My story

From banking associate to software developer

Today, I work as a software developer using Microsoft technologies, but that was not always the case because I started my professional career as an associate in corporate banking. Unlike many today, I did not attend any boot camps nor wanted to switch the job because finance and banking were not appealing enough.

Surprisingly, it just happened because I wanted to automate my work, mundane work. The detailed story follows.

The beginnings

After graduating from Finance and Banking in 2010 I began to work for BNP Paribas Corporate Banking. First I was Assistant to the Relationship Manager and later Credit Documentation Specialist. It was a great experience and Corporate Banking was what interested me the most, also I believed that the Credit Analyst position is what I wanted to do for the next few years at least.

This is how an old banking system looks like. It was old DOS application using IBM AS/400 form 80's (Microsoft Excel 2007 in the background), nice green numbers on black background... - I took this picture in 2012 while working for BNP Paribas.

However, within the first three years, I had just one issue... a lot of tedious tasks, so at some point, I started to ask myself if there is anything I can do to make it less manual. Unfortunately, due to the way the banking systems works and the state of existing processes (that would include banking law), there was not much that could be done to automate the processes, or at least I believed so.

By mid-2013 we had two major issues with one of the existing customers. With the combination of human error and imperfection of banking processes, our customer could not get access to its credit overdraft for a day (I believe it was a few million PLN for a mid-sized enterprise that uses it for daily operations). It happened because the bank division that provides banking products must handle the credit renewal process which requires manually track customer credit maturity; and when the time comes, the Business Analyst and Relationship Manager must prepare a full financial analysis and renewal request for the Credit Risk Department. We have failed.

This situation was an opportunity to propose an automated solution. I developed a small desktop application for Windows that runs in the background tracking customer credits maturity, it sent email notifications to the team within 14, 7, and 3 days before the credit due date; and even if 3 days is usually insufficient time to process renewal, it often allows to prepare a request for a technical extension for let's say two weeks to avoid shutting down the credit line (banking systems does this automatically).

While being not entirely perfect application (no SOLID or DRY principles applied, the strange mix of OOP and procedural code) written within 2 weeks in Delphi (VCL framework), it worked for us. It seemed that there is always a way to improve work by automated solutions even if you are not part of the IT division. It only requires analytical thinking, creativity, some technical proficiency, and willingness to learn new things to complete the tasks.

All in all, it was an interesting experience with automation, but still, I was considering myself to be in finance/banking rather than in the IT business.

DFDS Polska

A few months later I decided to pursue my career in one of the Shared Services Centres in Poznan. DFDS Polska is a company that belongs to large Danish logistic and ferry operator DFDS A/S. The company was established in 2013 and it started to migrate many of its accounting processes from different countries to Poland to cut the costs on wages significantly. I joined the company in March 2014 and after just two days in the new office, I flew out of Poznan city to Oslo for two months transition process.

Computers and papers - at Bj?rvika Apartments during the migration process. My job was to take someone else's job. Understanding the tasks and creating manuals was essential.

What I first noticed during the migration was that the company's accounting system (VISMA) was very clunky and very much out of date. Thus, a lot of tedious tasks including unnecessary paperwork had to be performed. At that point I saw two options: accept it and live with it; or leave it. But later on, I started to think about the third option: change it, improve the process yourself, automate it regardless. And this is what happened.

After the transition period, my tasks were:

Because the migrated processes and the old accounting system were not helping, I decided to use Excel and VBA to automate the reporting process for myself only. It worked quite well and my Team Leader asked if functionality could be extended so others could use it too. I gave a positive answer and started to use Access with JET-SQL, a local database placed in a shared folder on a common drive, so one Excel copy can read/write from one source of data, the data from the accounting system was separately taken from CSV file prepared by the BI guys and dumped few times a day from the server (automatically).

This led to the creation of an Excel-based application using just a few key ingredients: Excel, Access, JET-SQL, VBA, CSV data from an accounting system. In 2014 this was not the most modern technology stack you could imagine, but being officially non-tech and outside the IT division, it was the only thing that could be done independently. Nevertheless, I believe I was truly agile, I was building and testing at a fast pace while others users were also testing it and use it in daily work.

Between October 2014 and 2016 I worked partially as a Credit Controller and VBA developer working on the software I named TR Tool for Debt Management. It provided missing features in the accounting system. Its key features were:

Continuous Improvement Team

The success of TR Tool led to many smaller automation projects using a similar approach and fundamentally led to creating a Continuous Improvement Team that was built after the old Project Team was dismissed between 2016 and 2017. My Team and I could focus on maintenance of current solutions and on building a new one with Microsoft tools, including:

My desk at DFDS Polska while being in Continuous Improvement Team..., yes, I had two laptops.

The Team was later expanded and consisted of three developers and a Product Owner. We adopted Scrum concepts and the Azure DevOps tool for managing daily work and tasks. We also create documentation by using the C4 model, an accepted standard within DFDS A/S at the time. Our projects had to be greenlighted by IT Architect.

ABSL Diamonds Awards 2017

Apart from moving away from accounting to programming, 2017 was about something else. We were told by our Managing Director (Radek Mierzejewski) about the second edition of the ABSL Diamonds Awards.

ABSL stands for Association of Business Service Leaders - it is a leading organization representing business services in Poland. It organizes more than 100 meetings, training, and workshops to encourage companies to share their knowledge and experiences, inspire one another and build relationships with industry representatives and decision-makers.

We decided to submit the primary project I created for DFDS Polska (TR Tool for debt management) for an ABSL Diamonds Awards within the Business Excellence category.

Not only we prepared the submission, but also we created a short video presentation (not required, but very informative). We did it in the middle of February.

TR Tool - video presentation for ABSL Diamonds Awards 2017 submission (click to play).

At the end of February 2017, we received the nomination. We also learned about our competitors and their nominated projects. At that time, we barely believed we could win.

TR Tool - short description for ABSL Diamonds Awards 2017 submission (click to open).

A month later we traveled to Warsaw to attend the ABSL Gala. We had rare opportunities to meet the Shared Services community represented at large by managers and executives.

Television presenter Piotr Kra?ko announcing our win during the gala.

We competed with 3M Global Service Center Poland which had a large project budget and more than 15 developers. We were delighted to accept the win during the ABSL Poland Gala in March 2017. The key to our win was that we had small resources and yet we were able to achieve decent results; while our competition had to spend millions on the project.

My Team and I during ABSL Poland Gala. From the right: ABSL Director, Radek Mierzejewski (DFDS Polska Managing Director), Tomasz Kandula, Micha? Nawrocki, Jacqueline Wrzyszcz, Paulina Chraplak, Jerome Durepaire, Przemek Baum, Piotr Skoczylas, Marta Przyby?, Daniela Statucka.

The following video is a rare insight into the event. It was really big and we had lots of fun.

ABSL Diamonds Awards 2017 - the experience (click to play).

Mobile application (iOS/Android)

Having two years of experience already and a willingness to enter mobile development (I had earlier experience with Swift and Cocoa) I agreed to create a start-up company with three other people and build an application for Swift and Cocoa platforms.

Major development happened between August 2018 and February 2019. It was a mobile application allowing to discover pubs and bars and to claim one drink per 24h. We charged a small fee (monthly subscription) for the service, so with the cost of one drink (19 PLN), one could claim up to 30 drinks in different pubs/bars.

Cheers App running on iPhone 8 Plus. Picture had been taken on 14th of March 2019 in Pankejk Poznan.

The business was growing and we started to cover expenses a few months later. We had plans to change the business model (as a response to changing customer needs) and also to move the mobile project to Google Flutter.

Video - this is one of the commercial we placed on Google Play and our social media.

Unfortunately, the project was canceled due to COVID-19 in early 2020 and we are going to close the company this year.

Some technical details:

IT Magination and beyond

For more than the last three years, I was working on internal solutions where QA was not even a part of our process. In late 2020 I decided to join Software House that delivers software products for external customers meaning the costs, time to market and quality are critical ingredients. This gives me new experiences I could not get in DFDS Polska.

This ultimately ends the story of how I moved from Finance and Banking to the Information Technology business as a developer.