Overview

A Law Firms Association inherited a large CRM platform with AI services and mobile apps after the original development team (and team lead) disappeared. The system was partially broken, poorly documented, and carried compliance and reliability risks.

Webomage was engaged to audit, stabilise, and modernise the platform so it could be safely used and iterated on.

Challenges

  • Partly abandoned codebase with missing knowledge: the original team and team lead were no longer available.
  • Multiple moving parts: CRM backend, AI services, mobile apps, and supporting infrastructure.
  • Compliance and data sensitivity: legal-sector data with high expectations around access control, auditability, and reliability.
  • Operational instability: fragile deployments, unclear ownership, and ad‑hoc fixes accumulated over time.

Approach

  1. Discovery & mapping
    • Collected existing documentation, credentials, and infrastructure diagrams (where available).
    • Reverse‑engineered the system from code, infrastructure, and logs to understand data flows and integrations.
  2. Security & reliability audit
    • Reviewed access patterns, secrets handling, and network exposure.
    • Analysed logging, monitoring, and failure modes across services.
    • Identified high‑risk components (e.g. outdated dependencies, insecure endpoints, brittle deployment scripts).
  3. Stabilisation and fixes
    • Fixed production‑blocking bugs in the CRM and AI services.
    • Normalised configuration and environment handling (secrets, per‑env configs).
    • Cleaned up broken deployment paths and established repeatable build/deploy routines.
  4. Modernisation roadmap
    • Proposed a phased plan to modernise the backend and infrastructure (including containerisation and CI/CD improvements).
    • Highlighted quick wins vs. medium‑term refactors, mapped to business priorities.

Outcomes

  • Recovered and stabilised a critical CRM platform that had been partially abandoned.
  • Restored confidence in deployments by replacing ad‑hoc scripts with clear, repeatable processes.
  • Reduced operational and compliance risk through better configuration management and security hardening.
  • Delivered a roadmap for future modernisation, giving the Association a clear path to evolve the system instead of replacing it from scratch.

Relevant capabilities

This engagement drew on several of Webomage’s strengths:

  • Deep experience with legacy recovery and stepping into systems without prior handover.
  • Strong DevOps, automation, and CI/CD foundations.
  • Understanding of compliance‑aware design (data flows, access control, auditability).
  • Ability to collaborate across backend, infra, and mobile teams.

➡️ If you have a legacy or partly abandoned system that needs to be stabilised and modernised, start a conversation.