Mode had struggled with making the most of their heavy and intricate data sets across their financial solutions. They needed a ‘one-stop-shop’ that could cater to their heavy data demands by creating a Business Intelligence (BI) dashboard. Ensuring that valuable data on specific products and currencies could be easily deciphered and provide meaningful insights into trends.

They also needed expert guidance and production of a payment plugin that could feed directly into their Woo Commerce plugin, as well as integrating these new pathways into their existing Customer Relationship Management tool (CRM).

After an informative opening call with the Firemind team, we were able to lay the ground works on what a project of this type would type would require. The Mode development and data teams were impressed with our overall knowledge of the cloud space, as well as the specific Amazon Web Services (AWS) we believed would allow us to hit their requirements over the varied project.

The Mode team immediately signed up and shortly after, we began work on the project.

We decided to work on the bulk of the project’s requirements first with the new BI solution. The Mode data team wanted to move away from using local Postgres clients to Redash, an open source solution that’s specifically useful for Github integration. This BI tool would allow their team to connect and query their data sources, build dashboards to visualise data and share insights them with their peers.

After the initial planning and preparation, we proposed a cloud architecture that would be built on top of AWS Managed Services such as Amazon Fargate, with containers stored in the Amazon Elastic Container Registry.

We determined the appropriate number of worker containers, and the sizing of said containers based off multiple discussions with the Mode Data team around potential utilisation. We also ensured a strong element of versatility and scalability in the solution, allowing for more crypto currency data, pricing adjustments and market economy overview.

In order to work correctly in the AWS environment, and to allow credentials to be passed securely via methods such as AWS Secrets Manager, Firemind created new Docker Images for each of the Redash Services as part of a CI pipeline – these images were based on the standard Redash images and had minor additions, such as the AWS CLI and start scripts that retrieve credentials at runtime.

It would be possible to deploy without modification of images, however, credentials would then need to be passed via ECS, which could be considered a security risk and should be avoided. These images were pushed to the Amazon Elastic Container Registry and were tested as part of the deployment process, initially using docker on local machines.

Once this BI was tested and running, we moved onto the charity pages that needed stable and secure payment gateways running alongside their chosen merchant, Woocommerce. We had recommended using the AWS Payments solution, but Mode were reluctant to change all current accounts to an unknown, and were happy with structuring and flexibility of Woocommerce.

The integration into Redash ensured Mode could have access to every data element within their business. Opening up new areas of data insight, across their wealth of financial and technology services, as well as a more broad analysis of their crypto currency trends and forecasts.

Within just 6 weeks, Firemind was able to hit the requirements of Mode, beating their deadline date whilst enabling a secure, well governed, cloud environment.