/ Case study /

Survey Management System

From a 15-Year Legacy System to a Modern Research Platform: Reducing Report Generation Time by 80%

80%

Reduction in review time
13+

Detection models
100%

Manual review replaced

/ 01 / Executive summary

Executive Summary

Primotly partnered with a Global Market Research Enterprise to modernize their core Survey Management System. By replacing a 15-year-old, slow, and unscalable legacy monolith with a modern microservices architecture (AWS, NestJS, React), we didn't just upgrade their tech stack—we transformed their business operations. The new platform reduced advanced report generation time from 40 to 8 hours, accelerated generation of conjoint from hours to mere seconds, and completely overhauled the client's software development lifecycle by introducing Agile methodologies.

/ 02 / About the Client

About the Client

The client is a global enterprise with branches worldwide. They specialize in advanced market and consumer research. Their flagship product is used globally to conduct purchasing behavior simulations and sophisticated consumer surveys for top-tier retail brands. (Note: Details have been anonymized due to NDA).

Services

Team Extension
Web Development
Cloud Architecture
Agile Transformation

Industry

Market Research

Collaboration Model

Team Extension transitioning to Full Technical Ownership

Team Size

6 Full-stack Developers, 1 UX Designer, 1 QA, 1 DevOps, 1 PM/Scrum Master, 1 Business Analyst

/ 03 / The challenge

The Challenge: Technical Debt and Operational Bottlenecks

The client approached Primotly with a product suffering from severe legacy constraints. Their existing 15-year-old system was actively hindering the company's growth:

01/

Obsolete Tech & Poor Performance

The system relied on outdated technologies (including Flash) and was unscalable. The analytical components were so slow that they severely disrupted the company's daily operations.
02/

Tedious, Manual Data Analysis

Analyzing survey results and preparing reports required manually processing data in Excel spreadsheets using macros and painstakingly copying the findings.
03/

In-house Recruitment Struggles

The client faced significant difficulties in sourcing and retaining top IT talent. Previous attempts to rebuild the system with an in-house team had failed.
04/

Lack of Agile Culture

The client's internal teams did not use Agile methodologies. There was a lack of modern development processes, daily standups, or project management tools like Jira and Confluence.

/ 04 / The Primotly solution

The Primotly Solution: Comprehensive Rebuild & Agile Transformation

Our partnership began as a standard Team Extension (providing extra developer hands). However, due to our high-quality delivery and proactive approach, Primotly quickly assumed full responsibility for technical management and product direction.

We opted to rewrite the system from scratch using a modern tech stack (TypeScript, React, NestJS, AWS) while introducing rigorous engineering standards (CI/CD, daily releases, automated testing, and strict Code Reviews). Simultaneously, we drove an organizational transformation: we taught the client's team how to work in Scrum (two-week sprints, daily standups, backlog refinements) and successfully implemented the Atlassian suite.

Key Modules Developed

Questionnaire & Build

We entirely replaced the old Flash-based system. The new module features an intuitive, zero-error drag-and-drop builder, allowing users to effortlessly configure question types and assign visual assets.
eComm & Shelf (Simulation Modules)

We built highly innovative survey modules that display simulated online stores (closely mimicking real-world e-commerce UI) and physical 3D/2D store shelves. Respondents can interact with products, allowing the client to gather precise data on conversion rates and consumer behavior.
Analyze & Reporting

We created an advanced module for data cleaning and analysis, effectively replacing external tools like SPSS and heavily manual Excel workflows. It automates the entire analysis process right up to dynamic PowerPoint presentation generation. The module features a built-in presentation creator where users can compose slides and seamlessly embed dynamic data, tables, and charts derived directly from the analysis.
Integrations

We successfully integrated third-party tools, including eye-tracking software, to generate user attention heatmaps directly within the surveys.

/ 05 / Technical deep dive

Technical Deep Dive

01/
Blazing-Fast Cross-Tabulation of Massive Datasets
- The Problem: Cross-tabulating variables across highly complex data paths was taking far too long, often overloading the legacy system.
- The Solution: We offloaded heavy computations to the cloud using AWS Lambda. We wrote dedicated serverless functions that dynamically clean, transform, and prepare data on the fly, significantly reducing the load on the main application.
02/
Overcoming Scalability Limits
- The Problem: The old monolith couldn't handle the growing volume of concurrent global surveys.
- The Solution: We implemented a microservices architecture. Tasks and calculations are now executed asynchronously. A dedicated thread is spun up for specific intensive tasks, providing natural, highly efficient load balancing across the entire system.
03/
Ensuring Data Integrity During Concurrent Editing
- The Problem: The system required multiple internal users to build and configure surveys simultaneously without overriding each other's work or corrupting the configuration state.
- The Solution: We implemented a granular, session-level locking mechanism. When a user edits a specific area or question block, it is immediately locked and secured against changes from other active instances.

/ 06 / Business impact & results

Business Impact & Results

The deployment of the new system radically changed how the client's operational teams function, drastically optimizing their workflow and boosting team morale.

80% Time Savings in Reporting (From 40h to 8h)

Previously, preparing a final report required around 40 hours of manual data processing and copying from Excel. Thanks to the new Analyze module and the dynamic presentation creator, this was cut to just 8 hours—completely eliminating the need for the client's staff to work weekends.
Computations Reduced from Hours to Seconds

Generating conjoint for all users used to take several hours. The system now processes this dynamically, on-the-fly for each respondent, in just a few seconds.
A New Standard of Work

Replacing Excel macros and Flash with an intuitive drag-and-drop interface dramatically reduced survey creation time and minimized human error (Zero-Error Policy Design).
Global Expansion for Primotly

The reliability and sheer success of our Polish development team convinced the client to expand their cooperation with Primotly, rolling out our software solutions to their other branches across the globe.