ProductDock | BMS - Modern software solutions for the sustainable banking sector

About.

What does the client do?

BMS Corporate Solutions (BMS CS), part of the Atruvia Group, develops software and consulting solutions for the corporate banking sector. Their work specialises in digital tools designed to streamline processes, improve customer interaction, and support banks such as the German Volksbanken Raiffeisenbanken (VR) in effectively managing corporate clients. With expertise in areas such as data analytics, artificial intelligence, and sales management, BMS CS provides solutions that help banks address current challenges and adapt to the evolving demands of the financial industry.

Can you tell us about the project and how long you’ve been working on it?

BMS belongs to the banking sector and provides digital tools to two main client groups: banks and their corporate clients. A key focus of these tools is supporting compliance with European sustainability regulations, such as the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) from 2023, which makes environmental, social and corporate governance reporting (ESG reporting) mandatory for most companies in Europe and as such for clients of BMS.
In early 2023, we began collaborating with BMS as part of a cross-functional team that included colleagues from BMS and other vendors. Our work focuses on an application designed to calculate the ESG score of companies.

Initial situation.

What was the initial state?

BMS had already developed the concept of an app portfolio that included various sub-applications that banking clients could either select individually or purchase as a complete bundle. Our responsibility was to build the ESG calculator app, which became the most important and most used application. The ESG calculator delivers the ESG score which is an important metric to corporates since it directly influences a company’s loan rating.

What is the team structure? And how do you collaborate?

Our team is very diverse, with 13 members from different companies and countries including Germany, Croatia, Poland, Romania, and Bosnia. We work within the SCRUM framework with our own Scrum Master. The SCRUM team consists of a couple of frontend developers, from ProductDock. There are several colleagues taking over backend and devops engineering, and one Quality Assurance specialist. A Product Owner works closely with the team on operational tasks, while a Product Manager oversees multiple projects. Business analysts help us understand and sharpen the manifold requirements stemming mostly from legal and compliance backgrounds. Completing the team is a User Experience designer who not only designs the interface but also optimises user flows doing exploratory work with the users of our product.

The inter-company-collaboration works via tribes and quarterly plannings:

The different teams are organized into tribes that reflect particularly business relevant topics, such as sustainability. Each tribe consists of a couple of teams that are working on the products that belong to one tribe. On a regular basis there are tribe reviews where we discuss and sync about future goals, relevant features to achieve these goals, and what part of the system will be owned by which team. To streamline communication, each tribe has a tribe-architect who is the primary point of contact.
The goals are defined in quarterly planning, which is a series of meetings where BMS defines the plan for the upcoming quarter, and allocates a budget for the planned features.

Problem space.

What problems did you want to solve?

When we joined the project, the main challenge came from legal changes, such as the CSRD introduced in 2023, as part of the green deal, that made it obligatory for financial institutes to deliver the ESG report. Staying compliant with all legal obligations is one of the main challenges for companies in the financial sector.
For example, last year we adopted the whole system to be compliant with the Accessibility act that became effective in June, 2025. Read more about accessibility at BMS here.

Solution.

What did you do? What technologies did you use?

The ESG calculator app basically contains a list of questions that are answered by the responsible employee on the company side – which are the customers of our clients. It also requests legal documents that need to be uploaded. Once the data are submitted, a Bank consultant reviews and evaluates the answers. As soon as this is done the application takes over, takes all answers, documents and evaluations into account to finally deliver the ESG score.

The ESG calculator generates an official ESG report in PDF format, serving as a compliance document for both banks and their corporate clients. Each report is valid for a period of two years. Calculations are typically performed once or twice a year for all registered clients or on demand if organisational changes had been done that are supposed to lead to a new ESG score.

The ESG calculator is not only built to create the report but also to optimise and digitise the workflow between company and bank. One of the workflow optimisations we have implemented recently was a task list. For instance, if the customer submits a question, the banking consultant will see it as a new task that he can assign to himself for review and proceed with the next steps. This feature helps keep track of all tasks, and makes it easy to delegate responsibilities to another colleague or superior.

This is one of the trickier parts, since we need to handle complicated rights management. There are different views, one for the corporate clients who answer the questionnaire, and another for the banking consultants who have an extended admin view with more questions or evaluation fields. Also, for compliance reasons, only specific bank consultants can see certain tasks depending on factors such as the responsible department, client ownership, or loan amount. Data privacy is an essential part of the rights management as it is not allowed to see the questionnaire of an account that is owned by another banking consultant. However, while handling privacy is not that complex, what makes it challenging is that usually several teams are involved in building one feature, that can consist of different modules owned by different teams that belong to a tribe. Luckily, we have a designated contact person per tribe. Communication is streamlined through the tribe-architect who can help to find the responsible team member and speeds up coordination across teams.

Currently, we have about 600 banks that are using modules of the BMS portfolio application, and we could even increase the usage by extending other languages, and make the app usable to countries outside of the EU.
The ESG calculator app leverages a modern tech stack. The backend is built with the Spring Framework and Spring Boot, while the frontend utilizes Angular, TypeScript, and web components, with Angular components designed for reusability across teams (including potential use as React components). As our application focus is primarily on the frontend, we are investing more time and effort into testing, using Cypress and Spring for end to end coverage. Additionally, we migrated from Bitbucket to Gitlab for better CI/CD integration and features.

Results.

What was the outcome?

The ESG calculator turned out to be the most successful application, serving several functions:
Empowering data input: Representatives from companies can use the app to securely input necessary data for ESG calculations.
Facilitating expert review: Bank consultants have an administrative view, allowing them to review and evaluate the submitted data, ultimately leading to a comprehensive ESG score.
Starting point for ESG improvements: Receiving a detailed report about environmental, social and corporate governance at the customer’s company helps to further improve and increase their ESG score.
Generating legally binding reports: The application generates an ESG report in PDF format, which holds legal value and can influence credit and loan conditions.
Ensuring accessibility: In 2024, the system was specifically adapted to meet the stringent requirements of the Accessibility Act, demonstrating a commitment to inclusive design.

What are your lessons learned?

Mixed team collaboration: Our team members seamlessly integrated into a diverse team of a dozen people, collaborating with various suppliers and roles from different countries. This mixed model fostered a rich exchange of expertise. Additionally, with public holidays varying across countries, we can consistently ensure that developer resources are always available, avoiding any holiday-related bottlenecks.
Agile development & iteration: While initially working in two-week sprints, the team transitioned to one-month sprints, which proved more effective in delivering complete features. This adaptability underscores our commitment to continuous improvement.
Data privacy first: We successfully implemented a sophisticated task list feature that simplifies tracking and assigning tasks related to questionnaires and legal processes. This system adeptly handles complex rights management, ensuring the right person handles sensitive loan information and maintaining data privacy.
Focus on quality: Our commitment to quality is evident in the “four-eyes principle” for each feature, requiring both technical and QA approval before deployment. Furthermore, unit tests, e2e tests (Cypress), dedicated QA per team, and automated tests running every eight hours ensure robust and reliable performance.
Systematic handling of technical debt: The quarterly planning meeting includes feature planning and also the planning of updates. So technical debt is handled on a regular basis ensuring that it is kept under control.

Looking ahead

The ESG app is now transitioning into a maintenance phase, with a focus on architectural topics and bug fixing. Our next goal is to enhance another application within the BMS portfolio – the CO2 calculator, empowering companies to accurately assess their carbon footprint, and making the app as successful as the ESG calculator.

BMS – Mastering modern software solutions for the sustainable banking sector.