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Modern CRM appointment portal for international insurance companies: Scalable customer management with Angular, Spring Boot & microservices
Problem definition
The existing CRM system could no longer efficiently meet the requirements of the sales force. It lacked a central platform for customer management, scheduling and sales management that would enable transparent and fast interaction with customers.
Challenges in the existing system:
- Lack of transparency and inefficient lead management: Sales representatives did not have a complete overview of customer interactions, which led to missed sales opportunities.
- Manual appointment management and unstructured processes: Appointment scheduling was not automated and led to double bookings or inefficient processes.
- Limited flexibility in territory management: sales territories could not be dynamically adjusted, which limited the ability to react to market changes.
- Poor integration with other systems: The existing system was not seamlessly connected to other business applications, resulting in inefficient data exchange.
- Lack of mobile support: Field staff did not have secure and fast access to customer data while on the move.
Solution
To solve these problems, a cloud-based, modern CRM appointment portal was developed that significantly increases efficiency in customer management thanks to its powerful and scalable architecture.
The main features of the new solution:
- Integrated CRM on demand solution with 360-degree customer view, lead management and automated appointment management.
- Analysis and reporting tools to better understand customer behavior and make data-based sales decisions.
- Dynamic territory management that enables flexible adjustment of sales regions in real time.
- Automated processes and workflows that relieve the sales force of administrative tasks and allow inquiries to be processed more quickly.
- Mobile-optimized web app that allows secure access to customer data from smartphones, tablets and laptops, even offline.
- Increased data security and compliance through GDPR-compliant storage, role-based access rights and encrypted data processing
- Seamless integration with existing systems via modern APIs (REST/GraphQL) to connect ERP, financial and document management systems.
Technology selection
| Component | Old tech stack | New tech stack |
|---|---|---|
| Backend | Java EE, JSP, Servlet, XML, JDBC | Spring Boot, GraphQL/REST, Micronaut/Quarkus, Kafka |
| Databases | DB2, Oracle, SQL | PostgreSQL, MongoDB, Redis |
| Frontend | Web Services, xBeam Framework | Angular 17 with NgRx, Material-UI, RxJS |
| Tools & environment | Apache Tomcat, Eclipse, JIRA, Ant, CVS | Docker, Kubernetes, AWS/GCP/Azure, GitHub Actions |
Technologies & Tools
- Cloud-native & microservices-ready – scalability through Kubernetes.
- Better performance & maintainability – Angular + NgRx for modern UI/UX.
- Event-Driven Architecture – Kafka for asynchronous processing.
- Future-proof – Spring Boot + GraphQL for flexible API usage.
- Optimized development – CI/CD, logging & monitoring for high stability.
Activities
Analysis and conception:
- Recording and evaluation of existing CRM processes and requirements.
- Creation of an architecture and implementation concept based on a microservices architecture.
- Planning the migration of existing data and systems to the new platform.
Software architecture and development:
- Design and implementation of scalable backend services with Spring Boot and GraphQL/REST.
- Introduction of an event-based data flow with Kafka for real-time lead management.
- Development of state management and UI components with Angular 17 and NgRx for a dynamic user interface.
- Integration of single sign-on (SSO) and security concepts with Keycloak.
Database and infrastructure management:
- Selection and optimization of PostgreSQL and Redis for high-performance data storage.
- Introduction of container technologies (Docker, Kubernetes) for efficient deployment and scaling.
- Implementation of logging and monitoring solutions with ELK Stack and Grafana.
Testing and quality assurance:
- Automation of unit, integration and end-to-end tests with JUnit, Cypress and Jest.
- Performance tests to ensure a fast and stable application.
Deployment and operation:
- Implementation of a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions/GitLab CI/CD for automated builds and deployments.
- Ensuring high availability and scalability in the cloud infrastructure (AWS/GCP/Azure).
- Introduction of feature toggles and blue-green deployments for a low-risk introduction of new functions.
