Claranet helps Backbase fast-track solution for Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services

About Backbase

Backbase is a privately funded fintech company with its global headquarters in Amsterdam and regional offices throughout the world – from New York to Singapore.

It all started in 2003 with just two people, fast-forward 20 years and Backbase is the backbone of hundreds of banks around the world and part of the day-to-day banking experience of over 50 million people.

Today, Backbase has a team of almost 2 000 people spread across 22 countries and 14 offices.

Backbase is partnering with Microsoft to re-architect banking around the customer, delivering a fully integrated financial services cloud stack that allows banks to jumpstart their digital transformation.

Like Microsoft, Backbase is constantly innovating, and Claranet brings the expertise to bridge both worlds.
Jeroen Unger, Senior Ecosystems Manager | Backbase

ISV Dev Center streamlines Dynamics 365 integration

When Backbase made a strategic decision in 2021 to move its cloud-agnostic solution to the Microsoft platform, a big factor was the Microsoft Cloud for Financial Services. As a provider of solutions that are the backbone of the day-to-day banking experience of more than 50 million people around the globe, Backbase recognized the value of a vertical-specific cloud that offers banks and credit unions complete out-of-the-box services and regulatory compliance.

To take full advantage of the Microsoft Cloud platform, Backbase wanted to not only host its services on Azure, which its developers were familiar with, but also increase the value of its solutions by integrating with Dynamics 365 customer engagement features. Because Backbase’s development team lacked Dynamics 365 domain knowledge, it turned to Claranet, a Microsoft ISV Development Center partner, to help bring a solution to market.

Within just two weeks, Claranet’s team of experts was able to help Backbase identify the ten most critical use cases for integrating with Dynamics 365, develop an accelerator to enable those use cases, and publish the resulting solution to AppSource.

Claranet’s deep Dynamics 365 expertise helped us iterate very quickly to provide a complete solution for addressing the challenges of heavily regulated financial services clients.
Jeroen Unger, Senior Ecosystems Manager | Backbase

Partnering to jumpstart digital transformation in financial services

Co-innovating with Claranet, Backbase released the Backbase Engagement Banking Platform for Cloud for FSI accelerator, which helps financial institutions reduce friction, decrease time to market, and re-architect banking experiences around the customer. Integration with Dynamics 365 improves the functionality of the Backbase stand-alone offering, providing a 360-degree view of the customer and new insights into important indicators such as churn risk.

The accelerator unlocks additional value by providing customers with new self-service scenarios and bank employees better, more personalized customer engagement.
Jeroen Unger, Senior Ecosystems Manager | Backbase

Since launching in early 2022, Backbase has seen strong demand for its accelerator, which helps banks get the full benefit of digital transformation without a lengthy implementation process. “When joining the Microsoft ISV Connect program, we set initial targets for co-sell wins. Not even a full year in, we’ve already doubled that number,” said Unger.

For Claranet, working with Backbase to create the new accelerator has allowed its developers to work with cuttingedge technology and focus on innovation around the new industry cloud offerings.

Strong partnership to unlock future opportunities

Working with Claranet, Backbase realizes the value of using Microsoft ISV Dev Centers to supplement its development efforts. “ISV Dev Centers are a unique value proposition for partners, and they have really accelerated our ability to help our end customers,” said Unger. Now that the accelerator has launched, Backbase plans to continue working with Claranet to map out what features to focus on by extending the accelerator, including how to use artificial intelligence to help unlock insights from the mountains of data stored in both Dynamics 365 and the Backbase platform.

Claranet sees its work with ISVs as a way to drive positive transformation in its own business through access to new global partners with a shared vision of customer success.

Working with ISV partners around Microsoft technology and their own products challenges our team to find new tools and new ways to deliver innovation to the marketplace.
Hugo Gonçalves, Business Developer Senior Manager | Claranet Portugal