Client Overview Our client is a key provider of software solutions for ensuring safety and quality standards of the supply chain of consumable goods manufacturers. Client's dedicated software platform assists in automating, streamlining and improving food quality. The solution includes various modules which look after regulatory compliances as well as, safety and quality management. Our client s software platform helps in enforcing, automating and streamlining the process of food quality and safety checks which enables the providers to prevent losses. Client is focussed on providing affordable, cloud-based solution that can be used by companies globally across the food industry sector. Client also wanted to mobilize their solution to increase reach and serve their customers better. The overall purpose of our client's food safety solution is to create efficiencies that will help to ensure regulatory, non-regulatory, and customer-driven compliance along every point in the supply chain. Engagement Situation Today s food safety and quality assurance providers face a multitude of challenges when providing consumers with quality food while remaining profitable. Our client s solution essentially helps the vendors of a food supply chain in preventing losses related to food quality and safety thereby protecting their market value and brand to achieve safety and quality assurance, food suppliers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and services companies are turning to emerging software technology. The safety and quality of food is measured through various parameters that are monitored and measured by the client and then analysed to determine the safety/ quality score.
Existing platforms provided range of questions set (analyte), which are a set of examination parameters for different products, values of which determine the quality score. Client required an application for their end users to work with these analyte sets during the inspection of food processing across the food supply chain and submit the resulting values to a central system for analysis. The existing solution was not accessible from any location and also wasn t user friendly, in terms of allowing users to enter data and view the result in fewer numbers of clicks. In addition to the web solution, a mobile application was also one of the critical business objectives to meet the growing demands of the customers and their business strategy. Our client was seeking to work with partners who had experience in full spectrum of product development, maintenance, and iterative execution model for roll-outs. Client was looking for a partner who could deliver applications across multiple mobile platforms. Xoriant s track record of successfully delivering high class software applications with multiple technologies and multiple domains, and cost-effectiveness offered by Xoriant s global delivery model influenced client to engage Xoriant for the project. Key Engagement Objectives: The engagement objective was to develop a web based UI Clickable Mode software and a mobile application for Smartphones and Tablet (ios & Android). Some of the key requirements (Web as well as Mobile) are highlighted below: Provide UI design with wireframes for all Webpages based on the functional specifications and rich user experience Implement a complete clickable model having all views coded as per the functional requirement document
Develop new WCF Rest service with new naming tag for new Mobile (ios & Android) and Web applications Develop a new Services Layer for UI and backend interaction Develop a Mobile application which provides the similar functionalities as that of the Web Application like accessing and submitting reports, access in offline/online mode, etc. Another requirement was to simultaneously launch applications for multiple platforms of ios and Android to be able to cater to wider customer base Xoriant Contributions Xoriant was involved in complete software development lifecycle process in building the application, following an iterative methodology to meet demands of evolving requirements without much compromise on time to market goals. Xoriant team studied the functional and business requirements and defined the solution blueprint. Xoriant developed the entire web application using a View Mode lbinder framework. The team used Angular JS, Kendo, jquery, HTML5to provide a rich user experience for the application. In reference to the requirement of mobile application, Xoriant recommended developing the app with Xamarin considering the scope of client's growing customer base which will include multiple platforms in the future. Xamarin architecture allows use of any components for both ios and Android, including platform-specific capabilities. Xoriant is a Xamarin Authorized Consulting Partner which strengthens Xoriant s mobile offerings to create cross-platform applications with shorter development cycle, thereby facilitating client to reach a wider user base with accelerated time to market.
Some major contributions for the application (Web and Mobile) are listed below: Web Application Contributions: Developed a rich responsive UI using HTML5/CSS3 and incorporated the view Mode lbinder module Developed mechanisms to generate Form Designer, Records Viewer/Up date, Compliance Check etc functionalities using ASP.Net and Web API 2.0 Developed Dashboards for Reports, Alerts, Forms, Audits etc. with option of adding\deleting widgets to\from the dashboard Used jquery in combination with Visual Studio 2013 for various event han dling activities like Profile Management, Login Offline & Online mode, etc. Developed screens recording using jquery and Kendo UI which is taken at the time of checking a food product thereby creating an audit trail using application logs Developed a new Services Layer which defines "View Model" classes which are required by the Angular framework, and are serialized as JSON. Allowed Offline/Online testing of samples due to which Users can test samples offline and later sync data with server Provided user based access for reports and preventing of loss of data by implementing security standards Created a WCF service and configured it to use Web HTTP Binding for security
Mobile Application (ios and Android) Contributions using Xamarin: Developed a mobile solution for ios as well as Android platform with all the web application functionalities using Xamarin Platform Architected the applications to use a thin mobile Clientto be deployed on ios and Android devices that communicated with a server. Built Views using drag-and-drop functionality and property fields using ios designer of Xamarin Studio Created Form based dynamically on the type of data received from server Developed application using Model-View-View Model with Observer pattern to re-use more components across platforms Implemented a common logic using Xamarin for generating the Questions Type during run time which works across platforms. Tools & Technologies Web App: Visual Studio 2013, Angular Kendo UI LESS HTML5/CSS3 jquery ASP.Net MVC 5 ASP.Net WebAPI 2.0 Mobile App (ios and Android): Xamarin Studio ios and Android XCode SQLite SVN WCF Rest Service Android SDK
High level Architecture Diagram Web App Mobile App
Engagement Results/Benefits Enabled the client in getting safety & quality compliant solutions faster which helped them win and retain customers Improved operational efficiencies by 25% Increased the marketability of the product by around in new markets with advanced versions and functionalities Increased client's customers savings and revenue from the new web and mobile solutions by 15-20% Usage of Xamarin s cross platform support capabilities enabled access to a reusable code, thereby reducing development time and cost