This engagement demonstrates Scrums.com’s ability to operate effectively inside large enterprise and global group constraints, while still delivering tangible results.

Modern automotive finance is increasingly digital.

Data-driven, and experience-led.

Scrums.com helps enterprise organisations build, stabilise, and scale revenue-critical platforms - without sacrificing reliability or governance.

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