Amber

Amber is a forward-thinking energy and utilities provider committed to delivering efficient, reliable, and user-friendly services to its customers. As their business scaled, they recognized the need to modernize their recurring payments process to improve scalability, reduce manual overhead, and enhance the customer experience.

Amber’s previous setup relied on a subscription-based service integrated with an off-the-shelf billing solution to manage recurring payments. While this worked well in the early stages, scaling brought new challenges:

• Manual integration bottlenecks with systems like Salesforce, slowing operations.
  
  
• Scalability limitations, making it harder to adapt to increasing customer volumes.
  
  
• User experience constraints, limiting payment flexibility for residents.
  
  

Amber’s goal was clear: choose a new payment provider to manage direct debits while ensuring Salesforce and other systems stayed fully in sync with residents’ chosen payment methods.

D55 designed and implemented a lightweight, event-driven serverless architecture tailored to Amber’s needs. The approach prioritised simplicity, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with Amber’s long-term cloud strategy.

Key Elements of the Solution:

• AWS EventBridge
  
  • A Salesforce partner event source enabled straightforward communication with the AWS environment directly from Salesforce flows.
    
• AWS Lambda Functions
  
  • Used for API integrations with various systems, keeping bespoke code to a minimum and running on the most cost-effective compute model for this use case.
    
• AWS Step Functions
  
  • Orchestrated communication between systems, improving reliability through automated retries and error handling.
    
• AWS CloudWatch Dashboards & Alarms
  
  • Delivered robust monitoring and visibility into payment processes.
    

This modern architecture ensured seamless end-to-end integration between systems, eliminated manual overhead, and created a foundation for future innovation.

The Impact

The implemented solution delivered:

• Improved operational efficiency by removing manual processes.
  
  
• Enhanced customer experience through real-time, reliable payment processing.
  
  
• Future-ready infrastructure aligned with Amber’s cloud-native vision.
  
  

Scalable architecture capable of supporting growth without additional overhead.

Amber’s new payment system lays the groundwork for upcoming enhancements:

• Self-service LEX bots for payment management, empowering customers to manage their own payment preferences.
  
  
• Advanced reporting using archived event data to analyse customer behaviour and trends.
  
  Data-driven decision making, enabling targeted service improvements based on payment insights.