In order to accelerate the organization’s digital transformation, Bachem aims to leverage the power of a low-code platform and build internal competencies to fulfill the business needs for digital solutions. At the same time, there’s a strong need to reduce the dependency on external development partners. The Peptide Companion is a current use case of an industry-specific digital solution that exemplifies the challenge. The original application is end of life, and an alternative is currently only available in the form of a VBA enriched Excel-based application.

The goal was to provide the groundwork for the sustainable development of a Peptide Companion successor and provide guidance for similar projects in the future. As a first deliverable, the functional user requirements for the new Peptide Companion have been elicited in close collaboration with the relevant stakeholders. The second deliverable was a blueprint for the development and deployment of business logic components that can be consumed by low-code platforms. Research regarding suitable technologies has been conducted and prototyping has been applied to verify and showcase the findings.

By the means of a survey and workshops with selected stakeholders, the functional user requirements for the Peptide Companion have been elicited. They serve a common understanding based on which the technical implementation specification can be created. The developed blueprint consists of a business logic components architecture that describes the microservice approach and the technology stack for the uniform and consistent development of industry-specific applications like the Peptide Companion. The definition of such an architecture allows Bachem to enforce a common development approach with external partners. The complementing deployment pipeline is key for Bachem to take control of the development process and gradually build the desired know-how internally.