Prerequisites 01 The client's company provides services for collecting and processing various data in the retail market. Having built network of employees (vendors), the company collects data about market players, their points of sale, product range, etc. throughout the United States of America. A team of engineers and analysts manage data collection, process it, package it, and provide it to end customers This business model is complex. A hyper-distributed team requires automation and digitalization of vital business processes such as control over vendors, collection of information, and primary data processing.
Task 02 The client began to solve this problem on his own at the very beginning of his business, without a well-thought-out architecture and proper quality assurance. As a result, at the time of contacting our team, the client was working with a monolithic system, which was expensive to maintain and develop. The tools with which it was implemented were obsolete. The UI did not meet modern requirements for speed and accessibility. Consequently, the Innovedge Software team was tasked with developing:
- A web portal for vendors, complete with necessary tools for data collection: calendar synchronization, a questionnaire system, and the ability to check-in at the data collection site
- Web portal for managers with tools for resource management, as well as primary processing of collected data
Implementation
01 Prototype
02 Design
03 Development
01 Prototype Once the basic business requirements for a system are defined, the first step in implementation is prototyping. At this stage, the main concentration is on creating the basic architecture of the application: the screens it consists of, the logic for their display, and the third-party services that will be used. In addition, our team prepared a road map for “cutting up” the existing monolithic software to implement a new system using a micro-service architecture. A plan was agreed upon with the client in what order in which functions would be disabled in the old system and available to users in the new system.
02 Design After the prototype was created, our designers prepared 3 design concepts based on the customer’s brand book. A brand book is not required, but it is desirable. In its absence, our designers work based on the wishes of the customer. As a rule, 3 main screens are drawn for a design concept. In this case, the customer was presented with three screens: a login form, a customer information form, and a generated document form for digital signature. After the customer decided on the final design, our designers drew the remaining prototype screens.
03 Development When implementing the micro-service architecture, our team used the most modern tools of the .NET platform. For the Web application, the Angular framework was used - a modern and effective front-end development tool, which is often used in conjunction with development on the .NET platform. In the absence of a mobile application, special attention was paid to adaptive layout: hundreds of vendors used a wide range of mobile devices in their work, and the display of the user interface in our applications had to be as accurate and intuitive as possible for all users.
Result
As a result, within 12 months, applications for vendors and managers of the client’s company were developed and gradually put into commercial operation. During the entire project, uninterrupted operation of the two systems was ensured with consistent migration of functions from one to the other. New applications are being actively used and developed.