ThanksMint — Development Story | AMELA Development Portfolio

01

CLIENT

About the client

HRTechCo Inc., driving HR reform at a 5,000-person scale.

HRTechCo leads HR-system reform and engagement improvement in the domestic HR Tech sector. With over 5,000 employees group-wide, the company needed a foundation to advance HR evaluation, benefits, and talent management.

Under the existing evaluation system, the daily contributions of each employee and the cycle of gratitude across teams could not be made visible; benefits ran on Excel and peer approvals were scattered across chat. Management needed real-time engagement metrics, HR needed objective evaluation data, and employees needed a foundation to support a daily recognition experience.

Eligible employees

5,000+

people / multi-tenant

Departments covered

40+

Department / Role

Integrated domains

4 types

Approval / Reward / Exchange / Audit

BUSINESS FLOW

Four steps of the thanks-coin cycle

STEP 01

Contribute

Helping colleagues, completing tasks, delivering results

STEP 02

Approve

Thanks coins granted instantly with push notifications

STEP 03

Accumulate

Accumulated in personal/organization wallets and saved to the ledger

STEP 04

Give back

Used for gift exchange, HR evaluation, and management decisions

02

CHALLENGE

Design challenges to solve

Four design challenges that hindered engagement operations.

We treated this not as a technical problem but as a management issue directly tied to the approval experience, data consistency, and audit readiness of a 5,000-person organization, which meant designing from scratch a foundation that breaks free from Excel dependence and person-dependent approval.

Design Challenge ①

How to build a mechanism that delivers peer-to-peer thanks instantly

Thanks given in chat or verbally go unrecorded, and contributions get buried by evaluation time. Both instant notification and transaction records were needed.

Design Challenge ②

How to build a mechanism that automates task rewards

HR manually aggregating evaluations in Excel at month-end became routine, and timely incentives could not be provided.

Design Challenge ③

How to build a mechanism that unifies benefits and gift exchange

Paper coupons, departmental budgets, and multiple partners were run in silos, drawing constant employee complaints of ‘hard to use’ and ‘unclear eligibility.’

Design Challenge ④

How to build a ledger that withstands audits and HR evaluation

Approval history was scattered across email and chat, huge effort for SOX and internal-audit compliance was required, and it was hard to leverage for evaluations.

03

ARCHITECTURE

The architecture we built together

From scratch and fully in-house, four domains brought into a single SaaS foundation.

After deeply understanding HRTechCo's HR operations, ‘real-time metrics for management, objective evaluation data for HR, and a daily recognition experience for employees’ — we built, fully in-house from scratch, a thanks-coin SaaS that unifies these three-way needs into a single foundation.

EXECUTION

8

Duration (months)

48

Total effort (person-months)

Domain ①

Peer approval

Challenge

Approvals scattered in chat / no records.

Solution

Real-time push + transaction ledger

Thanks sent between employees are notified instantly and every one is recorded in the ledger.

Domain ②

Task reward

Challenge

Manual Excel aggregation at month-end / delayed evaluations.

Solution

Automatic rewards linked to the Bull queue

Triggered by task-completion approval, rewards are granted and notified instantly.

Domain ③

Gift exchange

Challenge

Paper coupons and departmental budgets made control impossible.

Solution

Unified catalog + inventory and discount-code integration

Gifts, discounts, and internal perks unified into one catalog with real-time inventory management.

Domain ④

Audit ledger

Challenge

Approval history scattered in email / hard to audit.

Solution

MySQL + MongoDB dual ledger + RBAC

A tamper-proof ledger and separation of privileges balance instant audit response with evaluation use.

TECH STACK

Frontend

React 18

TypeScript

MUI

Ant Design

Chart.js

Backend

NestJS 8

JWT Q Bull Queue

Socket.io

DB & Infra

MySQL

MongoDB

Redis

AWS S3 N OneSignal

04

IMPACT

The value the platform creates

HRTechCo's HR operations reach the next stage.

After deploying ThanksMint, visibility into each employee's contributions, flexibility of benefits, and audit readiness improved dramatically over the Excel era.

OUTCOME ①

A foundation that makes daily contributions visible

Peer thanks, task rewards, and exchange transactions are consolidated into one ledger, making employee contributions visible at all times.

OUTCOME ②

Engagement with an instant-recognition experience

With approvals and rewards arriving instantly, the organization escaped month-end waits and person-dependent evaluation, lifting engagement.

OUTCOME ③

A structure for unified benefits operation

Gifts, discounts, and internal perks are catalogued, balancing budget control and employee satisfaction with real-time stock syncing.

OUTCOME ④

A ledger that responds instantly to audits and HR evaluation

Every transaction is stored in a tamper-proof ledger, usable in one click for SOX, internal audit, and HR evaluation data.

STAKEHOLDER

Employee

Everyday contributors

Typically

Daily contributions went unrecorded and got buried at evaluation time.

With ThanksMint

Peer thanks arrive instantly, and contributions remain as coin history.

Business impact

Higher engagement

Recognition experience reduces attrition risk

STAKEHOLDER

Team Leader

Evaluation & 1-on-1

Typically

1-on-1s and evaluations relied on subjectivity, with little objective data.

With ThanksMint

Evaluate objectively with coin history and department rankings.

Business impact

Major reduction in evaluation effort

1-on-1 prep, instantly

STAKEHOLDER

HR department

Engagement operations

Typically

Metrics seen only via month-end Excel aggregation — no instant response.

With ThanksMint

Check engagement KPIs daily on the dashboard.

Business impact

HR analytics cycle: monthly → daily

Early intervention prevents attrition

STAKEHOLDER

Management

CHRO & CFO

Typically

Benefits ROI and the impact of engagement initiatives were opaque.

With ThanksMint

A transaction ledger and audit log balance investment decisions with audit response.

Business impact

Visibility into HR investment

Audit response in one click

05

DEMO

Three scenarios

Experience thanks coins through a live, working demo.

FLAGSHIP

SCENARIO 01 · HR Administrator

HR Dashboard

·Instant visibility into monthly grants, users, and exchange KPIs
·12-month issuance trend chart
·Recipient ranking and distribution by department
·Tamper-proof audit log + real-time transactions

Launch the demo

SCENARIO 02 · Employee

Send a peer thanks coin

·Pick a colleague and send coins instantly
·Transfer details are recorded in the audit ledger
·Automatic rewards for in-progress tasks
·Transaction history and filter by type

Launch the demo

SCENARIO 03 · Employee

Redeem a gift

·E-commerce gifts, cafés, and benefits in one unified catalog
·Filter by category + real-time stock display
·Balance and history updated instantly
·Exchange transactions are also saved to the audit ledger

Launch the demo