Supernova Award Category
The Problem
Recently, Power & Tel’s customers have been demanding apps that enable asset tracking out in the field, prompting a need to include mobile apps in the company’s development strategy. So, the team embarked on a journey to enable asset tracking in real time, beyond the company’s four walls–from the time it leaves their warehouse to the time it’s installed at their customer’s customer.
In addition, there was a need to move core applications to the cloud.
The Solution
To extend its current relationship with customers and provide the desired mobile functionality, the team leveraged Telerik® Platform by Progress to extend the Progress® OpenEdge® infrastructure.
The resulting applications, the Mobile App Foundation and Mobile Metrics, provide end users efficient, easy-touse solutions.
Both mobile solutions, Mobile App Foundation enables customers to track and control assets to the end of the supply chain, beyond the distributor’s typical exit point, and Mobile Metrics provides real-time metrics and a visual status of affairs, enabling Power & Tel’s customers to make timely, critical decisions in the field.
The results
Developing in Telerik Platform was surprisingly easy for the team to learn and use. In fact, one of the two developers working on the solution wasn’t familiar with the technology at all, but in less than three months, was able to deliver the application with the desired features and functionality.
“Developing and deploying solutions to our customers using Telerik Platform is extremely efficient, and it doesn’t take very long for us to develop the solution once we have the requirements,” he said. “Even better, we’re able to provide the customer with an application that can be used in multiple platforms.”
Moving its core applications to the cloud has provided numerous benefits to Power& Tel, as well. “Hosting our apps in the cloud increases efficiency because of the native multi-tenancy capabilities in OpenEdge,” said Matthew Moye, Director of IT at Power & Tel. “We can host as many customers as we need on a finite number of databases. As a result, costs are reduced—yearly maintenance is built into the monthly price and we pay only for what we use, avoiding the typical overhead that comes with traditional on-premise equipment.”
Importantly, Power and Tel’s developers have cut project time significantly by leveraging Telerik Platform for OpenEdge. What would have taken nine months takes just three months using Telerik Platform.
Metrics
Power & Tel’s customers were demanding apps that enable asset tracking out in the field. As a result, the company needed to incorporate mobile app development into its development strategy moving forward.
Power and Tel’s developers have cut project time significantly by leveraging Telerik Platform for OpenEdge. They can now provide customers with mobile apps for use on multiple platforms.
“Kendo UI provides tremendous flexibility to our developers. It enables them to code once and provide multiple ways for customers to use the application.” Said Jaime Zepeda, Information Technologies Group, Power & Tel. “Our developers saved a great deal of time by taking advantage of the JSDO technologies provided by OpenEdge infrastructure we already had in place, and integrating it with Telerik Platform. We were also able to deploy the same application to multiple platforms, because Telerik Platform allows us to code once and deploy to multiple devices, operating systems and web browsers, without rewriting the code.”
The Technology
The team leveraged Telerik® Platform to extend the Progress® OpenEdge® infrastructure with 2 mobile apps—Mobile App Foundation and Mobile Metrics.
Development was aided by JavaScript Data Objects (JSDO), which enable developers to integrate the new application with the OpenEdge backend via REST services.
Using Kendo UI® by Progress, Power and Tel’s developers were able to provide their customer with different ways of interacting with the app.
Disruptive Factor
“People aren’t just sitting behind their desks anymore; they’re out in the field, making decisions on the fly,” said Tommy James, Project Director for Power and Tel’s Managed Inventory division. “That’s where there’s a need for instant data access, and instant tracking on mobile devices.”
So, the team embarked on a journey to enable asset tracking in real time, as well as to move core applications to the cloud.
“The challenge is providing solutions in a timely manner, using the infrastructure we currently have in place,” said Jaime Zepeda, Manager of Solutions Development with the Information Technologies Group at Power & Tel.
“We needed to be able to customize the mobile apps based on customer need, for example, if users were in different geographical locations and needed support for different languages,” said Zepeda. “Using Telerik Platform, we didn’t have to worry about that.”
The resulting applications, the Mobile App Foundation and Mobile Metrics, provide end users efficient, easy-touse solutions. “We’re designing the apps to be fast and efficient for users, and to drive a level of process discipline they’re not normally used to out in the field—to maintain data integrity regardless of their location, so they can make informed decisions,” said Jaime.
Shining Moment
“Hosting our apps in the cloud increases efficiency because of the native multitenancy capabilities in OpenEdge. As a result, costs are reduced— yearly maintenance is built into the monthly price and we pay only for what we use, avoiding the typical overhead that comes with traditional onpremise equipment.” Matthew Moye, Director of IT, Power & Tel