How Prokonzept Modernized a Legacy Finance Platform Without Disrupting 1,000+ Daily Users

Prokonzept's EVA-Finance platform served credit brokers and real estate agents across Germany - but its aging UI and infrastructure couldn't keep pace with demand. easy.bi redesigned the interface and migrated the platform to Kubernetes, delivering modern UX on a scalable foundation.

Zero

Downtime during migration

Auto-scaling

Kubernetes infrastructure

Fewer clicks

Per core workflow

CI/CD

Automated deployment pipeline

The Challenge: A Critical Platform Trapped in Legacy Infrastructure

Prokonzept's EVA-Finance is the daily workspace for credit brokers and real estate agents across Germany. They use it to calculate real estate credits, compare loan terms, and generate client-facing proposals. It's not a nice-to-have - it's the tool that drives their revenue.

But EVA-Finance was showing its age. The interface, built on Ext JS and vanilla PHP, hadn't kept pace with modern UX standards. Credit brokers reported spending too much time navigating between screens for tasks that should take seconds. New users needed extensive training to become productive. In a market where brokers choose their tools based on speed and usability, the platform was at risk of losing users to more modern competitors.

The infrastructure told a similar story. EVA-Finance ran on a traditional hosting setup that couldn't scale elastically during peak usage periods - like the end-of-quarter rush when brokers process the highest volume of loan calculations. Slow response times during these peaks eroded user trust.

Prokonzept needed two things simultaneously: a UI that matched the speed and clarity their users expected, and infrastructure that could handle growth without manual scaling interventions. The constraint was that the migration had to happen without disrupting the production environment that brokers depended on daily.

“Our brokers calculate dozens of loans a day. Every unnecessary click costs time. The redesign cut the steps for our most common workflows significantly.”

Why Prokonzept Chose easy.bi

Prokonzept needed a partner comfortable working with legacy PHP codebases - not one that would insist on a full rewrite. The EVA-Finance backend was stable and well-understood; the problems were at the UI and infrastructure layers. A partner who could surgically improve those layers without destabilizing the core was essential.

easy.bi brought the right combination: frontend developers experienced with Ext JS modernization, DevOps engineers who had executed production Kubernetes migrations before, and a delivery model (Jira + GitLab + agile sprints) that gave Prokonzept visibility into progress every two weeks. The team could work within the existing PHP/MySQL stack while gradually introducing modern tooling.

“We couldn't afford to rewrite EVA-Finance from scratch - it's too critical. easy.bi modernized what needed modernizing without breaking what already worked.”

The Approach: Surgical UI Redesign + Zero-Downtime Infrastructure Migration

UI audit and redesign within the existing framework. Rather than replacing Ext JS entirely - which would have required rewriting business logic - easy.bi redesigned the interface within the framework. Navigation was restructured to reduce clicks-to-task for common workflows like loan calculation and proposal generation. Form layouts were simplified. The visual hierarchy was updated to surface critical information (rates, terms, comparisons) without scrolling.

CKEditor integration for document workflows. Credit brokers frequently generate formatted documents - loan proposals, comparison sheets, client reports. CKEditor was integrated to provide rich text editing directly within EVA-Finance, eliminating the need to export data into external word processors and re-import formatted documents.

Kubernetes migration with Docker containerization. The infrastructure migration started with containerizing the PHP application using Docker, then deploying to a Kubernetes cluster. This gave Prokonzept automatic horizontal scaling during peak periods, rolling deployments for updates without downtime, and infrastructure-as-code for reproducible environments.

Database optimization alongside the migration. The MySQL database was audited and optimized as part of the infrastructure work. Query performance improvements reduced page load times for the most-used calculation screens - the ones where brokers spend 80% of their time.

Agile delivery with staging validation. Every UI change and infrastructure update was deployed to a staging environment first, validated by Prokonzept's QA team, then promoted to production. GitLab CI/CD pipelines automated the build-test-deploy cycle, and Jira tracked every change back to a user story or infrastructure requirement.

“End-of-quarter used to mean slow response times and support tickets. Since the Kubernetes migration, the platform handles peak load without us even noticing.”

The Results: Faster Platform, Happier Brokers, Scalable Foundation

The redesigned interface reduced the steps required for EVA-Finance's most common workflows. Credit brokers navigate fewer screens to complete loan calculations, and the clearer visual hierarchy means less time searching for the data they need. New users require less training because the interface follows patterns they already know from modern web applications.

The Kubernetes migration transformed the platform's reliability profile. Peak-period slowdowns disappeared because the infrastructure now scales automatically based on load. Deployments happen without downtime, which means Prokonzept can ship updates during business hours without affecting active users.

For Prokonzept, the outcome was a modernized product that competes on usability with newer entrants to the market - without the risk and cost of a ground-up rebuild. The platform now has the infrastructure headroom to grow with their user base.