Custom development and cloud backend by Almato enable DATAGROUP IT Solutions to quickly and easily provide mobile processes for the state of Hesse and subsequently for the states of Bavaria, Brandenburg and Bremen.
The Challenge
BAföG offers financial support to promote education. For more than 40 years, this funding has helped pupils, students and career starters to finance their education and thus successfully launch their careers. The aim of BAföG is to provide more support for many young people. To this end, the states of Bavaria, Brandenburg and Hesse want to make communication with applicants as uncomplicated and quick as possible.
This project has been made more difficult by the predominantly analog processes to date. The required documents for the BAföG application could either be submitted by post or as a PDF, while updates on the processing status were always sent by post. The state of Hesse needed a way to strengthen its digital presence, improve the user experience and facilitate communication.
The Almato Solution
The custom development combined with the backend by Almato (ONE_Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service) enabled Hesse to be the first federal state to make services relating to the application process available on mobile devices. The states of Bavaria and Brandenburg followed in quick succession. During implementation, a strong focus was placed on data protection in order to guarantee the security of personal data.
Thanks to the standard functions, such as data storage and user management from the cloud backend, the app project could be implemented within just twelve weeks and with significant cost savings.
BAföGdirekt was developed as a native app for Android and iOS and optimized for smartphones and tablets. The states of Bavaria, Brandenburg and Hesse are now using BAföGdirekt as a mobile addition to DATAGROUP's BAFSYS system, which is used to process around 50% of all student BAföG applications across Germany.
Applicants can quickly and easily select their office in the intuitive app, upload documents and receive current status updates on their application via push notification - a standard function of ONE_Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service.
The Success
The combination of ONE_Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service and the mobile application has helped the state of Hesse achieve its goal of facilitating communication between the funding office and applicants and increasing process efficiency. The mobile processes support hundreds of thousands of applicants and have contributed to an enhanced user experience.
»The efficient architecture of ONE_Mobile-Backend-as-a-Service is also ideal for managing the resulting push notification volumes.«
– Michael Gross, Project Manager BAföGdirekt App, Almato AG
