Wessex Searches is a wholly owned subsidiary of Wessex Water, providing conveyancing property search services across England and Wales. Solicitors, conveyancers, and property professionals rely on Wessex Searches to deliver the critical searches required during property transactions — including CON29R and CON29O local authority searches, drainage and water searches, environmental risk assessments, mining reports, chancel repair liability checks, and flood risk data.
The business operates a B2B ordering model: legal professionals submit search orders through a digital storefront, and Wessex Searches fulfils them by routing requests to the appropriate data providers, compiling the results, and delivering completed search reports — often within hours.
Veriland Consulting partnered with Wessex Searches to replace over 20 legacy systems with a unified platform built on Microsoft Dynamics 365 Commerce and Finance, extended with a custom NextJS storefront. The transformation automated more than 90% of operational processes — from search ordering and multi-provider fulfilment through to invoicing and financial reporting — replacing fragmented in-house applications, XML-based web services, and BizTalk middleware with a modern, cloud-native architecture on Azure.
Wessex Searches had accumulated significant technical debt through years of organic system growth. The conveyancing search market was rapidly moving to digital-first, and the existing infrastructure could not keep pace with client expectations or competitive pressures.
Veriland delivered the transformation in two structured phases, ensuring minimal disruption to live operations while achieving a comprehensive platform overhaul.
Before writing a single line of code, Veriland conducted comprehensive process mapping and optimisation workshops with the Wessex Searches team. This phase mapped every search product type, identified all external data provider touchpoints, and delivered a fit/gap analysis demonstrating how Dynamics 365 Commerce and Finance could replace the entire fragmented estate with a centralised, automated architecture.
With the blueprint agreed, Veriland implemented a unified Dynamics 365 environment covering all core operations:
Veriland built custom NextJS extensions on top of Dynamics 365 Commerce to create a modern, responsive ordering interface for solicitors and conveyancers. The storefront presents the full catalogue of property search products — CON29R, CON29O, drainage, environmental, mining, chancel repair, flood risk, and more — with address lookup, property identification, and basket-based ordering. Solicitors can track order progress in real time, view historical orders, and download completed search reports directly from the portal.
The core innovation of the platform is an automated fulfilment pipeline that handles the entire lifecycle of a property search order. When a solicitor submits an order, the system automatically determines which data providers are required for each search product, routes the requests to the appropriate integration endpoints, monitors for responses, compiles the returned data into a completed search report, and delivers the report to the solicitor — all without manual intervention for the majority of search types.
A purpose-built integration layer replaced the ageing BizTalk middleware and XML-based services, connecting Dynamics 365 to six major data providers:
End-to-end financial management including automated invoicing tied to search order completion, settlement processing with solicitor accounts, revenue recognition across search product types, and management reporting. The finance module eliminated manual reconciliation across previously separate ledgers and provides real-time visibility into revenue by search product, client, and region.
A secure, scalable API gateway underpins all external integrations and supports hundreds of thousands of API transactions per month. The gateway provides centralised authentication, rate limiting, request logging, and automatic retry logic — ensuring reliable data exchange with all six integration partners and supporting future provider onboarding without architectural changes.
The platform consolidation delivered transformative improvements across Wessex Searches' entire operation, fundamentally changing how property search services are ordered, fulfilled, and delivered.
“Veriland understood our business model in detail and translated it into a platform that not only fits our current needs but also positions us for future growth. The transition from multiple legacy systems to a single integrated environment has revolutionised how we operate.”
The Wessex Searches platform is built on a modern Microsoft stack with custom frontend extensions, designed for resilience, scalability, and long-term supportability.
Core commerce engine handling search product catalogues, pricing, order management, B2B account structures, and transaction processing for property search services.
Custom-built NextJS extensions providing solicitors with a modern ordering interface, real-time order tracking, search report downloads, and account management.
End-to-end financial management including automated invoicing tied to search fulfilment, settlement, revenue recognition by product type, and management reporting.
Cloud infrastructure providing elastic scalability, high availability, and the secure foundation for all platform services and API integrations.
Purpose-built middleware replacing BizTalk, with API gateway, automated provider routing, and connectors to NLIS, Landmark, TerraFirma, GroundSure, Land Registry, and Ordnance Survey.
Automated pipeline that routes search requests to the correct data providers, monitors responses, compiles results into completed reports, and delivers them to solicitors.
