Our client, an emerging player in the automotive sales software industry, had developed an initial CRM-like application designed to help car dealers streamline communication with potential buyers through visually appealing, GIF-based offers sent via email and SMS. The concept leverages dynamic visual engagement to simplify the negotiation process and improve conversion rates. However, the initial application, while promising, was limited by incomplete functionality and inadequate user experience, preventing it from achieving broader commercial adoption. Early feedback from initial users highlighted significant shortcomings, including limited options for customer engagement, insufficient flexibility in creating and managing offers, and performance bottlenecks that diminished user experience.
Discover how we tackled these challenges and transformed an underperforming app into a powerful, flexible sales tool that delivers real results for automotive dealerships.
State of the client’s app before modernization
When the client approached us, their platform was a monolithic .NET application with a React frontend that allowed dealership managers to send GIF-based vehicle offers via email or SMS. However, the system was rigid, offering little flexibility for customizing visual elements or enabling interactive features, which limited the potential for personalized customer engagement.
The lack of technical documentation and an inherited, disorganized infrastructure further complicated any development or enhancement efforts. Our assessment identified several core issues:
- Restricted media customization: Dealerships were unable to create visually rich, tailored offers, as GIF customization was limited to basic overlays.
- Limited user interaction: The platform did not allow customers to easily accept, reject, or negotiate offers, which reduced engagement and made sales processes inefficient.
- Performance and scalability challenges: Resource-heavy GIF generation was tightly coupled with the core application, leading to slow performance and limited scalability.
With these challenges mapped out, we shifted our focus to a detailed technical review of the existing platform.
Architectural modernization and refactoring
To efficiently address our client’s requirements, our team initiated an in-depth technical analysis of the existing system’s architecture.
Technical assessment and discovery
This included examining the .NET-based monolithic backend, React frontend, and integration points involving Azure services, Twilio, and SendGrid.
During this discovery phase, we identified several critical performance bottlenecks, mainly tied to the application’s core image-processing logic, which was deeply embedded within the monolithic backend. Heavy reliance on resource-intensive operations to generate customized GIF images created a significant processing load, adversely impacting overall performance and scalability of the platform.
Refactoring to microservices and serverless functions
To resolve these performance issues and improve the scalability of the application, we strategically extracted the GIF-generation component from the monolithic backend and refactored it into an independent microservice hosted on Azure Functions.
We chose Azure Functions for several clear advantages:
- Cross-platform flexibility: Azure Functions allowed us to utilize specialized image-processing libraries that operated independently from the main .NET backend, ensuring smoother compatibility.
- Scalability: The serverless nature of Azure Functions provided automatic scaling during peak usage, significantly improving responsiveness and reliability.
- Ease of deployment: Serverless architecture enabled rapid iterative deployments without disrupting the core application, allowing continuous improvement and minimal downtime.
As a result, this architectural shift drastically reduced the load on the primary backend, increased the reliability and efficiency of GIF generation, and enabled smoother scalability in line with the client’s future business growth.
Implementing critical business features
Recognizing the necessity for engaging, interactive features, we developed an advanced offer management system that provided dealerships and their customers the capability to negotiate effectively.
Custom GIF generation and styling capabilities
To empower dealerships with more personalized and engaging content, we engineered a robust custom GIF-generation capability. We utilized Azure Blob Storage combined with Azure Functions to dynamically create GIF images, enriched with detailed text overlays, diverse font styles, and customizable visual styling.
Dealership sales personnel could now easily:
- Upload or select a base GIF from existing templates stored in Azure Blob Storage.
- Dynamically apply rich text styling and customized details directly through a user-friendly React interface.
- Instantly preview and adjust offers before sending them to potential buyers, ensuring accuracy and engagement.
The Azure Functions backend seamlessly processed these images in real-time, returning high-quality, visually appealing GIFs ready for immediate dispatch, significantly boosting user productivity and customer response rates.
Interactive offer management
We expanded the existing application to include:
- Accepting offers
- Rejecting proposals
- Counter-offering capability with adjustable terms (price, monthly payments, and payment duration)
Technically, we implemented these features by extending the React frontend to support intuitive user interactions and status updates. The backend was enhanced by creating specialized REST API endpoints that managed offer states and customer interactions, storing and retrieving transactional data efficiently in Azure SQL Database. This comprehensive approach ensured seamless real-time synchronization between users’ actions and system data, dramatically improving the dealership-customer negotiation experience.
Enhanced notifications and messaging
Improving customer communication and engagement was a key objective. Leveraging Twilio and SendGrid, we significantly upgraded the system’s notification capabilities, ensuring timely and impactful delivery of customer offers.
Technically, we accomplished this by:
- Creating customized, engaging email templates using SendGrid’s template management tools, which supported visually rich and personalized messages.
- Implementing dynamic messaging logic within our backend to automate tailored SMS and email notifications, triggered by customer interactions or system events.
- Integrating robust analytics to track customer responses, improving offer visibility, follow-up actions, and overall dealership sales efficiency.
This focused approach enhanced customer engagement while significantly streamlining dealership sales operations through automated, intelligent communication flows.
Integrated cloud architecture built on Azure
The modernized architecture, with resource-intensive operations refactored out of the original monolith and into dedicated cloud services, is structured as follows:
User interface and experience
The process starts at the React frontend, which acts as the main point of interaction for dealership managers. Here, users create, customize, and preview GIF-based vehicle offers using a clear and intuitive interface.
Backend logic and business operations
All frontend actions are routed to the .NET backend, hosted on Azure App Services. This backend processes business logic, manages user authentication, and coordinates all offer-related transactions.
Dynamic media processing
When a GIF offer needs to be generated or updated, the backend initiates Azure Functions. These serverless components handle the resource-intensive tasks of overlaying text, applying custom styles, and rendering finished GIF images. After processing, the new media is saved in Azure Blob Storage.
Reliable media and data storage
Azure Blob Storage serves as the central repository for all GIF files. These files are available for immediate use, both in the frontend for preview and in outbound communications to customers. All related business data (such as offer history, negotiation statuses, and user profiles) is stored and managed in Azure SQL Database, ensuring fast, secure access and reliable scalability.
Real-time customer communications
Whenever an offer is created, updated, or negotiated, the backend triggers notifications through SendGrid for emails and Twilio for SMS. This guarantees that customers receive interactive offers quickly and can respond directly, improving engagement and communication effectiveness.
Continuous integration and deployment
Azure DevOps supports the entire development lifecycle. It enables automated builds, testing, and deployments. This allows for the rapid release of new features and updates with minimal disruption to users.
Unified and scalable ecosystem
All components in this architecture work together as an integrated system. The frontend, backend, serverless functions, storage, messaging, and DevOps pipelines form a cohesive solution. This setup solves current business challenges while providing a stable foundation for future growth and the easy implementation of new features.
Outcomes
Our architecture modernization significantly improved the existing application:
- Greatly reduced backend processing load, enhancing system responsiveness.
- Enabled rich customer interactions with powerful negotiation features.
- Delivered engaging and visually attractive communications through advanced media customization.
- Ensured reliable, scalable infrastructure capable of supporting future business growth without compromise.
We’re the right partner for modernization projects
Our team specializes in rapidly and effectively adapting existing applications—preserving prior investments while avoiding unnecessary redevelopment from scratch. We understand deeply that software modernization is not just a technical task but a business-driven necessity. By carefully identifying critical business needs, we deliver solutions that enable growth, improve customer satisfaction, and directly enhance operational performance.
If your business faces similar challenges we invite you to connect with our experienced modernization specialists.
Contact us today for a consultation, a demonstration, or an initial technical assessment, and discover how we can help you transform your current software solutions into powerful, scalable assets that effectively drive your business forward.
