Virgin Money Web Site Launches With CSC
Client: Virgin Money U.S.
Challenge: Support the launch of the Virgin Money business model and brand in the U.S. by creating VirginMoneyUS.com, a new Web site that helps friends and family lend money to each other for home mortgages, as well as personal and business loans.
Solution: An application audit to determine the scalability of the existing CircleLending site into the new Virgin Money site and its sustainability and weaknesses under significantly more user traffic. Develop a new Web site with new features and content for the new Virgin Money U.S. Web site, and host the site for at least three years.
Results: In two months, a team of CSC content developers, technical architects and testers created the new site and integrated the existing back-end system in time for a successful launch.
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In 1972, before he became a billionaire, Richard Branson borrowed $10,000 from his aunt to build a recording studio, which eventually became Virgin Records, and decades later, a $20 billion empire.
His latest venture, Virgin Money, a financial services company, is helping others borrow from family and friends for real estate, personal and business loans using its Web site, VirginMoneyUS.com, developed and hosted by CSC.
Branded for success
Virgin Money U.S., formerly CircleLending of Waltham, Mass., launched in October with the help of CSC. Over five years, CircleLending had built up a business in loans and mortgages between family and friends with loan volume that exceeded $200 million. Early in 2007, Branson’s Virgin U.S.A. made a majority stake investment in CircleLending and launched the newly branded company onto the financial services scene in the U.S.
The company plans expanded advertising, new and improved products, and a Virgin-branded alternative for consumers to traditional banking and credit products in the U.S. “Our goal is simple — to provide a service that allows for more choices, a surer fit and, ultimately, a better deal,” says Virgin Money U.S.A. President and CEO Asheesh Advani.
The new Web site includes calculators and a loan setup and signature process that allows customers to set up their loans online. They can work out the repayment terms (typically getting lower fees than they would from a traditional bank) and then repay the loan electronically, relying on electronic fund transfers, e-mail statements and reminders all handled through the Web site and Virgin Money.
A platform for growth
CSC began working with CircleLending on the project in April 2007. The first step was to perform an application assessment to evaluate the current lending platform’s scalability. The new Web site needed to support the launch of the more robust Virgin Money business on a platform able to sustain up to 10 times the amount of traffic.
The client and CSC also met in several workshops to determine at what point they would benefit from bringing in a common off-the-shelf Customer Relationship Management solution.
CSC was also tasked with re-architecting the environment, develop the new Web site and integrating it into the existing back-end systems. CSC’s Managed Hosting Services also won a three-year contract to host the U.S.-based VirginMoneyUS.com.
“In technology, this represented creating a Web presence and rebuilding a platform that can support the necessary scale and performance of a much larger organization, but can also accommodate the expected transition as we grow from a mom and pop startup to a global brand,” says Dan Narahara, vice president of technology at Virgin Money. “The effort produced a new platform based upon a much more stable and scalable architecture.”
From front to back end
The collaborative project initially began with CSC tasked to develop the front-end of the Web site and integrating usability with the Virgin brand. But the client realized CSC could also integrate with its core development design team, allowing for an even easier transition from the CircleLending site into the new Virgin site.
“It was a very fast moving project and certainly very demanding because we had a short amount of time to build the site,” notes Jeff Holmes, CSC's account executive for Virgin Money. “Our original plan was that we had about three-and-a-half months, but, due to circumstances we really only had about two months to build it while getting almost daily updates for the look and feel of the site.”
A 15-person team of CSC and Virgin Money (CircleLending) personnel focused on developing the technical architecture, developing the templates, integrating content and thoroughly testing the site to meet the fast approaching deadline.
“Ninety nine percent of teams charged with similar circumstances would have failed,” Narahara says. “We knew that it would take a combination of luck and/or extraordinary effort to achieve this task. We didn’t get much luck. It was only due to the relentless focus of all that we were able to produce a release-worthy application on a fixed-point delivery date.”
Holmes attributes the success to CSC’s willingness to work alongside the client to help them be successful. “The team recognized that there was a lot at stake here with Richard Branson coming to Boston on October 15 to launch in the U.S. Our team had absolute commitment to the client. We co-located so our team and theirs were able to work together. At times, you really couldn’t tell who was with CSC and who was with CircleLending.”