Keelings Knowledge

Project Details

Background

Keelings Knowledge provides to its clients a complete enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, designed by people with decades of combined experience in the fresh produce industry.

To improve their offering to their clients, Keelings Knowledge enlisted Greenfinch’s help to design, develop and launch a new mobile sales app capable of integrating with their existing main ERP solution.

The objective of this project was to create an easy to navigate, and user-friendly, mobile app which would be used by the following users:

Salesperson: To place orders while out of the office visiting customers. To view key information on customer accounts, and view live the stock levels, and confirm orders while on the go.
Drivers: Client drivers or 3rd party drivers can be supported by letting them see the route they are on, and what customers they need to visit on a given day. They can confirm delivery of each order and receive a Proof of Delivery signature there and then which is automatically updated in the back office system.
Customer: To be able to order from a full catalogue of products or a favourites list, view and download invoices, raise complaints or contact suppliers directly via email or phone.

Challenge

Early in the process of capturing the functional and non-functional requirements, it was identified that interfacing the sales app with a complex ERP system would come with a few challenges. One area identified was that the app would need to process the massive amounts of data involved and also maintain excellent performance.

To deliver the app within a stringent time frame, Keelings Knowledge required that the development of the sales app took place in parallel with the development of their ERP API endpoint.

Outcome

Greenfinch worked closely with Keelings to create a solution in parallel with the ERP API development, which required the development of a multi-platform app capable of running on both iOS and Android.

Xamarin Forms was identified early by Greenfinch as the best technology to use to build the mobile application. The Xamarin platform facilitated the development of the application across multiple platforms (iOS, Android, Windows) while using a single codebase, this ensured that the sales app was developed effectively and efficiently while reducing development time and cost significantly.

Data from the Keelings ERP system is cached within the apps own database, improving performance and also providing some offline functionalities. Synchronisation with the ERP system is triggered when required, for example when searching for products.

Greenfinch incorporated their Design, Build & Manage strategy in order to deliver the business solution effectively. In this case, integration with the client’s current ERP system was a priority. Working closely with the client throughout the process ensured smooth collaboration and the finished solution was delivered on time, on budget, and contained all desired functionalities.

Keelings Official