Entelect x Sanlam - Customer Success Story

How Entelect helped Sanlam modernise a decades-old retirement platform with Claude Code

Building digital products that work in the real world – across complex architectures, and shifting user expectations – requires more than good design. At Entelect, we cover the full stack of digital product engineering: from strategy and user research through to channel engineering, platform integration, and customer engagement. We build products that are structured to scale, with cross-functional teams committed to continuous development and ownership.

Summary

Creating a faster path from idea to production

BEE123 provides software that helps organisations manage Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) and Employment Equity (EE) compliance. As its platform evolves to support changing compliance requirements and customer needs, BEE123 and Entelect are using Claude Code to improve how new functionality moves from an initial idea to production. A non-technical product owner can create working prototypes independently, validate them with stakeholders and carry that context into development, with the recent Enhanced Deviations feature providing the team's first measured proof point: a 60% efficiency gain compared with existing development approaches.

With Claude, BEE123 and Entelect:

Achieved a 60% efficiency gain on the recent Enhanced Deviations feature
Enabled a non-technical product owner to independently create interactive prototypes aligned with the live BEE123 application
Carried approved prototypes into development tickets, test cases and production-ready development
Created reusable Claude skills that capture established architecture and engineering patterns for future features
Extended the skills-based approach into QA, enabling non-technical testers to create Playwright automated tests using natural-language instructions
Applied the reusable approach to further functionality, including FSC Empowerment Financing

The Challenge

Validating new functionality before development begins

BEE123's platform supports organisations managing B-BBEE and Employment Equity compliance, an environment where functionality needs to evolve alongside changing compliance requirements. As BEE123 modernised existing functionality and developed new features, the team wanted to give stakeholders a clearer view of proposed solutions earlier in the process.

Working prototypes would allow stakeholders to interact with proposed functionality and provide feedback before significant development effort was committed. This was particularly valuable for functionality influenced by regulatory change, where early validation could help the team confirm its understanding before completing development. The platform also spans multiple codebases, including legacy and modernised components. New functionality can therefore require context from several repositories, making it important for the development team to maintain consistency while working across different parts of the platform.

The Solution

Carrying context from prototype to product with Claude Code

Entelect introduced Claude Code across BEE123's feature delivery workflow, beginning before traditional development starts. A non-technical product owner can use Claude Code to independently turn an idea into a working prototype that reflects the styling and experience of the live BEE123 application. Stakeholders can interact with that prototype, provide feedback and refine the proposed functionality before the team commits significant development effort.

Once agreed, the prototype becomes part of the development process. Claude Code helps translate it into development tickets and test cases and supports developers as they convert the approved design into production-ready code. Its terminal-based workflow also allows the team to work with context across multiple repositories when functionality spans legacy and modernised components of the platform.

The team has also created reusable Claude skills based on BEE123's established architecture and engineering patterns. As features are delivered, repeatable approaches are incorporated into these skills, creating a growing development “recipe” that can be carried into future work. The same approach is now being extended into QA, where reusable Claude skills enable non-technical testers to create Playwright automated tests through natural-language instructions, reducing the team's reliance on manual regression testing.

Entelect’s use of Claude Code has changed the speed at which we can move from idea to working software. Their prototyping approach allows our business team to turn an idea into a detailed, interactive prototype before development even starts, giving developers far greater clarity and helping us take new features from concept to production much faster, with excellent quality and very few defects.

For QA, Entelect created custom Claude Code skills that enable our testers to easily write Playwright automated test cases using normal, natural-language instructions. This has made test automation accessible to our QA team without requiring traditional coding skills. Claude Code has also made project documentation faster and easier. Across prototyping, development, testing and documentation, Entelect’s use of Claude Code has shortened the distance between an idea and a production-ready solution.

René van der Walt Product Owner and Dev Manager, BEE123

The Outcome

Growing efficiency gains as the approach matures

The Enhanced Deviations feature, which helps organisations track and explain gaps between actual workforce demographics and their Employment Equity plan targets, achieved a 60% efficiency gain compared with BEE123's existing development approaches. This provided the team's first measured proof point for its AI-assisted feature delivery approach.

The impact also begins before development. Working prototypes give stakeholders an opportunity to review and refine functionality earlier, and BEE123 has used these prototypes in external meetings to help confirm upcoming legislative changes before development is complete. Once a direction is agreed, the prototype provides developers with clearer context for what needs to be built.

The approach is also becoming reusable beyond a single feature. Patterns established through one piece of functionality can be captured in Claude skills and carried into the next, with the team already applying the approach to FSC Empowerment Financing, which helps South African banks capture, track and score qualifying financing deals against regulatory targets. At the same time, the extension into QA is creating a path for non-technical testers to build automated regression tests using natural-language instructions.