Desktop, Mobile and Web Applications for Logistic Company

The following story illustrates our development process and what our customers say about us.

Begoma, one of our clients, is a family-owned logistics company headquartered in Malmo, Sweden, with sales offices in Stockholm and a subsidiary in Hradec Kralove, Czech Republic. The company offers ground and rail transport services throughout Europe.

This client found us online, and we had our first meeting in our Riga office on March 2011. Our client, Mr Fredrik Malmberg, Deputy Managing Director and CTO, introduced us to his company and explained that they were looking for a client-server system with the following key requirements:

1. the capacity to handle 20,000-30,000 orders per year. Because of the high volume, all filtering, search, and reporting functions had to work fast. Operators had to have easy and reliable access to both new and old orders (including orders from the previous five years).
2. the capacity to receive, validate and generate invoices automatically.
3. integration with an app capable of working in multiple locations (including several sites in Sweden and the Czech Republic).
4. simultaneous access to the system by more than 20 dispatchers, financial specialists and expediters
5. project completion, with the system launched and in production, by January 1, 2012 (6-7 months).

Over the years Diatom has developed systems for a wide variety of different applications and we’ve established best practices for creating web applications, as well as mobile and desktop applications. We’ve found that it’s very effective to have a library of examples of different tools dedicated to different platforms and technologies. When Begoma contacted us, we had a pilot version of a desktop accounting software application that we had developed in order to participate in the tender procedure for the Sage company. On the basis of that application, during the first meeting, we had already prepared short requirements of the system we had to develop. Diatom presented the client with

• a pilot Working .NET application
• brief specifications with wire-frames
• an estimate for MVP
• an architecture and development process description
• projected deadlines
• profiles of the software developers and team lead assigned to the project

By 2011, our main competency was developing custom web applications. However, for that specific project, we offered a client-server MVP.NET desktop application.

For the front-end framework, we selected Telerik UI for WinForms controls which enabled effective data filtering and view UI for short periods at low cost.

As expected, the system was successfully developed and launched on January 1, 2012.

Today Diatom is working on other projects with Begoma using the same approach. When necessary, the client would extend their staff with Diatom’s experts, and in collaboration with their team, we developed several web and mobile solutions tailored specifically to their needs. Once the Begoma’s business requirements were fulfilled and the applications we built began to generate the desired profits, our team was scaled back at their request.

The results of several years of software development with Begoma have been outstanding. Automation of the company’s basic daily routines has helped Begoma minimize human errors, increase the number of business transactions and, as a result, increase profits. The general implementation of the system we built for client reduced the overhead associated with manual scheduling and load management processes and at the same time increased the throughput of the large volume of the business transactions the company processes on a daily basis.

This is just one example of how a logistics company benefited from collaboration with Diatom. Feel free to get in touch with us and discover what we can do for you!

Programming language: C#,  HTML, typeScript, react.js, JavaScript.