Our Customer:
North Data
Founded in 2011 as the start-up Biz-Q and launched in 2016 as
North Data after two new shareholders joined the company, the client obtains business information by analysing notices in the commercial register and other mandatory publications of German companies, as well as many other publicly accessible sources. The focus is on key financial figures as well as company affiliations and persons. Since 2020, the offer has been continuously expanded to include various European countries.
North Data offers its customers:
- Simple online research via their website
- Clear presentation & interactive visualisation of business information
- Premium service with additional data and presentations
- Data service with API and export for further machine processing & integration
Starting Point
North Data's simple and free online research tool allows for the creation of a holistic picture of companies – it offers the largest freely accessible compilation of profit and turnover figures of German, and now also some European, companies. In addition, a paid premium service is available to service providers from all sectors for detailed research and financial analyses.
Originally started for the German market, the offer was soon expanded to include other countries. Moreover, Frank Felix Debatin, founder of North Data, planned a technical and content-related modernisation of the front end in order to offer his customers a better user experience in the short term and to be able to implement future product expansions more easily and quickly.
The Project
ServicesConsulting, software analysis, development
MethodsFunktional, agile, incremental development
TechnologiesBackend: Java, Google App Engine, junit5, Mockito, Maven, GitHub, GitHub Actions, Immutables, OpenAPI Specification
Frontend: TypeScript v4, webpack v4, Node.js, npm, Less.js, Jest, jQuery, d3 v5, leaflet, GitHub Actions, dependabot, Fomantic UI, Open Street Ma
What impressed us most about cronn's support was the quality of the development results and the motivation of the developers to work with us to take our codebase to a new level.
We are very satisfied with the cooperation with cronn and appreciate the high competence, flexibility and direct communication there.
— Frank Felix Debatin, CEO of North Data
Successful migration of other countries
In order to increase the development capacity, North Data commissioned cronn with the demanding and complex integration of two countries: Switzerland and Poland.
Against the background of a wide variety of publicly accessible data sources and formats, cronn developed country-specific, individual integration solutions – based on core functions of the existing software. The goal was a software solution that could crawl and parse a multitude of HTML pages and PDFs and analyse the natural language texts they contain. For this, the cronn team relied on libraries such as jsoup and pdfbox.
The software was developed in a functional, test case-driven, incremental approach. Continuous integration and automated deployments using GitHub made the developers' work easier.
The non-existent structuring of publicly available information proved to be a major challenge, as did working with incomplete, ambiguous or erroneous data; different languages; and different economic systems. Eventually it was possible to transfer the information into the North Data database in a consolidated and valid way.
With regard to the integration of Polish company data, cronn was able to offer the customer a strategic advantage with our location in Białystok.
Modernisation frontend
Together with North Data, cronn analysed the existing software and brought it to a new level: by replacing the UI framework used, cronn not only improved the usability and performance of the website, but also increased security and stability. In addition, future product enhancements can now be implemented more easily, cost-effectively and quickly. Further cost savings resulted from the replacement of Google Maps with OpenStreetMap for the display of geographical information.
On behalf of North Data, cronn will be further expanding the list of countries included in the database.
cronn Pluspoint
Consulting & software analysiscronn solves problems together with its customers
Commitment & flexibilityUncomplicated commissioning and flexible terms
ModernisationProduct enhancements can be implemented easier & faster
Safety & stabilityUse of modern web technologies
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