Dedicated Engineering Pod for Global Automotive SaaS Provider
Embedded a dedicated engineering team for over three years to reverse-engineer, stabilize, and modernize an acquired dealership CRM, increasing automated test coverage from 70% to 93% for a company serving 50 OEMs across 186 countries.
Embedded Engineering Pod for an Acquired Automotive Software Platform
When software companies acquire products to expand their portfolios, they frequently inherit legacy codebases with missing documentation, zero test automation, and architectural vulnerabilities.
Our client is a global provider of automotive SaaS and Data-as-a-Service (DaaS) platforms. Their software suites are used by more than 50 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and over 250,000 automotive specialists across 186 countries to manage dealership parts sales and field service operations.
After acquiring an external customer relationship management tool to expand their dealership offering, the client faced a common operational bottleneck: their internal engineering teams were already fully committed to core products. They needed an experienced, long-term engineering pod capable of stepping in, reverse-engineering the codebase, stabilizing the infrastructure, and taking end-to-end responsibility for ongoing feature development.
Stabilizing an Acquired Codebase Without In-House Overhead
The acquired software came with several technical and operational risks that had to be addressed before rolling it out across major dealer networks:
Missing Architecture Documentation
The original creators left no detailed technical documentation or developer guides. Maintaining or updating the portal felt like walking through a black box.
No Safety Net for Releases
Automated test coverage hovered around 70%, and there was no dedicated QA team. Every new deployment risked breaking existing features in production.
Missing Mobile Capability
Dealership field sales representatives spend their days on the road. The acquired product was web-only, limiting adoption by parts sales teams.
No Staging or Recovery Plan
Deployments went straight to live servers with no mirror staging environment, and there was no automated disaster recovery process in place.
Five Key Technical Turnarounds We Delivered
Operating as a dedicated extension of the client's internal team, Zediant methodically transformed the acquired asset into an enterprise-grade platform:
Reverse-Engineering & Documentation
Within the first 30 days, we mapped out every component, database relationship, and third-party dependency, producing a comprehensive developer handbook for all future engineering work.
Automated Testing Uplift
We built automated unit, functional, and integration test suites, raising overall test coverage from 70% to 93% and creating a safety net for fast, frequent deployments.
AWS Disaster Recovery & Staging
We built an automated backup and disaster recovery architecture on AWS for rapid failover and created an isolated staging environment matching production configurations.
Native Mobile Application Development
We developed native iOS (Swift) and Android apps from scratch, allowing field representatives to manage customer visits, review sales histories, and log issues on the go.
CI/CD Automation via CircleCI
We replaced manual server updates with automated build and deployment pipelines, reducing deployment times and eliminating human error during release cycles.
New Core Features Delivered by the Pod
Over three years of continuous delivery, our engineers designed and shipped several high-value business modules:
Location-Aware Route Planning
Automated visit scheduling that groups client meetings geographically, helping field representatives plan driving routes and visit nearby workshops efficiently.
Predictive Sales Forecasting
An algorithmic engine that uses historical purchase data and daily adjustment curves to project end-of-month parts revenue for dealership managers.
Automated Billing Integration
Direct integration with the client's enterprise DaaS infrastructure, automating monthly client billing, invoice generation, and account status synchronization.
Issue Tracking & Warranty Module
A closed-loop ticketing module allowing reps to photograph defective parts, log customer complaints, and track resolutions through to completion.
The Embedded Delivery Model
Unlike traditional outsourcing where work is tossed over a fence, Zediant operated as an integrated product pod working directly inside the client's ecosystem:
Two-Week Agile Sprint Cycles
Structured backlog refinement, sprint planning, daily standups, and bi-weekly sprint reviews with client product owners.
Continuous Automated Verification
Automated regression tests run on every pull request via CircleCI, preventing broken builds from entering the main codebase.
Three Plus Years of Shared Ownership
Long-term team stability ensured zero loss of domain knowledge, enabling our developers to propose architectural improvements proactively.
The Value of Long-Term Pod Ownership
Our ongoing partnership allowed the client to turn an uncertain acquisition into a stable, high-margin product offering:
- Over Three Years of Reliable Delivery: Zero major production outages or release failures across dozens of successful feature rollouts.
- Test Coverage Raised to 93%: High automated test coverage allowed the team to release updates frequently without fear of regressions.
- Internal Teams Stayed Focused: The client's core engineering leadership remained 100% focused on their primary SaaS lines while Zediant ran this product end to end.
- Transformed from Web Tool to Multi-Platform CRM: The platform grew from a desktop-only portal into a complete suite with native iOS, Android, and web access.
Why Team Augmentation Beats Ad-Hoc Contracting
Acquiring software is easy; maintaining and scaling it without derailing your existing engineering roadmap is the hard part. Staff augmentation often fails when contractors are treated as temporary keyboard-fillers who leave after six months, taking their knowledge with them. By embedding a dedicated pod that took full technical ownership for more than three years, our client gained the reliability of a dedicated in-house team with the operational flexibility of an external partner.
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