A legacy modernisation and digital transformation success story. Avco and Experian partnered closely to design and build a brand-new and awarding winning automotive data platform.

Experian UK has been one of Avco Systems’ most valued partners since 1995. Over the past three decades we’ve built a deep and trusted relationship, particularly with the Experian Automotive team. Together we’ve delivered numerous products and services built on top of Experian’s core data platform, a legacy mainframe system dating back to the 1990s.

This long-standing collaboration has given us a deep understanding of the automotive domain, Experian’s business, and most importantly a shared confidence in the ability of our partnership to deliver high quality and future-proof systems.

That’s why Experian chose Avco Systems to develop their next-generation automotive data platform: Velocity.

The Challenge: Modernising a Mission-Critical Legacy Platform

Modernising legacy platforms is a natural part of evolving a business. As organisations grow and their strategic priorities shift, even the most reliable systems eventually need to adapt to support new ambitions.

At Experian Automotive, the legacy platform had been a trusted foundation for many years. It played a key role in delivering consistent value to customers and partners. But as the business expanded its vision for automotive services, the team recognised an opportunity to evolve the technology to better support future innovation. The team wanted to deliver:

• Higher data quality
• Faster response times
• Modern, highly available services
• A platform ready to innovate and disrupt the market

The Solution: Project Velocity

The new Experian Automotive platform developed by Avco Systems is a leap forward in every dimension compared to its predecessor

Replacing any mature, high-traffic platform is inherently risky. Over 20 years, undocumented quirks, forgotten integrations, and institutional knowledge gaps accumulate. The challenges of migration and “unknown unknowns” are significant and must not be underestimated.

Many legacy modernisation projects fail for this very reason. A shiny new platform is built, but insufficient consideration of the migration challenge results in the legacy system proving impossible to fully replace. There are too many small but critical pieces missing - a file export a key client relies on, or an API quirk unknowingly depended on by dozens of integrators. Such situations can lead to huge cost and timeframe overruns, or even kill a project outright.

Avco’s highly skilled team and experience in legacy modernisation is what made the difference, and sets us apart from other consultancies and offshore development teams. Building the platform itself, the software development, would be the “easy” part. The key to success would be focusing on executing a smooth, seamless, and ultimately successful platform migration.

Three key principles guided this effort:

• Minimise client change. Wherever possible, clients were migrated without needing to make any changes. This meant creating exact replicas of existing APIs, data extracts, and even legacy behaviours. Where change was necessary, it had to be simple and clearly superior to the old system.
• Testing, testing, and more testing. Avco developed the most extensive automated test suite in our history, with a strong emphasis on end-to-end integration testing. We also built a bespoke and unique API testing harness that compared legacy and new API responses at scale - helping us identify and eliminate even the smallest behavioural differences.
• Strong SME–developer relationships. Legacy platforms often rely more on SME knowledge than documentation. With Velocity, we minimised project management layers and connected Avco developers directly with Experian SMEs. This allowed queries to be resolved quickly and accurately. It also reflects the strength of our partnership - Avco was treated not as an outsourcing vendor, but as an extension of Experian’s own team.

This focus was accompanied by Avco’s rigorous dedication to technical excellence and previous experience building data platforms. Bold, forward-looking architectural and engineering decisions have resulted in a solution that is rapid, resilient, and built to deliver for decades to come.

The Results

Project Velocity was a resounding success:

• The legacy platform was fully decommissioned
• SLA targets were not just met - they were exceeded
• Support ticket volumes and maintenance workloads dropped significantly
• Experian’s product teams are now free to focus on innovation

The new Experian Automotive platform developed by Avco Systems is a leap forward in every dimension compared to its predecessor:

• 100% uptime in 2024, with 2025 on track to repeat
• Sub-100ms average response times at over 10 million requests per month
• Faster, more accurate data loads
• A modern API surface and web portal for clients and internal teams

In recognition of this transformation, Experian Automotive won the 2025 CarDealer Power Award for Best Vehicle Provenance Service.

What The Customer Said

Ready to Modernise?

If you’re in the automotive space, Experian now offers a cutting-edge platform that’s winning awards and enabling innovation. Get in touch with them here.

If you’re an enterprise facing the challenges of legacy modernisation, Avco Systems is here to help. Contact us today for a free initial consultation. We’ll help you assess your needs and chart a path forward.