Intro

Igor Balamut is providing services as a Senior Symfony PHP Engineer at Transformify, a Workforce & Vendor Management System.

Igor, what do you think about the technology empowering vendor management systems ( VMS)?

Vendor Management Systems are supposed to simplify complex processes, but how do they do that? Let’s have a look inside of the technologies which are used to empower all great and useful services provided by Transformify. When you choose some software provider, services or tools to buy, you want to know what is “under the hood”, is it a proven technology, is it a sustainable, scalable and modern software solution?  So, you want to get not only functionality that matches your needs, but also the best available on-market technical solution and technology stack. In this article, we unveil some points about our software development approaches.

Transformify delivers …

Software as a Service: SaaS 

First of all, let’s talk about what type of software does Transformify ( TFY)  deliver?

As it is known, Transformify provides services that enable End-to-End Workforce Management System, which includes: AI-driven Applications Tracking System (ATS) to manage the recruitment process, Freelancer Management System (FMS) to manage all employee types: payroll, EoR, and contractors, Vendor Management System (VMS)  to automate billing and payments to one-off vendors and service providers across the globe.

Our customers can work with thousands of freelancers and independent contractors worldwide but receive invoices from and make payments to just one vendor - Transformify. In other words, we call this Company-as-a-Service. It is natural that for this powerful concept of Company-as-a-Service the best technical match is the concept of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). 

And it is the first significant advantage of using Transformify enterprise cloud suite. As a business customer, you do not need to deploy any software and hardware on-premises, take care about further support and development of the system. Instead, you just use services on-demand from the Cloud and pay only for the services you have actually used. 

It sounds good ! So, in the modern world, SaaS is the right option for many innovative business models. Still,  you need to choose the proper service provider that will address the needs of your business among a myriad of possible options. How do you do that? Let’s consider the next points. 

When it comes to the selection criteria, user-friendliness, process automation, ease of integration, external integrations, post-integration support and pricing are always on the list.

Native Integrations with 3rd party software providers

Stripe, Payoneer, Google Calendar, Microsoft Outlook, DigiSigner, …

Integration of Software Services: Open API

Secondly, as a business,  you need to use a lot of different services to transfer payments, automate billing, sign electronic documents, create batches of payments, approve payments, etc. and you want to have the best solution for each of them. 

How is it possible for just one company - Transformify,  to deliver services for all these use cases? 

Here comes another modern trend in web technologies - different services (SaaS) can “communicate” using special tools and protocols, called Open API. So in this way, we can integrate the appropriate solutions provided by other technology companies.

Payment Services

Using Open API integration, we can ensure our customers use the services of such well-known payment providers as Stripe, Payoneer, Revolut, CoinsPaid and many others. Just some days ago, we upgraded Payoneer API integration to the latest version and added support for the Euro program. 

Digital Signature 

Recently, we’ve built another integration - integration with DigiSigner services. This functionality allows the online e-signature of agreements, terminations, NDAs and other documents between parties. All via a click of a button, respecting the signatory hierarchy and without leaving Transformify platform.

Job Publishing

Thanks to Open API integration, the customer’s job listings posted to Transformify ATS ( applicant tracking system) will be published by a lot of other recruiter services, job boards and job aggregators such as Indeed, Jooble, DrJob, Adzuna and many more. 

Calendar Integration

Your Google Calendar or Microsoft Outlook will be integrated to set up interview appointments as soon as you join  Transformify applicant tracking system (ATS). It will take in the availability of both the Applicant and the HR representative and then publish the event in their calendars. 

Transformify Open API

And as we are able to use services provided by other companies, in the same way we can provide our own software services to be used by systems of our customers to integrate. So currently we are working to implement an Open API for Vendor Payment service that Transformify already delivers online. This will automate the process of payments by integration of the services with customer’s internal systems. 

Google Cloud, Symfony, React, Transformify, …

What is "under the hood" ?

Last, but not least, the third factor that drives success, efficiency, and reliability of our products is the proper choice of each component that is used for building our own system. 

Google Cloud Platform

As long as Transformify enterprise software is under the SaaS model, we should have a reliable cloud hosting for our platform. By using Google Cloud Platform (GCP), offered by Google, our hosting is as reliable and effective as Google cloud services can be. Imagine that the hosting runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses internally for its end-user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, Google Drive, and YouTube.

Symfony 

Our development team is very careful in choosing development frameworks and tools. Currently, we develop web applications using Symfony (sounds like music!). Symfony is the leading framework to create websites and web applications, built on top of the Symfony Components, embracing and promoting professionalism, best practices, standardization, security  and interoperability of applications.

React

Another very important component is modern front-end frameworks. In this area, we rely on React. React.js is a free and open-source front-end JavaScript library to build modern user interfaces and ensure great user experience (UX/UI). It is maintained by Facebook and a community of independent developers and companies.  React can be used as a base in the development of single-page, mobile, or server-rendered applications.

Transformify Core 

And of course, there are core modules that are developed by our Transformify development team, on top of all technologies and approaches we discussed above. We are doing specific functionality in the domain of our competency - Managing Workforce. We are working day after day to support and improve, innovate and promote the Transformify modules: ATS, VMS, FMS. 

What else matters ?

Knowing the business is a key factor 

So far, we’ve reviewed the necessary components and concepts to build reliable and successful solutions from a technical point of view. These are:

• Software as a Service - SaaS

• Integration with other services - Open API

• Reliable Platforms for development - Google Cloud, Symfony, React, Transormify core

Sure, it is a necessary condition, but still not sufficient. To reach success and satisfy the needs of our customers, we need to meet all their requirements and business specifics. So, the crucial factor is  “know your business”, to implement exactly what our customers need, and propose to them the proper workflow. Thereby, our software development team cooperates closely with our business team:  marketing, sales and finance departments. 

Having all these business practices in place, as well as an established development process, we are able to guarantee the high quality of our products and services.