Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Boost Application Quality with Cypress: CI/CD, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned

Boost Application Quality with Cypress: CI/CD, Best Practices, and Lessons Learned

Auteur n°16 – Martin

In an environment where speed to market and application reliability are critical, end-to-end test automation becomes a strategic lever. With Cypress, every code change can be continuously validated and deployed with increased confidence. By combining Cypress with CI/CD pipelines and Docker containers, IT teams shift from reactive quality to a preventive culture, where every commit is tested, validated, and delivered in an environment identical to production.

Integrating Cypress into Your CI/CD Pipelines

Cypress integrates natively with your CI/CD pipelines to automate every testing step upon commit. This integration ensures reliable, reproducible deployments while reducing validation times.

Systematic Automation on Every Commit

Configuring Cypress in GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, or Jenkins triggers your test suite automatically after each push. Results are immediately reported to development teams, providing rapid feedback on potential regressions.

This approach fosters a continuous feedback loop: any detected issue is resolved before other changes accumulate. It thus promotes ongoing software quality rather than concentrating test efforts at the end of a sprint.

By standardizing automation, you minimize human errors from manual testing and ensure consistent coverage. Teams gain peace of mind and can focus on innovation rather than manual verification.

Reproducible Environments with Docker

By packaging Cypress and its dependencies in a Docker image, you get a strictly identical test environment for each run. You can precisely define the versions of Node.js, the operating system, and browsers.

This reproducibility eliminates the “it works on my machine” issue and guarantees consistent test execution, whether run locally, on a CI runner, or in a Kubernetes cluster.

Docker containers also simplify scaling your pipelines: simply launch multiple instances in parallel to drastically cut execution times.

Orchestration with GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, and Jenkins

Mainstream CI/CD tools’ support for Cypress lets you define complete YAML workflows. You can chain installation, linting, test execution, and reporting within a single pipeline.

Caching dependencies reduces build times, and Cypress plugins simplify publishing test reports and screenshots on failures.

For example, a Swiss e-commerce company cut its test cycles by 50% by orchestrating Cypress under GitLab CI and Docker. This optimization demonstrated that environment consistency and test suite parallelization significantly accelerate deployments.

Best Practices for Structuring and Customizing Your Cypress Tests

Adopting a clear structure and tailored commands improves your tests’ maintainability. Rigorous fixtures management and network stubbing strengthen reliability and speed of executions.

Organizing Test Suites and Cases

Structuring your tests in coherent folders (by feature, microservice, or business module) makes them easier to discover and maintain. Each file should describe a specific business scenario.

Limiting test suite size prevents excessive runtimes and quickly identifies regression sources. You can group critical tests in high-priority pipelines.

Explicit naming conventions for files and tests ensure better collaboration among developers, QA engineers, and product owners, and speed up test code reviews.

Custom Commands and Reusability

Cypress lets you create custom commands to factor recurring actions (authentication, navigation, form input). These helpers simplify scenarios and reduce duplication.

By placing these commands in the support folder, you centralize common logic and facilitate changes. Any update to a business routine then propagates in just one place.

This reuse improves test readability and reduces long-term maintenance costs. It naturally fits into a modular, context-based testing approach.

Data Management and Network Stubbing

Using fixtures allows you to simulate API responses deterministically, ensuring predictable and fast scenarios. Tests no longer depend on the real state of servers or databases.

Network stubbing makes it possible to validate complex business flows (payment, authentication, etc.) without deploying a full environment. Tests become more reliable and less sensitive to external instability.

Combining fixtures and stubbing accelerates test execution and tightly isolates each use case, which eases failure diagnosis and builds confidence in your automated suite.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Parallel Execution and Cross-Browser Compatibility for Enhanced Robustness

Parallel execution taps into CI resources to drastically reduce validation time. Leveraging BrowserStack extends coverage across browsers and versions, ensuring a consistent user experience.

Time Reduction Through Parallel Execution

Cypress supports automatically splitting tests across multiple threads, fully utilizing CI runners. Time savings on large suites can exceed 60%, depending on volume.

This parallelization maintains deployment frequency even as test scenarios increase. Pipelines stay smooth and avoid end-of-sprint catch-ups.

Optimizing execution times also frees resources for other CI/CD tasks, such as progressive deployments or automated security scans.

Cross-Browser Coverage with BrowserStack

Multi-browser compatibility is often a blind spot in end-to-end testing. Integrating BrowserStack into your pipelines lets you run the same Cypress tests on Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Edge.

This way, you quickly identify rendering or behavior differences, ensuring a consistent user experience for all customers, regardless of their technical choices.

A SaaS vendor strengthened its cross-browser compatibility via BrowserStack, showing that behavioral discrepancies accounted for less than 2% of test cases. This approach reduced production incidents and reassured users about service quality.

Integrating Test Reports

Cypress-generated reports (JSON, HTML) can be centralized and analyzed through dashboards. You can track coverage trends and quickly spot unstable areas of your application.

Automating report delivery to stakeholders (IT management, business teams, QA) increases transparency and aligns everyone on delivery performance.

This continuous visibility improves decision-making and fosters a shared quality culture, where every issue is tracked and resolved promptly.

Case Studies and Strategic Benefits

Real-world project feedback demonstrates Cypress’s impact on team productivity and software quality. This proactive QA approach becomes a strategic lever to control technical debt.

Building Trust at Business and Technical Levels

End-to-end automation with Cypress provides a comprehensive view of application behavior and reduces friction between teams. Business analysts see their use cases validated automatically, and developers receive immediate feedback.

This transparency builds trust in every deployment, lessening the fear of regressions and encouraging a bolder iterative approach.

On the technical side, the technical debt induced by late-detected issues decreases, as tests run from development onwards and cover all critical flows.

Accelerating Delivery Cycles and Reducing Production Bugs

With Cypress, teams align their test rhythm with sprint pace. Each increment is continuously validated, significantly reducing the risk of pre-production bugs.

A Swiss fintech observed a 30% decrease in production incidents and a 40% faster delivery cycle after adopting end-to-end Cypress testing. Validation processes became more streamlined and repeatable.

Fixes occur faster, and production environments gain greater stability, boosting end-user satisfaction and partner confidence.

Controlling Technical Debt with Preventive Testing

Incorporating Cypress tests from the first lines of code turns QA into a permanent guardrail against regression accumulation. New features are designed and deployed without hidden debt.

Automated tests serve as living documentation of application behavior, easing new team members’ onboarding and future refactoring.

This preventive discipline enhances the robustness of your ecosystem, lowers maintenance costs, and ensures a rapid, worry-free time to market.

Transform Your Software Quality into a Performance Driver

By embedding Cypress at the heart of your CI/CD pipelines, you establish a continuous, preventive quality culture. Clear test structures, custom commands, network stubbing, and parallel execution with BrowserStack become the pillars of a scalable QA strategy.

Feedback from our Swiss projects shows that this approach significantly reduces test cycles, strengthens cross-browser reliability, and decreases technical debt. Your teams gain efficiency and confidence, and your releases become faster and safer.

Our Edana experts are here to design and deploy a tailored automated testing strategy, aligned with your business challenges and technological context.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Martin Moraz

Avatar de David Mendes

Martin is a senior enterprise architect. He designs robust and scalable technology architectures for your business software, SaaS products, mobile applications, websites, and digital ecosystems. With expertise in IT strategy and system integration, he ensures technical coherence aligned with your business goals.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Refactoring Technical Debt, Eliminating Anti-Patterns: Preserving Software Value

Refactoring Technical Debt, Eliminating Anti-Patterns: Preserving Software Value

Auteur n°3 – Benjamin

Managing technical debt and eliminating anti-patterns ensures the sustainability of applications and the smoothness of development cycles. When technical debt is visible, quantifiable, and planned, it becomes a time-to-market lever, while anti-patterns represent structural risks with zero tolerance.

To establish effective code governance, this article proposes an operational framework based on five complementary pillars. Each pillar aims to maintain code that is scalable, secure, and modular in order to preserve software value and guarantee sustained velocity. Mid-sized to large Swiss companies will find a clear methodology here that can be adapted to their context.

Standards and Anti-Anti-Pattern Checklist

Defining and enforcing clear standards limits the spread of anti-patterns. A dedicated checklist facilitates early detection of deviations and strengthens code maintainability.

SOLID Principles

The SOLID principles provide a foundation for structuring code and ensuring its scalability. By adhering to single responsibility and open/closed principles, you avoid creating unwieldy entities that are difficult to maintain.

Systematic application of these rules reduces coupling and makes unit testing easier. Developers can then refactor with confidence by following our guide to refactoring software code, without fearing major collateral impacts on other components.

Module Boundaries

Defining clear boundaries for each module ensures a decoupled and understandable architecture. By concentrating business responsibilities into dedicated modules, you avoid implicit dependencies between critical functions.

Proper module granularity also allows each part to be deployed and tested independently, as explained in how to structure a high-performing software development team. This isolation reduces regression risk and accelerates release cycles.

Duplication Rules

Code duplication leads to errors and inconsistencies. Implementing a strict “no copy-paste” rule and documenting legitimate use cases prevents the same business logic from being scattered across multiple locations.

Example: A Swiss logistics company discovered that several services were using different implementations to calculate rates. After an audit, standardizing via an internal library reduced calculation-related incidents by 70%, demonstrating the direct impact of duplication rules on system reliability.

Code Reviews and CI/CD Quality Gates

Systematic code reviews and well-configured quality gates establish a quality barrier at every commit. Continuous integration with complexity, coverage, and lint criteria prevents the introduction of anti-patterns.

Mandatory Code Reviews

Requiring a code review for every pull request ensures that at least two developers validate consistency and compliance with standards. This process promotes the sharing of best practices within the team.

Reviews also help catch SOLID violations, oversized classes, or nested logic early. They contribute to maintaining a healthy codebase and facilitate the onboarding of new team members.

Configured Quality Gates

Configuring quality gates in the CI/CD pipeline automatically rejects any code that fails to meet defined thresholds, following recommended agile best practices.

For example, you can block a deployment if the test coverage falls below 80% or if cyclomatic complexity exceeds a set limit.

CI/CD Automation

Automating builds, tests, and static analysis with tools like GitLab CI or Jenkins ensures continuous validation of each change. This standardized workflow reduces manual errors and speeds up production releases by helping you manage technical debt to secure your company’s future.

Example: In a Swiss industrial SME, implementing a GitLab CI pipeline including linting, unit tests, and churn analysis reduced the number of feedback loops for corrections by 40%, demonstrating the effectiveness of rigorous automation.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Code Observability and Executive KPIs

Implementing observability tools like SonarQube or CodeScene provides quantitative visibility into quality and debt. Well-chosen executive KPIs enable targeted remediation actions.

Technical Debt per Line of Code

The debt-to-LOC ratio highlights accumulated liabilities and helps prioritize modules for refactoring. A maximum threshold can trigger an automatic cleanup plan.

By tracking this KPI, IT leadership gains a clear and objective measure. They can then allocate resources preventively rather than reactively, optimizing overall time to market.

Cyclomatic Complexity

Cyclomatic complexity measures the number of execution paths in a function. The higher this number, the more costly testing and understanding the code become.

An example from a Swiss financial institution illustrates this: a key component had an average cyclomatic complexity of 25, well above best practices. After restructuring and modularization, this KPI dropped below 10, demonstrating a significant improvement in maintainability.

Remediation Cost and Mean Time to Repair

Tracking average remediation cost and mean time to repair per ticket measures the financial and operational impact of technical debt. These indicators help convince decision-makers to invest in refactoring.

By comparing these KPIs before and after interventions, you can quantify performance gains and reduced service interruptions. This data-driven approach strengthens the credibility of code governance efforts.

Time-Boxed Refactoring and Evolutive Architecture

Allocating 10–15% of each sprint’s capacity to refactoring prevents technical debt from becoming a barrier to delivering new features. A modular architecture and a RACI process stop anti-patterns as soon as they are detected.

Time-Boxed Refactoring Sprints

Including dedicated code cleanup slots in every sprint ensures that technical debt does not obstruct new feature delivery. This cadence embeds refactoring into innovation.

This discipline comes with clear objectives: reduce complexity in certain modules, improve test coverage, or simplify overloaded classes. The result is more robust code and sustained velocity.

Pragmatic Modularization

Adopting a module-based architecture—or pragmatically using micro-frontends and microservices—limits the impact of changes. Each team can evolve within its scope without disrupting the entire system.

This modularity, favoring open source and decoupling, also eases scalability and integration of third-party components. It prevents the Big Ball of Mud effect and architecture freeze risks.

Anti-Anti-Pattern RACI Process

Establishing a clear RACI for every code deliverable and review stage eliminates responsibility gaps. When an anti-pattern is detected, the module owner is notified and must decide on a corrective action.

This discipline ensures decisions are not left hanging and non-compliant practices are corrected immediately. It fosters a culture of shared responsibility and rigorous anomaly tracking.

Turn Your Technical Debt into a Competitive Advantage

A code governance approach based on strict standards, systematic reviews, quantitative observability, refactoring rituals, and evolutive architecture lets you control technical debt while eradicating anti-patterns. The proposed framework delivers sustained velocity, reduced mean time to repair, optimized total cost of ownership, and lowered project risk.

Our experts are ready to understand your business challenges and adapt this framework to your specific context. We support you in implementing CI/CD pipelines, configuring quality gates, defining KPIs, and organizing refactoring rituals to turn your debt into a true performance lever.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

IT Systems Integration: From Application Patchwork to a Unified Platform (API, Middleware, Webhooks, EDI)

IT Systems Integration: From Application Patchwork to a Unified Platform (API, Middleware, Webhooks, EDI)

Auteur n°14 – Guillaume

In an environment where each application operates as an autonomous island, IT teams spend up to a quarter of their day reconciling data across systems. This application “patchwork” hampers innovation, generates errors, and undermines responsiveness to strategic challenges.

IT systems integration is not limited to a one-off project but is an essential capability for aligning data, processes, and partners. By adopting a unified platform based on APIs, middleware, webhooks, or EDI, organizations gain productivity, strengthen compliance, and accelerate their time-to-value.

Impact of Disconnected Systems

Disconnected systems significantly impair operational performance. Integration debt results in almost 25% of time lost to manual tasks and increased risk of errors.

Time Loss and Proliferation of Manual Tasks

Each data transfer between two unconnected applications often requires manual intervention, whether exporting and formatting files or re-entering key information into another system. This duplication of effort drains internal resources and diverts IT teams from higher-value tasks such as innovation or proactive maintenance.

In a growth context, this overload increases exponentially: the more applications there are, the greater the integration workload, making any evolution laborious. The feedback loop slows down, and the company loses agility in meeting business needs and regulatory requirements. By avoiding the IT patchwork and adopting a unified architecture, you improve responsiveness.

Result: longer processing times, diminished user experience, and increased vulnerability to incidents, as each manual connection poses a risk of error or omission.

Data Quality Compromised by Silos

Application silos undermine information consistency. When finance, warehouse logistics, and customer relations rely on separate repositories, version and format discrepancies multiply, undermining the reliability of reports and dashboards. Discover our best practices for data cleaning to ensure your processes are reliable.

For example, a mid-sized Swiss banking institution observed discrepancies in monthly revenue figures of several tenths of a percent between its CRM and ERP. These variances required additional checks, slowing down the closing process and delaying strategic decision-making. This case demonstrates the direct impact of a lack of integration on the reliability of key metrics.

In the long run, these discrepancies can trigger costly corrective actions and in-depth audits to address erroneous or incomplete reports.

Business Silos and Limited Replicability

When each department builds its own solutions without a global vision, the result is an ecosystem where reuse is almost impossible. Cross-departmental processes run into technical and functional incompatibilities, forcing ad hoc workarounds.

This leads to increased technical debt: the more you overload an existing infrastructure, the more complex it becomes to evolve it. Teams end up dreading any new integration, preferring isolated solutions that are quick to deploy.

This phenomenon blocks the organization’s scalability, especially during mergers or integrations of new partners, where the absence of a standardized platform requires custom development for each new connection.

Benefits of Coherent Integration

Coherent integration creates a tangible competitive advantage. Business benefits are measured in productivity, compliance, and return on investment.

Increased Productivity and Team Empowerment

By automating data flows between CRM, ERP, and business platforms, operational teams free up several days of work each month. Recurring processes run without intervention, allowing staff to focus on analysis and optimization.

The cumulative effect is rapid: reducing manual tasks limits errors and speeds up the processing cycle for orders, invoicing, and regulatory reports. The result is improved satisfaction among internal and external stakeholders.

Beyond efficiency, this automation reduces user frustration and enhances IT tool adoption, as the business experience becomes smoother and more intuitive.

Enhanced Compliance and Simplified Auditing

A unified platform facilitates full traceability of transactions and data changes, meeting compliance requirements in finance, healthcare, or industrial sectors. Centralized and standardized logs ensure fast and accurate auditing, reducing the risk of penalties due to discrepancies or missing documents.

Automatic linking between documents, processes, and entities also ensures data consistency during internal and external audits. Reconciliation reports and regulatory dashboards are available in real time, without manual re-entry or consolidation.

This transparency builds trust with authorities and partners while reducing audit costs, which often run into tens of thousands of francs.

Time-to-Value and Increased Agility

By industrializing integration via real-time APIs or a data bus, new services can be deployed in weeks rather than months. This allows the company to quickly offer differentiating features and respond to evolving markets without rebuilding its entire system.

The modular architecture enables isolated testing and launching of MVPs, then connecting them to the global platform without disruption. This continuous delivery cycle maximizes the impact of innovations and minimizes regression risks.

Speed to market enhances competitive advantage, especially in high-tech sectors where customer adoption depends on offer responsiveness.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Approaches to a Unified Platform

Four complementary approaches to building a unified platform. APIs, middleware, webhooks, and EDI address distinct but converging needs.

Real-Time APIs for Seamless Interoperability

REST or GraphQL APIs expose business services in a standardized way, allowing internal and external applications to immediately access status data, ongoing transactions, and shared repositories. This real-time mode ensures instant consistency and bidirectional integration. To learn more, see our REST API guide.

Thanks to public or private APIs, Dev teams optimize component reuse, avoid reverse-engineering, and can finely measure performance and usage via monitoring tools. Interface contracts encourage a collaborative workflow between integrators and business teams.

This use of APIs strengthens the business user experience by providing dynamic dashboards and instant updates without waiting for manual synchronization.

Middleware to Orchestrate a Heterogeneous Ecosystem

In a legacy or multi-vendor environment, middleware serves as an abstraction layer. It unifies protocols, transforms formats, and orchestrates business processes through configurable workflows. This solution reduces vendor lock-in and eases scaling with a modular architecture.

For example, a Swiss industrial group used middleware to connect multiple regional ERPs, MES modules, and a CRM. This centralized integration platform demonstrated that you can modernize a legacy system without replacing existing components, ensuring scalability and compliance with ISO standards. This example illustrates how middleware accelerates application landscape modernization without interrupting operations.

Decoupling systems also simplifies maintenance: updating one component does not directly impact the entire ecosystem.

Event-Driven Webhooks for an Event-Driven Ecosystem

Webhooks enable notifications to be triggered on every critical event (order creation, stock update, case closure). These asynchronous callbacks ensure lightweight, event-oriented communication without continuously polling APIs.

Event streams are particularly suitable for serverless or microservices architectures, where each service reacts in real time to notifications. This approach reduces latency and server footprint while maintaining a high level of functional consistency.

Teams can thus build automated workflows, such as instant invoice dispatch when a payment is confirmed, improving user experience and accelerating the financial cycle.

EDI for Secure, Standardized Exchanges

In regulated sectors (finance, healthcare, large-scale distribution), EDI remains the standard for exchanging structured documents according to international standards (EDIFACT, ANSI X12). It ensures traceability, non-repudiation, and encryption of sensitive information.

EDI connectivity integrates into the architecture via specialized adapters that automatically convert incoming and outgoing documents into formats that can be consumed by the ERP. This automation reduces format errors and ensures compliance with legal and industry requirements.

With EDI, trusted partners can confidently share invoices, purchase orders, or regulatory reports without resorting to manual processes or insecure emails.

Architecture Governance for Integration

Architecture governance and pitfalls to avoid to sustain integration. A clear strategy, defined standards, and living documentation ensure robustness.

Avoid Monoliths and Ensure Format Consistency

Accumulating features in a single system hinders scalability and complicates updates. A monolith quickly becomes a major point of failure and a bottleneck for the entire platform.

It is crucial to standardize data formats, use common schemas (JSON Schema, OpenAPI), and define naming conventions. Without these rules, each interface develops its own dictionary, leading to incompatibilities and exchange rejections.

A Swiss healthcare company had centralized all its workflows in a single application. The teams were unable to deploy a patch without interrupting the entire service, causing several hours of downtime. This case demonstrates the need to decouple modules and standardize formats from the start.

Single Ownership and Living Documentation

To ensure maintainability, each interface must have a clearly identified owner responsible for data governance and the evolution of the API contract or exchange schema.

Documentation should be automatically generated from code (Swagger, AsyncAPI) and updated with each release. A centralized developer portal allows teams to access specifications, payload examples, and migration guides.

This process ensures smooth adoption of new standards and minimizes surprises during integration redesigns or expansions.

Security, Compliance, and Automated Testing

System integration involves the exchange of sensitive data: strong authentication (OAuth 2.0, JWT), TLS encryption, and granular access control are essential. Every entry point must be validated and monitored.

Automated tests (contract testing, end-to-end) should verify that each update respects API contracts and introduces no regressions. CI/CD pipelines incorporate vulnerability scans, schema audits, and performance tests to secure deployment.

Compliance with standards (GDPR, ISO 27001) requires rigorous log and access tracking, as well as periodic reporting to demonstrate architecture robustness and exchange traceability.

Transform IT Integration into a Competitive Advantage

An integration strategy cannot be improvised: it relies on clear governance, standardized interfaces, and living documentation. By combining real-time APIs, middleware orchestrating legacy systems, event-driven webhooks, and EDI for regulated sectors, you build an ecosystem platform capable of supporting growth and compliance.

Our experts in modular architecture, data integration, and legacy modernization are at your disposal to assess your situation, define an integration roadmap, and ensure a fast, sustainable ROI.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Guillaume Girard

Avatar de Guillaume Girard

Guillaume Girard is a Senior Software Engineer. He designs and builds bespoke business solutions (SaaS, mobile apps, websites) and full digital ecosystems. With deep expertise in architecture and performance, he turns your requirements into robust, scalable platforms that drive your digital transformation.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Protect React Routes with Guarded Routes

Protect React Routes with Guarded Routes

Auteur n°2 – Jonathan

Within web applications, ensuring that only authorized users can access certain parts of your interface has become essential for both security and user experience. React Router, the standard routing library, does not natively include a mechanism to control route access based on authentication. Leveraging Guarded Routes allows you to combine state management, conditional redirection, and front-end best practices to separate your public and protected areas.

This article walks you through setting up your own Guarded Routes in React step by step, using real-world organizational examples to master rights separation and streamline navigation.

Understanding Guarded Routes in React

Guarded Routes are components that decide in real time whether a user can access a given route. They intercept navigation and redirect to a login page or a public area when an authentication condition is not met.

Concept and Benefits of Guarded Routes

At their core, Guarded Routes behave like standard React Router Route components but include a condition that evaluates the user’s authentication state. If the condition is true, the target component renders; otherwise, an alternative action is triggered (redirection or error message).

This technique prevents duplicating access-control logic in every sensitive component of your application. By centralizing verification, you simplify maintenance and reduce the risk of missing a protection check.

From a user experience standpoint, Guarded Routes guide unauthenticated users through a smooth login flow while preserving navigation context (requested page, URL parameters, etc.). This enhances coherence and satisfaction, as the transition between public and private spaces remains seamless.

Navigation Flow and Access Control

Access control occurs before rendering the target component. In practice, you wrap your Route with a function or component that checks the authentication state stored in a context or store.

If the user is authenticated, the Guarded Route returns the original component; otherwise, it issues a Redirect or uses React Router’s navigate() function to send the user to the login page (for more details, see our article on OAuth 2.0).

You can also add logic to remember the requested URL so that, after authentication, users are automatically redirected to their originally intended page. This step improves personalization and maintains a sense of navigational freedom.

Use Case Example: Public vs. Private Separation

A financial services firm built a client dashboard where certain reporting pages were reserved for internal staff. Before implementing Guarded Routes, simply tweaking the URL allowed unauthorized access to these reports. By creating a PrivateRoute component that checked for a valid token in React context, the firm successfully blocked unauthenticated access.

This setup not only strengthened information security but also simplified onboarding: new staff members were redirected directly to a password-reset page if they had never activated their accounts.

The example demonstrates that a modular Guarded Routes implementation ensures consistency across all workflows and drastically reduces the risk of sensitive data leaks.

Implementing Authentication State Management

To make your Guarded Routes effective, you need a reliable global state indicating whether the user is authenticated. Various state-management options allow you to share this information between your routing components and pages.

Choosing a State-Management Solution

Depending on your application’s size and complexity, you can opt for React’s built-in Context API or a dedicated library like Redux or Zustand. The Context API is easy to set up and sufficient for an authentication flow without complex business logic.

Redux provides a predictable model with actions, reducers, and middleware, which simplifies debugging and tracing authentication events (login, logout, token refresh).

Lighter solutions like Zustand offer a minimalistic approach: a central store without boilerplate, ideal for projects where every kilobyte and dependency matters, in line with an open-source, modular strategy.

Storing and Persisting the User Token

Once the user is authenticated, you must store their token in a secure manner.

If persistence across page refreshes is required, using HttpOnly cookies provides better XSS protection, while localStorage can be considered with encryption mechanisms and a limited lifespan.

Regardless of your choice, implement a server-side refresh token to minimize risks associated with long-lived tokens, and clear all traces of the token upon logout to prevent exploitation after sign-out.

Context API Configuration Example

An SME in the e-learning sector chose the Context API for its internal portal. On each login, the AuthProvider component stored the token in its state and exposed a useAuth() hook to Guarded Routes.

When the user logged out, the provider reset the state to null and automatically redirected to the public homepage. This simple approach was sufficient to serve tens of thousands of students without adding third-party dependencies.

The case highlights that a lightweight, centrally managed state documented by React Context enables easy maintenance without compromising the application’s scalability.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Dynamic Redirection and Route Wrapping

Beyond basic protection, your Guarded Routes should handle navigation dynamically for a seamless experience. Wrapping Route components lets you inject this logic without code duplication.

Wrapping a Route Component

Wrapping involves creating a Higher-Order Component (HOC) or functional component that takes a Route element as input and adds access-control logic. The wrapper encapsulates verification, redirection, and conditional rendering.

This method avoids modifying every Route definition in your main routing configuration. You simply use PrivateRoute in place of Route for all protected pages.

This approach decouples routing logic from authentication implementation, aligning with a modular, maintainable front-end architecture that supports open-source evolution.

Generating Real-Time Redirections

When an unauthenticated user attempts to access a private route, the Guarded Route can record the initial URL using React Router’s useLocation() hook. After login, redirecting to this URL restores the navigation context.

You can also handle more advanced scenarios like fine-grained permissions: for example, directing a user to a “403 Forbidden” page if they lack the required role, or presenting an additional verification flow.

By using navigate() inside a useEffect, redirections do not block initial rendering and remain compatible with search engines and accessibility tools, as they rely on virtual navigation.

Error Scenarios and Fallbacks

It’s important to anticipate authentication-related errors: expired token, connectivity issues, or server-side validation failures. Your Guarded Route should then provide a clear fallback.

For instance, you might display a loading screen during token verification, then switch to an error page or reconnection modal if needed. This level of granularity enhances application robustness.

In a hybrid architecture (existing modules plus from-scratch components), this fallback ensures service continuity even if some back-end services are temporarily unavailable.

Front-End Security Best Practices for Your Routes

Protecting your routes on the client side is part of a defense-in-depth strategy but does not replace back-end controls. It reduces the attack surface and ensures cohesive, encrypted navigation.

Minimizing Attack Surface with Code Splitting

Code splitting with React.lazy and Suspense loads only the bundles needed for each route. By compartmentalizing your code, you limit exposure of unused modules and reduce load times.

Less exposed code means fewer vectors for XSS attacks or malicious tampering. Additionally, smaller bundles improve performance, notably page load speed, and enhance resilience during network issues (loading speed).

This approach aligns with a modular, hybrid architecture where each component remains autonomous and can evolve without compromising the entire application.

Client-Side and Server-Side Validation

Even though Guarded Routes block navigation, every API call tied to a protected route must be validated server-side. Always verify token presence and validity along with associated permissions.

On the client side, a validation schema (for example using Yup or Zod) ensures that submitted data meets business constraints before triggering network requests.

This dual validation strengthens reliability and defends against injection attacks or request forgery, aligning your front and back ends under a consistent security policy.

Unit and E2E Tests for Assurance

Unit tests verify that your Guarded Routes behave as expected under defined scenarios (authenticated, unauthenticated, expired token). Jest and React Testing Library allow you to simulate navigation and assert redirections.

End-to-end tests (Cypress, Playwright) ensure the user journey—from login to private page access—remains intact despite changes. They also catch regressions in your authentication flow.

By pairing automated tests with CI/CD pipelines, you reinforce application quality and security with each deployment, reducing the risk of undetected vulnerabilities.

Audit Example and Hardening

A healthcare organization discovered vulnerabilities in its intranet portal where certain endpoints remained accessible despite restricted routing. After a front-end audit, we implemented targeted e2e tests for each Guarded Route and enhanced validation logic before every render.

The result was a 95% reduction in unauthorized access incidents noted during an internal audit after production deployment. This case shows that a well-tested front-end layer effectively complements back-end controls.

Secure Your React Routes for a Reliable User Experience

We’ve covered the principles of Guarded Routes, setting up authentication state, wrapping and dynamic redirection techniques, and front-end security best practices. You now have a clear roadmap to partition your public and private areas while preserving smooth navigation.

Our team of experts is ready to help you implement these mechanisms, tailor the solution to your business context, and ensure a scalable, secure, modular architecture.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Jonathan Massa

As a senior specialist in technology consulting, strategy, and delivery, Jonathan advises companies and organizations at both strategic and operational levels within value-creation and digital transformation programs focused on innovation and growth. With deep expertise in enterprise architecture, he guides our clients on software engineering and IT development matters, enabling them to deploy solutions that are truly aligned with their objectives.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Kotlin Multiplatform: Simplifying Cross-Platform App Development

Kotlin Multiplatform: Simplifying Cross-Platform App Development

Auteur n°14 – Guillaume

In just a few years, Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) has earned its stripes and is now stable and production-ready. With 7 billion smartphones projected by 2025, companies are looking to cut mobile development costs and complexity without sacrificing native performance. KMP offers a hybrid solution: a shared Kotlin codebase for business logic compiled natively on Android and iOS, while preserving each platform’s own UI. In this article, we review the main benefits of Kotlin Multiplatform, illustrated by concrete use cases, to show how this technology can transform your mobile strategy.

Sharing Business Logic for Faster Development

Reusing a single Kotlin codebase eliminates redundancy and accelerates development cycles. Compilation to JVM and LLVM ensures uncompromised native execution.

Reusing Business Logic

Kotlin Multiplatform centralizes all business logic in a shared module, avoiding duplication of algorithms or data handling for each platform. This reuse yields functional consistency and fewer bugs caused by code divergence.

In practice, the same synchronization or validation service can be written once and deployed to both Android and iOS, significantly reducing maintenance overhead. Fixes are applied in a single place before being rolled out to all users.

This approach also simplifies unit testing. The same test suites written in Kotlin run on the JVM and within an LLVM environment for iOS, ensuring the business logic behaves identically everywhere.

Cross-Compilation to JVM and LLVM

The core of a Multiplatform project relies on two backends: the JVM for Android and LLVM (via Kotlin/Native) for iOS. Kotlin/Native generates native machine code, fully leveraging LLVM compilation optimizations for each targeted architecture.

Thanks to this cross-compilation, there’s no extra interpreter or virtual machine on iOS: the Kotlin code is directly embedded in the app alongside Swift components. Performance and integration with native frameworks remain optimal.

Project configuration is handled with Gradle, using dedicated plugins to manage shared sources and native targets. This user-friendly structure simplifies the setup of a single CI/CD pipeline, reducing orchestration effort and minimizing configuration errors.

Practical Example in Finance

An asset management company adopted Kotlin Multiplatform to unify its mobile financial reporting tools. Before introducing KMP, two separate teams maintained distinct implementations of the same performance calculations.

Switching to a shared module, the team cut the average implementation time of a new calculation rule by 40%. Presentation discrepancies between Android and iOS disappeared, ensuring a consistent user experience.

This case demonstrates that centralizing business logic not only enhances the final product’s quality but also improves code governance and accelerates time-to-market.

Preserving Native Interfaces for an Optimal User Experience

Kotlin Multiplatform offers the flexibility to leverage Compose UI on Android and SwiftUI on iOS. Teams retain full control over the native interface while sharing the same logic layer.

Compose Multiplatform for Android and Desktop

Compose Multiplatform extends Kotlin’s declarative UI library to multiple targets, including Android and desktop, building on Compose for Android and Compose for Desktop. This convergence enables interface component reuse while preserving customization freedom.

Developers can define adaptive visual components that automatically adjust to different screen sizes, all while sharing the same code. The declarative syntax of Compose accelerates iterations and strengthens visual consistency across the application.

Architecturally, these components seamlessly connect to KMP modules, ensuring the business logic drives the views uniformly, regardless of the execution environment.

SwiftUI for Native Rendering on iOS

On iOS, SwiftUI remains the preferred framework for building modern, responsive interfaces. KMP interacts with SwiftUI through Kotlin/Native code bindings, exposing shared functions as Swift libraries.

This allows iOS designers and engineers to work in a familiar environment, leveraging the latest SwiftUI features without constraint, while benefiting from consistent logic with Android.

Integration is seamless: variables and data structures defined in Kotlin/Native map to Swift types, minimizing manual conversions and reducing the risk of errors when calling shared APIs.

Optimizing Cross-Team Collaboration

The clear separation between the logic layer and the presentation layer encourages team specialization. Kotlin developers handle algorithms and API communication, while UI specialists focus on interactions and visual design.

This workflow minimizes merge conflicts and simplifies branch coordination. Each team contributes within a well-defined scope without stepping on each other’s toes.

A healthcare services provider tested this workflow by assigning one team to the shared API layer and two separate teams for Android and iOS. The result was faster update releases and a notable reduction in UI-related bug reports.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

A Mature Technology Adopted by Major Players

Kotlin Multiplatform benefits from JetBrains’ support and a vibrant open source ecosystem. Renowned references attest to its production robustness.

JetBrains Ecosystem and Support

JetBrains maintains the Kotlin compiler and provides Gradle and IntelliJ plugins dedicated to Multiplatform configuration. The language’s official support and frequent updates reassure about the project’s longevity.

Moreover, the open source community actively contributes to compatible third-party libraries, such as Ktor for networking or SQLDelight for persistence. This wealth of resources covers most technical needs without resorting to proprietary solutions.

Best practices and migration guides are regularly published by JetBrains and the community, easing adoption for teams new to the technology and ensuring a solid foundation for new projects.

Use Cases from Large Enterprises

Several international companies, including major streaming and finance players, have adopted Kotlin Multiplatform. They report significant reductions in maintenance efforts and more consistent functionality across platforms.

These organizations also highlight how easily they integrated new features thanks to KMP’s modularity and the decoupling of logic and interface.

The general feedback is unanimous: delivering a fully native end-to-end experience while benefiting from shared code efficiency boosts competitiveness against fully cross-platform frameworks.

Example from a Public Organization

A cantonal administration deployed a citizen consultation app for Android and iOS, leveraging Kotlin Multiplatform for data analysis and authentication. Previously, two external teams had developed separate versions, causing operational overhead and security inconsistencies.

By migrating to KMP, the administration consolidated authentication and encryption processes in a single core, enhancing compliance with GDPR-like regulations while reducing technical discrepancies.

This project shows that a public entity can improve responsiveness and control IT expenditure with a hybrid approach, without compromising the native experience for end users.

Pragmatic Migration Strategies and Scalability

Kotlin Multiplatform integrates gradually with existing architectures, minimizing risk. Coexistence with native code enables a measured scalability path.

Incremental Approach on Existing Projects

To avoid blocking ongoing deadlines, it’s possible to migrate one module at a time to KMP. Teams often start with the networking layer or data model management, then progressively extend the migration to other functional domains.

This incremental strategy delivers quick ROI since the first shared modules immediately benefit both platforms without waiting for a full rewrite.

The Agile methodology fits perfectly with this approach: each sprint can include one or two migration tasks, validated via advanced Agile methods and non-regression tests on each target.

Coexistence with Native Code

KMP does not eliminate the need for existing Java, Kotlin, or Swift code. On the contrary, it coexists within the same project through Gradle modules for Android and Swift packages for iOS.

Teams can continue using their proven libraries and frameworks while adding features developed in Kotlin Multiplatform. This mix ensures product stability and offers a gradual learning curve.

Once KMP skills are mastered, it’s easier to decide whether to extend this technology to other parts of the application without global architectural constraints.

Illustration in the Manufacturing Industry

An industrial group started by migrating its data synchronization module between the factory and its mobile monitoring app. This critical feature was developed in KMP and deployed to Android and iOS within a single sprint.

The migration reduced mobile engineers’ workload on synchronization by half, freeing resources to enhance real-time performance analysis features.

This proof-of-concept paved the way for gradually extending KMP to other modules, demonstrating rapid skill acquisition and tangible improvements in development timelines.

Kotlin Multiplatform: Toward a Unified, High-Performance Mobile Strategy

Kotlin Multiplatform enables sharing business logic between Android and iOS while maintaining native performance through LLVM and JVM compilation. Its open source ecosystem and JetBrains support ensure stability and rapid skill adoption.

Real-world examples show that an incremental migration, combined with modular architecture, improves time-to-market and reduces maintenance costs without sacrificing Compose UI or SwiftUI interfaces.

Our Edana experts support organizations in pragmatically implementing Kotlin Multiplatform, from auditing existing architectures to integrating shared modules, to build an agile and sustainable digital strategy.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Guillaume Girard

Avatar de Guillaume Girard

Guillaume Girard is a Senior Software Engineer. He designs and builds bespoke business solutions (SaaS, mobile apps, websites) and full digital ecosystems. With deep expertise in architecture and performance, he turns your requirements into robust, scalable platforms that drive your digital transformation.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Rust: Software Security by Design

Rust: Software Security by Design

Auteur n°14 – Guillaume

In an environment where over 70% of application vulnerabilities stem from memory bugs in C/C++, organizations are seeking a shift to secure their systems at the source. Introduced in 2015, Rust relies on a memory ownership model and strict typing that prevent vulnerable code from compiling. By eliminating the most frequent errors before runtime, it promises to significantly reduce associated risks and post-release patch costs.

This article details how Rust is establishing itself in critical sectors such as aerospace, healthcare, and automotive, and why its ecosystem is maturing into a strategic choice for cybersecurity and performance.

Security by Design with Rust

Rust enforces memory management rules at compile time to prevent critical errors. It provides strict typing that requires resolving access conflicts before code can even be executed.

The Memory Ownership Model

Rust’s ownership mechanism ensures that data is owned by only one variable at a time, eliminating risks of double free or memory leaks. This principle is based on a clearly defined borrowing and lifetime system.

Thanks to this approach, the compiler verifies that no variable remains referenced after being freed and that no unprotected concurrent access is possible. C/C++ code often needs external tools to detect such vulnerabilities. Discover our article on quality assurance and fundamental tests for ensuring software quality.

By enforcing these rules at compilation, Rust allows developers to focus on business logic without fearing errors related to manual memory management—a major advantage for the reliability of critical applications.

Strict Typing Control

Each variable and function is assigned an immutable type by default, which prevents dangerous implicit conversions. Developers must explicitly state their intent, enhancing code clarity and maintainability.

Rust’s static typing catches type mismatches between structures and functions at compile time, avoiding crashes and unexpected behavior in production.

By combining immutability and strict typing, Rust reduces attack surfaces, notably against vulnerabilities like overflows, underflows, or out-of-bounds access, typical in C/C++ environments.

Eliminating Vulnerabilities at Compile Time

Rust refuses to compile any code that could lead to illegal memory access or race conditions. Developers are therefore compelled to address these critical points before producing a binary.

This approach transforms the way software security is approached by fostering rigor from the very first line of code.

Adoption of Rust in Critical Sectors

Rust is gaining ground in aerospace, healthcare, and automotive industries for its security and performance guarantees. Pilot projects are already demonstrating its added value in zero-failure environments.

Manufacturing Industry

Development teams have integrated Rust into the low-level layer of an onboard navigation system. Simulations showed a 30% reduction in error detection time during simulated flights.

Financial Sector

An algorithmic trading solutions provider migrated a calculation module to Rust. Memory leak alerts dropped from several dozen per month to zero.

Healthcare and Medical Devices

A medical device manufacturer rewrote its network communication module in Rust. Network stress tests confirmed the absence of memory crashes under overload scenarios.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Optimized Maintenance and Equivalent Performance

Rust significantly reduces post-release patches with its early vulnerability detection. Its compiled binaries are compact and deliver performance on par with C/C++.

Reduction in Post-Release Bug Rates

The ownership model and lack of a garbage collector prevent memory leaks and unexpected latency. Teams report fewer critical incidents in production.

Internal feedback shows a significant drop in memory leak alerts. For more, consult our long-term software maintenance guide.

Simplified Validation Cycles

Testing phases benefit from a more predictable and readable codebase. Testers can focus on business logic instead of random behaviors. Discover our article on test-driven development to deliver faster and better.

Near C/C++ Performance

Rust compiles to optimized machine code and incorporates zero-cost abstractions that do not impact performance. Benchmarks show latency comparable to C++.

An industrial equipment manufacturer developed a prototype system in Rust. The demonstrator achieved performance comparable to existing code while eliminating segmentation faults.

This equivalence allows critical modules to be gradually migrated to Rust without compromising performance SLAs.

Current Limitations and Future Outlook for Rust

Rust faces a shortage of experts and a certification process still maturing for certain regulated sectors. Its adoption should be evaluated against ROI based on use context.

Talent Shortage and Skill Development

The pool of Rust developers remains smaller than those for C++ or Java. IT departments must invest in internal training or recruit rare profiles.

However, the active community offers numerous open resources and online courses that accelerate skill acquisition.

Companies that anticipate this learning curve gain a competitive edge by securing their projects from the outset.

Certification in Regulated Environments

For sectors subject to standards like ISO 26262 or DO-178C, Rust’s certification framework is still under development. Certified static analysis tools and libraries are gradually emerging.

Regulatory authorities are beginning to evaluate Rust, but comprehensive compliance records remain scarce.

Collaboration with compliance experts is essential to integrate Rust into a safe and regulation-compliant certification cycle.

ROI and Contextual Choices

Return on investment depends on project profile and requirements for latency, memory, and security. In some cases, a less restrictive language may suffice if critical resources are limited.

The decision to adopt Rust must consider training effort, tool maturity, and system criticality level.

A contextual analysis determines whether Rust delivers sustainable maintenance savings or adds undue complexity.

Rust, a Turning Point for Safer and Sustainable Systems

Rust offers software security by design, eliminating memory errors at compile time, and ensures performance equivalent to C/C++. Its guarantees lower maintenance costs and simplify validation cycles while meeting critical sector demands.

Despite a still-growing community, an evolving certification process, and a learning curve, Rust emerges as a strategic evolution for building reliable and long-lasting applications.

Whether you plan to migrate critical modules or secure your new developments early on, our Edana experts are ready to assess your context and define the best approach.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Guillaume Girard

Avatar de Guillaume Girard

Guillaume Girard is a Senior Software Engineer. He designs and builds bespoke business solutions (SaaS, mobile apps, websites) and full digital ecosystems. With deep expertise in architecture and performance, he turns your requirements into robust, scalable platforms that drive your digital transformation.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

ERP Inventory & Warehouse Management System Specification (Switzerland): Real-Time Visibility, MRP…

ERP Inventory & Warehouse Management System Specification (Switzerland): Real-Time Visibility, MRP…

Auteur n°3 – Benjamin

Implementing an ERP focused on inventory management and a Warehouse Management System requires a precise requirements specification that covers all logistics processes, provides real-time visibility, and efficiently controls replenishment. For Swiss companies with 50 to 200 employees or more, the challenge is to retain data sovereignty while ensuring interoperability and reversibility. A well-constructed specification blends proven open source building blocks with bespoke development to address multi-site operations, lot management, FEFO/FIFO or cross-docking. The objective is to improve turnover, service levels and operational costs without creating excessive dependence on a single vendor.

Defining the Functional Scope and Data Model

The specification must cover all key processes: goods receipt, quality control, picking and shipping. The data model must accurately reflect operational reality to guarantee traceability and flexibility.

Operational Scope and Priorities

The scope begins with goods receipt, including quality checks and automatic location movements. Put-away rules must account for zones, product characteristics (hazardous, temperature-sensitive) and defined priorities. The picking module should support waves, zoning and batch or serial-number management to optimize operator routes.

Internal replenishments, cycle counts and returns are natively integrated. Each process generates alerts or tasks in an RF operator interface to ensure reliability, reduce errors and accelerate operations. Packing and shipping include ASN generation and GS1/EAN-128 label printing compliant with logistics standards.

Integration with Material Requirements Planning (MRP) and Master Production Scheduling (MPS) feeds net requirements to purchasing and suppliers, taking lead times, economic order quantities and the production master plan into account. This link optimizes days-of-coverage and safety stock levels.

Structuring the Data Model

Each SKU is defined with its variants (size, color, configuration) and storage and sales units. Locations are structured by warehouse, zone and rack, enabling granular positioning and precise reporting on occupancy and turnover.

Lot and serial-number management, including best-before/best-use dates, as well as FEFO/FIFO rules, are configurable to comply with regulatory or business requirements. Kits and bill of materials (BOM) are supported for assembly or packaged-order operations.

Substitution mechanisms and expiration-date postponement enrich the model. Unit conversions are handled automatically via validated mapping tables, minimizing errors and ensuring data consistency across ERP, WMS and reporting.

Case Study: Swiss Industrial Project

A technical components manufacturer deployed a detailed specification covering multi-site operations and serialized lots. By precisely defining storage zones and FEFO rules, critical stockouts of sensitive components dropped by 18%. This example demonstrates that a robust data model is the foundation for continuous flow optimization.

Interoperability, Security and Compliance of Data Flows

An API-first approach and industrial standards ensure architectural flexibility and reversibility. Compliance with the Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (nLPD 2023) and the GDPR, combined with auditable traceability, secures data handling.

API Connectivity and Field Equipment

The REST or GraphQL APIs, supported by webhooks, enable real-time exchange with financial systems, the PIM and B2B/B2C e-commerce platforms. Periodic exports in CSV, JSON or Parquet feed data warehouses and BI tools.

RF scanners connect via standard connectors, ensuring a response time under 300 ms for picking and receipt transactions. TMS integrations automate transport order creation and ASN uploads to carriers.

Utilizing GS1/EAN-128 and printing labels that comply with international directives guarantees traceability throughout the supply chain and facilitates collaboration with third-party partners.

Compliance and Auditable Traceability

The Swiss Federal Data Protection Act (nLPD 2023) and the GDPR mandate encryption in transit and at rest, as well as fine-grained role-based access control. Every inventory and flow action is timestamped and recorded in an immutable audit log.

Segregation of Dev, Test and Prod environments, paired with an automated non-regression test plan, ensures data integrity and continuous availability. Backup and restore procedures are documented in an operational runbook.

Access governance follows the principle of least privilege. Regular penetration tests and security reviews ensure adherence to best practices and prompt adaptation to emerging threats.

Case Study: Swiss Distributor

A technical equipment distributor integrated an open source WMS with an API-first architecture to its financial ERP. This approach reduced stock synchronization time from two hours to a few seconds while ensuring full traceability for regulatory audits.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Demand Forecasting, Control and Performance

Demand planning and stock policy definition enable control of net requirements. Dedicated dashboards provide a real-time view of key performance indicators.

Demand Planning and Stock Policies

Forecasting algorithms consider seasonality, past promotions and market trends. They feed the MPS and MRP modules to calculate net requirements for components or finished goods.

Min/max stock thresholds and days-of-coverage settings are configurable by item family. Proactive alerts flag items at risk of stockout (OOS) or those tying up excess capital.

What-if scenario simulations aid decision-making before a promotional campaign or pricing policy change. Adjusted forecasts can be exported to the purchasing module to automatically launch RFQs with suppliers.

Dashboards and Business Alerts

Key metrics—such as turnover rate, days of stock, service level and carrying cost—are displayed on interactive dashboards. Logistics managers can instantly spot deviations and trends requiring action.

Webhooks trigger notifications in collaboration tools (messaging, Kanban boards) when thresholds are exceeded or critical anomalies occur. Periodic reports are automatically generated for steering committees.

Site- or zone-level granularity isolates bottlenecks and optimizes local resources. A comparison mode facilitates performance analysis between similar periods or peer sites.

Case Study: Swiss Omnichannel Retailer

An omnichannel retailer implemented a forecasting module integrated with its open source WMS. By refining min/max policies per customer segment, stockouts during peak seasons fell by 12% while dead stock decreased by 8%, optimizing overall TCO.

Technology Strategy, Reversibility and Change Management

A hybrid open source and custom architecture ensures flexibility, scalability and anti-vendor lock-in. Contracts must include reversibility clauses, SLAs and operational documentation.

Build vs Buy: Open Source and Custom Development

Open source components (WMS, planning, ETL) lower licensing costs and offer a supportive community. They suit standard processes and receive regular updates.

Custom development targets specific business rules: cross-dock workflows, prioritization algorithms or ergonomic operator interfaces. These enhancements complete the building blocks to meet each client’s unique needs.

This hybrid approach leverages proven solutions while preserving full freedom of evolution, free from dependence on a single vendor or imposed update cycles.

Ensuring Reversibility and Contractual Governance

Contracts must clearly define data and code ownership, include a no-cost export clause to standard formats (CSV, JSON, Parquet) and provide a detailed operational runbook.

SLAs set availability targets, mean time to recovery (MTTR) and potential penalties. Integration documentation covers APIs, webhooks and data recovery scenarios.

This contractual rigor ensures the company retains control over its system and can change providers or solutions if needed, without data loss or technical lock-in.

ERP Inventory & Warehouse Management System Specification: Toward Agile, Controlled Logistics

A comprehensive specification brings together a precise functional scope, a robust data model, API-first integrations, security and compliance guarantees, and a forecasting and control strategy. Combining open source components with custom adjustments meets the specific needs of each Swiss company without creating excessive vendor lock-in.

Contractual reversibility, performance indicators and a change management plan ensure rapid adoption and skill development. Open, modular architectures protect ROI and facilitate evolution alongside business needs.

Our experts are ready to co-develop a requirements specification tailored to your challenges, advise on the optimal build vs buy mix, and support your teams through migration and training.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Teleconsultation: How to Build a Specialized, Secure, and Truly Scalable App

Teleconsultation: How to Build a Specialized, Secure, and Truly Scalable App

Auteur n°16 – Martin

Since the health crisis, teleconsultation has established itself as a sustainable service, extending its use far beyond clinical emergencies. To compete with generalist platforms, simply offering video conferencing is no longer enough: real value comes from specialization by care pathway or discipline, ensuring a seamless experience for patients and practitioners, and scrupulously complying with data protection standards.

In this competitive ecosystem, every technical choice — WebRTC, modular CPaaS, API-first — must be driven by scalability, latency, observability, and integration with national health systems. This article details the key levers to build a teleconsultation application that is secure, scalable, and agile.

Niche Positioning to Create Value Through Specific Care Pathways

Differentiation comes from professional specialization or dedicated user pathways. Addressing a precise segment allows you to meet very targeted clinical and functional needs.

Generalist positioning gives way to granular expectations of prescribers: teledermatology, chronic disease monitoring, mental health or remote rehabilitation each require a tailor-made value chain. By defining a specialty scope, you can standardize exchange formats (dermatoscopic images, sensor data, CBT protocols…), optimize AI algorithms, and streamline case handling.

This niche approach enhances triage accuracy, improves conversion to in-person consultation when needed, and boosts practitioners’ adoption by providing tools calibrated to their workflows. A dedicated pathway also limits functional complexity, reduces regulatory testing scope, and optimizes load-scaling on a standardized interface for a given segment.

In practice, even minor protocol variations — imaging, clinical questionnaires, vital-sign monitoring — are managed within a controlled framework, enabling faster roll-out and more visible ROI on both marketing and compliance investments.

Teledermatology and AI-driven Triage

Teledermatology combines high-resolution imaging with image-analysis algorithms for initial triage. Each photo is standardized under a validated protocol, ensuring readability and compatibility with deep-learning models. This uniformity facilitates early detection of suspicious lesions and accelerates care pathways.

On the practitioner side, a dashboard automatically highlights detected areas of interest, cutting analysis time. Structured comments are prefilled from AI results, reducing manual entry and errors.

A Swiss health insurer’s service illustrates this: by focusing solely on dermatology, its MVP filtered out 70% of benign requests via AI pre-triage—demonstrating how specialization improves operational efficiency and doctor satisfaction.

Chronic Disease Monitoring

Chronic conditions — diabetes, COPD, heart failure — require continuous parameter monitoring via connected devices. By defining a dedicated workflow, from glucose readings to respiratory-signal drift alerts, the platform secures data transmission and prioritizes clinical actions.

Aggregated data are displayed as trends, facilitating weekly reviews and therapeutic decisions. Configurable thresholds trigger automatic notifications, while preserving the audit trail required for compliance.

This model proves that disease-specific specialization optimizes clinical value and reduces churn, since patients perceive real daily support and practitioners have tools tailored to protocol-based follow-up.

Online Mental Health and CBT Protocols

Online mental health demands particular ergonomics: integration of cognitive behavioral therapy modules, emotion journals, and self-assessment questionnaires. A guided pathway, structured in sessions, fosters engagement and allows practitioners to continuously track progress.

The back-office incorporates usage metrics and engagement scores, optimizing therapist management and protocol adjustments. Digital support becomes an extension of the practice, ensuring ethical compliance and confidentiality.

A Swiss remote psychological support initiative showed that implementing structured, measurable content doubled CBT program completion rates—proving the value of a hyper-specific service.

Designing a Frictionless Dual UX for Patients and Practitioners

Adoption of a teleconsultation solution relies on a smooth, intuitive user experience for both stakeholders. Every interaction must minimize context switches and technical friction.

From entry to session closure, the patient journey must be guided, regardless of user tech-savviness. Clear prequalification screens, automatic microphone/camera setup, and personalized SMS/email reminders reduce drop-off rates.

Meanwhile, the practitioner interface must centralize calendar, medical records, live chat, and co-navigation of documents. Status changes (in progress, validated, follow-up) synchronize instantly, reducing manual entry and application switching.

An audio-only fallback option or a preconfigured emergency call reinforces trust—an essential condition for quality clinical exchanges.

Guided and Accessible Patient Experience

Patients start with a questionnaire tailored to their consultation reason. Each step must be completed before proceeding, with embedded help messages to resolve technical setup doubts. The UX is strictly linear, avoiding complex menus.

In case of issues (undetected microphone, insufficient bandwidth), the system automatically offers audio fallback or sends a rescheduling link at a more convenient time. Error messages are solution-oriented and jargon-free.

Post-consultation satisfaction scoring enables continuous adjustment of sequence, question order, and visual presentation to minimize drop-outs.

Integrated and High-Performance Practitioner Interface

Practitioners access a consolidated dashboard with today’s schedule, patient records, and critical notifications. No multiple windows—one web workspace hosts video conferencing, note-taking, and image annotation.

Connectivity to hospital or private clinic information systems is one click away via embedded widgets compliant with GDPR and the Swiss FADP. Clinical notes are prefilled using adaptable templates.

A priority-patient logic (emergencies, chronic follow-ups) guides the practitioner at schedule opening, boosting productivity and day-to-day clarity.

Seamless Clinical Workflows and Proactive Reminders

Each step — appointment booking, video call, prescription drafting, e-prescription — is automated. System-triggered reminders inform patient and practitioner of pending tasks without manual intervention.

Real-time screen and document sharing is secured by end-to-end encryption, ensuring continuity even on unstable networks.

A centralized history logs all milestones, offering transparent tracing for escalations or transfers to other services.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Modular Architectures and Healthcare Compliance

An API-first foundation coupled with WebRTC and a CPaaS ensures scalability, low latency, and observability. Each component can evolve independently to meet regulatory requirements.

Native WebRTC adoption provides direct video/audio routing, minimizing latency and bandwidth costs. A modular CPaaS (Twilio, Vonage, Agora) supplies APIs for SMS, call management, and session recording—no need to reinvent the wheel.

A microservices architecture decouples video, messaging, authentication, and each third-party integration. This API-first approach simplifies observability via contextual logs, real-time metrics, and proactive alerts. By adopting a microservices architecture, you enable modular scaling and efficient resource utilization.

Overlaying monitoring (Prometheus, Grafana) and distributed tracing (Jaeger, OpenTelemetry) delivers a detailed performance picture—essential for maintaining high SLAs even under heavy load.

GDPR and Swiss FADP Compliance

Every personal health data transfer must rest on a clear legal basis. Encryption in transit and at rest, pseudonymization of identifiers, and access traceability are non-negotiable. Audit logs must record every operation on patient records.

In Switzerland, the Federal Act on Data Protection (FADP) mirrors GDPR with nuances for local processing. Mapping cross-border data flows and appointing a Data Protection Officer to manage incidents is imperative.

Authentication interfaces can leverage HIN for practitioners and an OpenID Connect provider for patients, ensuring secure SSO and centralized rights management.

HDS-Certified Hosting and Local Requirements

Health data hosting in France requires Health Data Hosting (HDS) certification, while in Switzerland it may rely on ISO27001-compliant data centers in zones 1 or 2. The choice must cover geographic redundancy for disaster recovery.

Resilience plans, backup management, and restoration procedures are audited regularly. Failover tests guarantee restart in under 15 minutes, per industry best practices.

An isolated preproduction instance allows update testing without impacting production, essential for maintaining compliance and operational security.

Key Integrations with EMR/EHR, Payment, and e-Prescription

The API bridge to Swiss Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD) systems or French medical records (via National Health Insurance/Third-party Payer) should be orchestrated by a dedicated API gateway. Each SOAP or REST call is validated against national schemas.

The integrated payment module handles PCI-DSS-compliant transactions. Billing is automatically forwarded to third-party payers or insurers, reducing manual entry and billing errors.

Electronic prescription generation follows the national protocol, is electronically signed, and archived in a legally compliant vault, ensuring traceability and reliability.

Managing Acquisition and Operational Costs

Balance targeted marketing investments with operational optimization to control run costs, especially for real-time video. SRE governance ensures reliability and incident reduction.

Acquisition cost optimization leverages a health-focused SEO/SEA keyword strategy, partnerships with care networks, and insurer channels. Technical onboarding performance directly impacts CAC—a streamlined process boosts conversion.

On the operational side, peer-to-peer WebRTC video limits relay server expenses. Usage-based CPaaS billing allows capacity adjustment to real traffic, avoiding disproportionate fixed costs.

A dedicated SRE team for the platform ensures continuous dependency updates, TLS certificate rotation, and automated load testing. These practices reduce incidents and control support expenses.

Optimizing Acquisition Costs

Precise persona targeting via LinkedIn Ads and Google Ads, backed by SEO-optimized content, focuses budget on the most profitable segments (CIOs, IT directors, healthcare managers). Specialized landing pages boost Quality Score and lower CPC.

Event-based retargeting (white-paper downloads, demo views) strengthens nurturing and improves conversion without increasing initial investments.

Collaboration with care networks, medical federations, or professional associations offers low-cost recommendation channels, significantly reducing CAC over time.

Reducing Real-Time Video Operational Costs

A WebRTC mesh topology limits TURN/STUN server load. When peer-to-peer isn’t possible, a CPaaS dynamically adjusts routing to optimize throughput and latency without overprovisioning resources.

Automated load-testing validates peak-handling capacity without infrastructure over-sizing. QoS metrics (packet loss, jitter, round-trip time) are monitored and escalated to the SRE team for immediate action.

Micro-service decomposition of video components (signaling, media server, transcoding) allows individual scaling—maximizing efficiency and reducing run costs.

SRE Governance and Support Processes

Runbooks for every incident scenario accelerate mean time to resolution (MTTR). Playbooks are regularly tested in simulations to ensure relevance.

A robust CI/CD pipeline deploys patches and new versions in minutes, with instant rollback if automated monitoring detects regressions.

Post-mortem reviews feed a continuous improvement program, preventing incident recurrence and optimizing platform availability.

Make Teleconsultation a Competitive Advantage

By specializing by pathway, offering a dual frictionless UX, and adopting a modular architecture compliant with healthcare standards, you can deploy a secure and scalable teleconsultation solution.

Whether you represent a hospital, clinic, insurer, or integrated health service, our experts are ready to assess your technical, regulatory, and business needs. Together, let’s build a platform that sets you apart, safeguards your data, and supports your users for the long term.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Martin Moraz

Avatar de David Mendes

Martin is a senior enterprise architect. He designs robust and scalable technology architectures for your business software, SaaS products, mobile applications, websites, and digital ecosystems. With expertise in IT strategy and system integration, he ensures technical coherence aligned with your business goals.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Job Intermediation Platforms: Winning Through Niche Focus, Trust, and Transactional Execution

Job Intermediation Platforms: Winning Through Niche Focus, Trust, and Transactional Execution

Auteur n°4 – Mariami

On a market saturated with generalist platforms, competitive advantage lies in precise positioning, flawless transactional execution, and controlled local liquidity. Tomorrow’s leaders target a vertical segment, build trust through a robust end-to-end journey, and manage their metrics to achieve profitability.

In this article, we explain how to build a specialized B2B2C job marketplace (for example, last-minute hospitality or multi-site housekeeping), assemble a complete transactional chain (KYC, escrow, e-sign contracts, payouts), and drive a local liquidity engine. Anti-disintermediation is won by adding value at every step of the cycle.

Vertical positioning: the strength of a clear niche

Focusing on a specific segment allows you to meet unique business needs and deliver a differentiated experience. A generalist job marketplace struggles to retain users and guarantee the quality of its matches.

Understanding the target sector’s business challenges

Vertical positioning means deciphering the operational and regulatory processes unique to your chosen segment. For last-minute hospitality, for instance, demand variability requires flexible profiles available within hours. The platform must incorporate industry-specific filters (role type, equipment, certifications) and offer workflows adapted to seasonal peaks.

By deeply understanding restaurant or hotel operators’ expectations, the solution can propose dynamic pricing, insurance guarantees, and dedicated support. This approach strengthens the relevance of each match and eliminates friction points that a generalist provider cannot control.

Vertical positioning also optimizes communication and marketing: messaging tailored to restaurateurs or accommodation managers resonates far more than a one-size-fits-all platform.

Example in event logistics

An event-logistics specialist launched a marketplace dedicated to riggers and audio-visual technicians. By focusing on this segment, it reduced profile qualification times by 40%.

This case shows that a vertical platform—targeting event-specific skills and certifications (safety, equipment handling)—increases client satisfaction and provider retention rates.

With territory playing a key role, the startup adapted its services to local constraints (permits, insurance), instilling trust among end users.

Building a differentiated value proposition

Beyond matching, value crystallizes in understanding the workflows and constraints of the target profession. Offering specialized modules (for example, timesheets tailored to hospitality’s legal break requirements) helps simplify both sides’ operations.

Deep industry expertise also enables integration with insurance partners or the addition of certified training. These ancillary services enhance the value proposition and create barriers to entry for newcomers.

In short, verticality transforms a matching platform into an ecosystem of specialized services, boosting trust and user retention.

Robust transactional chain and anti-disintermediation

Flawless transactional execution is a key trust lever for a job marketplace. KYC, contracts, escrow, and payout steps must be seamless and secure.

KYC and regulatory compliance

Identity verification (KYC) of providers and client companies is a prerequisite for secure, lawful matches. Integrating specialized vendors (document checks, background screening) enables automated collection and validation of supporting documents.

In Switzerland, obtaining CRS authorization is mandatory for personnel placement activities. This compliance reinforces the platform’s credibility with authorities and major accounts.

A modular open-source solution combined with a third-party KYC service allows you to evolve without vendor lock-in and finely tune checks to vertical-segment requirements.

Managing e-sign contracts

Generating and electronically signing contracts is critical for securing commercial relationships. Contracts must be fully generated and signed online—paperless—via a recognized e-signature API.

Clause customization (hourly rates, penalties, termination terms) should adjust automatically to profiles and mission types. This autonomy reduces legal teams’ workload and accelerates provider deployment.

Signature evidence and timestamps ensure traceability and facilitate dispute management.

Escrow mechanism and dispute resolution

Using escrow protects both the client and the provider. Funds are held until service validation, limiting disintermediation and securing payments.

By integrating Stripe Connect or a similar solution, the platform can automate payment splits, apply the take rate, and trigger fund releases upon proof of completion.

An automated dispute-resolution module with ticketing and mediation handles incidents swiftly, maintaining user trust.

Secure payouts and reconciliation

Payouts cover IBAN management, transfer timings, and social and tax withholdings based on provider residence. A local banking API or a payment service provider adapted to the Swiss market ensures FINMA compliance and fee transparency.

Automated transaction reconciliation, backed by integrated financial reporting, enables real-time tracking of GMV, take rate, and cash-flow optimization.

This payment-level granularity supports reliable cash-flow forecasting and demonstrates the marketplace’s financial solidity to investors.

{CTA_BANNER_BLOG_POST}

Local liquidity engine and retention strategies

Local liquidity depends on a qualified supply, reliable matching, and an effective retention program. Without engaged providers and demanders, a marketplace quickly loses its appeal.

Qualified supply and reliable matching

To generate relevant matches, the algorithm must cross-reference skills, availability, and geographic proximity. Incorporating contextual criteria (language, required equipment, ratings) improves suggestion accuracy.

Automated qualification workflows (technical tests, reference checks) ensure each registered profile meets the niche’s predefined standards.

Proximity—crucial in event logistics or multi-site housekeeping—requires real-time updates of provider availability within a defined zone.

Retention through re-booking and actionable reputation

An actionable reputation system encourages companies to reuse the same providers and rewards the most reliable professionals. Ratings, comments, and performance indicators become visible signals at every match.

One-click re-booking simplifies mission renewals, reducing provider churn and boosting the platform’s Net Promoter Score (NPS).

Retention also relies on proactive alerts and availability reminders for recurring or seasonal missions.

Exclusive in-app perks and premium offers

Offering perks (insurance discounts, ongoing training, local partnerships) increases provider loyalty. These benefits can unlock based on mission volume or service quality.

A resource hub (templates, checklists, tracking tools) adds registration value and further engages users in the ecosystem.

Premium services—such as priority mission access or advanced reporting—provide an additional monetization lever.

Pre-, in-, and post-mission tools

Integrated tools—digital timesheets, photo/GPS proof, start-and-end notifications—ensure execution transparency and reliability.

These elements automatically trigger escrow fund releases and feed into provider reputation scores.

Operational data collection enriches the platform’s dataset, continually optimizing matching and service quality.

Narrow yet deep MVP in 12 weeks and unit-economics tracking

A quick launch requires focusing efforts on a limited scope while offering a complete, frictionless journey. Tracking metrics (take rate, CAC/LTV, recurrence) validates the model’s viability.

Defining the MVP scope

The MVP should include essential functions: KYC onboarding, mission posting, matching, e-sign contract management, escrow, and payout. Each feature must be tested in an end-to-end scenario.

By favoring a modular architecture, you can add or swap services (KYC, PSP, matching engine) without major rewrites.

The goal is to validate business value and initial user adoption before investing in secondary features.

Flawless end-to-end journey

Journey fluidity—from registration to payment—is a key success factor. KYC validation, contract signing, and fund transfer times must be controlled and communicated in real time.

User-experience tests conducted in real-world conditions help identify friction points and optimize interfaces for each vertical segment.

Even minimal customer support must respond quickly to resolve incidents and maintain trust.

Metrics tracking: take rate, CAC/LTV, and recurrence

Take rate (commission per transaction) should be integrated into reporting from day one. A sector benchmark positions the platform against market practices.

CAC (customer acquisition cost) and LTV (lifetime value) must be calculated per vertical segment to optimize marketing strategy and investments.

Measuring 30- and 90-day re-booking rates indicates satisfaction and local liquidity. These insights guide functional extension decisions.

Obtaining Swiss personnel-placement authorization

In Switzerland, any platform offering personnel placement must secure cantonal or federal authorization, depending on the activity type. This sometimes lengthy process requires demonstrating compliance with labor and worker-protection laws.

Planning this step alongside technical development avoids production delays and ensures legal operations from MVP launch.

An open-source, modular architecture eases adaptation to regulatory requirements and compliance-procedure updates.

Gain agility and trust with a vertical job marketplace

By betting on clear vertical positioning, a robust transactional chain, and a local liquidity engine, you build a job marketplace capable of fighting disintermediation. A focused MVP deployed in 12 weeks validates your model quickly and refines unit economics. Obtaining Swiss personnel-placement authorization ensures legal compliance and strengthens credibility with users.

Our experts are ready to support you in designing, implementing, and optimizing a niche, scalable, and profitable marketplace—from strategy to execution.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Mariami Minadze

Mariami is an expert in digital strategy and project management. She audits the digital ecosystems of companies and organizations of all sizes and in all sectors, and orchestrates strategies and plans that generate value for our customers. Highlighting and piloting solutions tailored to your objectives for measurable results and maximum ROI is her specialty.

Categories
Featured-Post-Software-EN Software Engineering (EN)

Test Driven Development (TDD): Writing Tests First to Deliver Faster and Better

Test Driven Development (TDD): Writing Tests First to Deliver Faster and Better

Auteur n°4 – Mariami

In a context where time-to-market speed and deliverable robustness are strategic priorities, Test Driven Development (TDD) stands out as an indispensable methodology. By reversing the traditional development order—writing tests first, then the code to make them pass—TDD ensures constant feedback and secures every change.

Beyond code quality, this approach streamlines collaboration between business and technical teams, aligns teams on precise acceptance criteria, and keeps technical debt at bay. In this article, we demystify the Red-Green-Refactor cycle, explain its integration into CI/CD pipelines, detail a gradual adoption process, and present key metrics to measure TDD effectiveness, regardless of the languages or stacks used.

Red-Green-Refactor Cycle

The Red-Green-Refactor cycle structures development around short iterations, ensuring functional, tested code at each step. It makes refactoring a routine practice, reducing code complexity and instability.

Principles of Red-Green-Refactor

The Red-Green-Refactor cycle breaks down into three distinct phases that flow quickly. First, the Red phase involves writing a unit test or integration test that fails. This step forces precise definition of expected behavior and formalization of specifications from the outset.

Next comes the Green phase, where the goal is to produce the minimal code needed to pass the test. The emphasis is on simplicity: validating that the test turns green without worrying about code elegance.

Finally, the Refactor phase aims to clean up and optimize the newly introduced code while keeping the test suite green. This ongoing practice ensures that every change is safe, as it will only be confirmed if all tests pass successfully.

Concrete Use Case

A financial institution adopted the Red-Green-Refactor cycle for the overhaul of its internal APIs. Each new route was first covered by an automated test.

Discuss your challenges with an Edana expert

PUBLISHED BY

Mariami Minadze

Mariami is an expert in digital strategy and project management. She audits the digital ecosystems of companies and organizations of all sizes and in all sectors, and orchestrates strategies and plans that generate value for our customers. Highlighting and piloting solutions tailored to your objectives for measurable results and maximum ROI is her specialty.