Building Manawanui's next-generation platform with an embedded team | Orient Software%

Building Manawanui's next-generation platform with an embedded team

/ Modern funding-management platform /

A portal built for a community that depends on it every day

years of ongoing partnership

dedicated specialists

team growth, built on trust

/ SUMMARY /

Manawanui, a New Zealand social enterprise providing individualised funding management for people in the disability community, came to Orient for a long-term offshore partner, one that could extend its stretched in-house engineering team and modernize an aging, hard-to-maintain platform without ever taking it offline. What started as two developers grew to six, a team now maintaining the live V1 platform while building a modern V2 SaaS platform beside it, delivering a steadier release rhythm and real momentum toward that modern future along the way.

Location

New Zealand

Cooperation period

2024 - ongoing

Industry

Health & social care

Engagement model

Dedicated team

Services used

Web app development

Mobile development

Legacy software modernization

QA & software testing

Technology consulting

/ The situation /

Growth the legacy platform couldn't keep up with

For more than two decades, Manawanui has helped people in the disability community across New Zealand take control of their own support funding, work built on the belief that self-direction is a right, not a privilege. That mission had grown far enough that its platform needed to grow with it, carrying real technical debt from years of doing exactly what it was built to do. Every new feature took longer to ship, and the small in-house team was fully consumed keeping it running, unable to build the web, cloud, and QA depth that would have been costly and slow to hire locally.

Debt slowing every release

As expectations grew for a more modern, self-service digital experience, the existing architecture became a bottleneck rather than an enabler, and every new feature carried the risk of breaking what already worked.

Rising risk on sensitive data

Left unaddressed, the maintenance burden would have kept compounding: slower delivery, a rising risk of outages or defects in a system handling sensitive funding data, and growing security exposure on an aging stack.

A team already at capacity

Manawanui's lean in-house team was fully occupied with day-to-day support, leaving little room for modernization. A legacy codebase made changes riskier still, all while the platform had to stay live throughout.

Rules & competition moving fast

The aging system made it harder to keep up with evolving compliance requirements and rising customer demand for modern self-service, risking a fall behind more digitally mature competitors.

/ THE SOLUTION /

A team that scaled the way the platform needed it to

Orient joined as a small extension of Manawanui's team and grew from two developers to six as scope and trust expanded. The team works embedded directly inside the same codebase, ceremonies, and backlog, not as a separate offshore vendor. Today, it carries delivery across two fronts at once: keeping the live V1 platform running, and building the V2 SaaS platform meant to replace it.

Become part of the team, not a vendor

Manawanui’s tech lead sets direction, its business analyst drives requirements, and Orient’s developers own building, testing, and shipping across both platforms, working the same ceremonies and backlog, no different from an in-house hire.

Keep V1 alive while shipping continuously

The team continuously ships new features and enhancements on the existing production platform, keeping V1 stable and fully operational for the users who depend on it, all while splitting sprint capacity with the V2 build running in parallel.

A SaaS platform, growing underneath

Alongside V1, the team is modernizing the legacy platform into V2, a multi-tenant, SaaS-ready architecture built to replace the aging system over time, without forcing a hard cutover on the business or its users.

Locking down access, layer by layer

The team builds and maintains the authentication layer, an IdentityServer4, OIDC-based system, securing access to the portal and the services behind it.

Portal and backend, together

Underneath the portal, the team develops and maintains the APIs and backend services that power it and integrate with Manawanui’s wider systems, while also building and improving the web portal UI itself for a cleaner, more modern self-service experience.

Cloud, QA, and going beyond tickets

The team supports hosting, deployment, and scalability through cloud infrastructure work, embeds QA and testing throughout delivery, and works directly with Manawanui to clarify requirements, contributing technical input rather than just executing tickets.

/ THE RESULTS /

Faster releases, stronger safeguards, delivered in parallel

What changed isn't just what Orient built; it's what Manawanui gained from it: a platform that ships more predictably, protects the data it was always meant to safeguard, and keeps moving toward the modern SaaS system it set out to build.

team growth as trust deepened

As trust in the team grew, Manawanui expanded the engagement from two developers to six, letting the work scale to cover both the live V1 platform and the new V2 build at the same time.

Minimal

manual effort through automation

A steady two-week cadence, paired with CI/CD pipelines, gave the team a reliable, repeatable rhythm and cut down the manual work involved in shipping.

Stronger

safeguards for user data

Embedded QA and automated testing, including Playwright and unit tests, help protect the live platform as new features ship, on a system built around sensitive funding data.

Modern

SaaS foundation replacing legacy debt

Moving off an aging, hard-to-maintain architecture reduces technical debt and positions Manawanui for a more scalable, self-service future.

AI-assisted

delivery built for speed

Alongside strong DevOps practices, AI-assisted tooling helps the team work faster and stay current with modern delivery standards.

Freed-up

capacity for higher-value work

With Orient owning delivery, QA, and requirements clarification, Manawanui’s in-house team gained the room to focus on higher-value work instead of day-to-day tickets.