The proof is in the pudding
as the saying goes
We've written up a bit of detail on some of the projects we've been involved with over the years to give some insights into how we work with our clients.
Elder's Upholstery / Nationwide Furniture Services
| Duration | 8 Years (2006 to 2014) |
|---|---|
| Type | Business Management System |
| Service | Fully Managed |
| Technology | Web app: PHP, JavaScript, HTML, PDF |
| Approx Value | £10-15K |
Elder's were a local upholsterer in Liverpool and had secured an initial contract with a large nationwide furniture retailer to undertake work to assess and carry-out warranty claims and other repairs to soft furnishings sold by the retailer. They wanted to undertake the work that fell into the local area, and sub-contract the more distant jobs out to other upholstery companies around the country.
Their existing paper job sheet system worked well for them and the retailer, but other suppliers had job sheets in different formats or that captured different job details. In addition, it was very slow and cumbersome to manage a paper based system ether via Fax or with scanners and emails.
We agreed that the best approach would be to start with an almost like-for-like digitisation of Elder's version of the paper based job sheets into an web based system, and then iterate quickly once the system was functional. During an initial two hour planning session, we reviewed the current job sheets and the Elder's team explained the various parts of the forms and how the process worked from the initial request by the retailer to potentially multiple visits to the customer and recording all the details on the job-sheets.
Elder's agreed that once the system was ready, they would re-enter a few dozen old job sheets following the same steps as they would if it was a live job.
After just 8 weeks we delivered the first iteration of the web based forms. The decision to spend time re-entering old job sheets was a key part of the success of the project, as part way through Elder's realised that quite often notes, comments and additional details which we're not part of the pre-printed job sheet would be scribbled into the margins, footers and reverse of the paper forms. We captured a whole new list of requirements and got back to coding.
A few weeks later and the next iteration was ready, and Elder's started using it for their own "live" jobs. They would regularly feed back with niggles and suggestions for pain-points in the process. We would make small updates and deploy them quickly.
This cycle continued successfully and just over 6 months from our first meeting the paper system was well-and-truly redundant for Elder's internal work, and by 12 months we had completed implementing all the additional multi-user work to enable sub-contractors to complete the long-distance jobs fully using the web-based system. The feedback and the iterations continued for another 12-18 months, fixing issues and adding "nice-to-have" features.
Then gradually things went quiet. In a good way!
Over the next five years we hosted the application, applied software updates, security patches and the occasional bug-fix or tweak. The system was achieving what we had set out for it to do and "active-development" had come to an end. Elder's and the sub-contractors were happily getting on with work, and the system "just worked" for them.
Eventually, a changing landscape and overall slowdown of Elder's business meant that the system was no longer required. It went through a graceful closure and was taken offline in 2014. It retired a happy and well loved application! 🥰