UI-design Archives | ISDK - eCommerce development, omnichannel solutions, CRM-marketing

Apr

E-Commerce Omni-Channel

eCommerce, Integration, Mobile, UI-designadmin

Customer

GLOBAL PRODUCER OF WELL-BALANCED NUTRITION, WEIGHT CONTROL AND BEAUTY GOODS

Herbalife, a worldwide-known producer of nutrition, weight control, and beauty goods, together with Filuet Group, its logistic partner, expands into Eastern and Western Europe.

Entering CIS and Baltic countries’ markets, the customer wanted to introduce a new strategy for market expansion, which proposed an intense use of modern e-Commerce tools. They wanted to create a system of sales channels that would include a single web-store for all new business regions, mobile applications for popular platforms (iOS и Android), and a network of automated self-service kiosks (touch screen terminals). All solution components were supposed to use a single data source as well as centralized content administration tools, and configuration settings pool.

The planned online operations needed to be fully integrated with the existing offline business process of orders processing and delivery.

See customer feedback

The Omnichannel solution required a combination of several external and internal corporate tools, integration with Herbalife ERP system and Filuet Group logistic applications. nopCommerce, a leading Microsoft .NET based solution, was chosen as an e-commerce platform as its plugin-extendable architecture using Dependency Injection pattern provides almost unlimited system integration capabilities.

The following tasks were completed within the project:

design and development of an online-store;
design and development of mobile applications delivering full cart and order sync with the online-store;
integration of the e-commerce channel with the existing offline architecture of order processing, pricing, warehouse stock tracking etc.;
Filuet Group shipping widget embedding;
integration with payment systems, addition of new payment methods using online banking;
integration of e-commerce with vending channels (kiosks, automated sales stores);
implementation of chat bots for customer support.

The system is fully hosted on Microsoft Azure using one of the standard cloud service plans which ensures good stress resistance. This helps the system to show adequate performance: in peak times the site auditory might go up to a few thousands.

Herbalife users got a completely integrated shopping environment. This allowed to increase the number of customers and the average sum of their orders significantly. Customers now can access their carts from all devices, order history is centralized and shows all orders, including offline. For example, an order can be put together in the mobile application while final checkout can be done later via web-store personal account or vice-versa.

The company saw increased customer loyalty, boost in sales revenue and endless opportunities of using marketing technologies – retargeting, upselling, cross-selling, CRM marketing etc.

Nov

Enterprise SharePoint Portal. HRM-Trainings

SharePoint, UI-designadmin

Customer

Russian telecommunication holding company that offers a wide range of services including broadband and mobile Internet access, telephony and digital TV

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As part of an update of corporate portal and transition to SharePoint Server 2013 (see profile Telecom.Enterprise-Portal.Services-Branding), the Customer has planned to automate some of his internal business services on the SharePoint base.

In particular, the HRM-module for internal employee training became one of these services. The module provides users with a set of training from internal and external service providers. As part of the service, an employee can enroll himself/herself and send a request for the passage of courses available to him/her, plan a calendar of his/her own training, complete trainings and assess them, etc.

The main functionality of this service consists of:
─ Management of the training directory and calendar;
─ Records for training by the company’s employees and planning personal training calendar;
─ Coach of the company: conducting training;
─ Employee: passing training;
─ Employee: assessing training;
─ Coach: assessing an employee;
─ Viewing training history and information of its passing by specific employees;
─ Creating and viewing reports on training.

The customization of the user’s interface in compliance with the common corporate identity and Brandbook of the company was a separate task of development.

Jun

SharePoint HR-Portal – Employee Request Approvals

SharePoint, UI-designadmin

Customer

Automobile company group, comprises 5 official dealers of leading car brands

Initially this project was targeted to decrease stress on HR department making them free of various routine work: preparation of certificates/references, paychecks, ordering of stationery and business cards, application forms, notifying employees about changes in company procedures, adaptation materials for hew hires etc.

Before project start, it was decided to interview employees to know their issues and expectations from new portal. There was significant feedback – and project expansion became evident. With support from HR department such extension was approved at company top management level.

We in ISDK shared our experience and portal solution developments and provided consulting on which services are most commonly used in other companies, which issues can happen in implementation, what should be done first and what can be postponed. All this resulted in preparation of extended solution concept together with customer functional team and eventually in a project start.

Pilot project (for one division of the company) achieved the following goals:

News ribbon, calendar of events, phone book, employee birthdays
Employee personal page and department pages
Meeting room booking service
Requests service (documents, stationery, statements, leaves, certificates/references)
Voting and surveys module
Corporate events and thematic blogs (health, travel, volunteering, self-development) discussion platform
Corporate knowledge database (new hire package, application forms, description of procedures and relevant contacts, business literature library)
Ideas exchange: any employee can share his or her ideas on improving company business or corporate life

Some modules required custom development but main part was developed using standard SharePoint portal functionality (free Foundation edition) and modular blocks of our company («ISDK portal: SharePoint – HR services» and «ISDK portal: SharePoint – electronic requests» solutions). Maximum usage of standard functionality allowed savings on cost of implementation and time to Go Live.

Additionally we developed mobile version of the portal with limited read-only functionality for key portal sections.

Based on the results of first project phase portal went live. Several months of pilot usage showed benefits as well as future improvement areas, from both technical and business perspective. For example, there was significant decrease in the number of non-standard user tickets to Helpdesk and directly to accounting department related to leave balance calculations, leave requests, orders for stationery and other goods, business cards etc. Estimated decrease is 25-30%.

Another good result is the decrease of average request processing time down to 30-60 minutes in semi-automatic mode. Before it took up to several days. Portal sections with downloadable materials – marketing, technical, corporate policies and instructions – became very popular among employees. Total number of documents downloaded from the portal in the first few weeks exceeded 2000 items, which indicates high demand for such unified file storage.

We also noted indicators of the need to further development of internal company business processes and tools for its automation. For example, some of business processes require deeper integration of disparate IT systems. This relates to integration with accounting system and with sales and customer database management systems. This is the most useful for data aggregation for company management.

Jun

SharePoint Tablet App

Custom development, Mobile, SharePoint, UI-designadmin

Customer

RUSSIAN TELECOMMUNICATION HOLDING COMPANY THAT OFFERS A WIDE RANGE OF SERVICES INCLUDING BROADBAND AND MOBILE INTERNET ACCESS, TELEPHONY AND DIGITAL TV

Client management was looking for a long time possibility of a high-level integration center for project and process tasks accompanied with the easy to use KPI dashboards. Besides that, top management wanted not only integration on its own but also easy to use aggregated information visualization tools and quick functions (task assignment, commenting, and attachments).

Ultimately, this solution was supposed to be implemented within the scope of corporate Internet portal upgrade and migration to SharePoint Server 2013 (due to the fact SharePoint became an integration center itself). Customer also planned automation for some of its internal business services and that was a good point as well to develop a desirable integration center and its services.

One of these services was a module for integration of investment planning, technical projects and billing systems. Main business users of this service are company top managers. Certain challenges included the need to integrate data from independent systems in single information space. Systems were not designed for such integration either technically or logically (from business models perspective).

Another key goal (above integration) – as highlighted in the very beginning – was to get lightweight mobile client for company top management. The idea was to gather and aggregate all key information for current projects and top-level tasks. Top managers wanted to have analysis tool accessible from tablets and wide format devices.

To achieve the set goals, project included the following tasks:

Integration and aggregation of data from disparate IT systems
Creation of a single task center based on Microsoft SharePoint corporate portal
Development of a visualization and monitoring tool for key programs and project and their KPIs
Development of a mobile client for tablets and wide-format devices allowing to show key aggregated data and KPI on dashboards and do quick task assignments

Technically solution was developed using Devexpress Devextreme HTML5 application development platform (https://js.devexpress.com/). This platform is a large collection of JS/HTML components for building interactive and lightweight Web applications responsive for both common laptops and modern tablets and mobile devices.

We used the following components:

DataGrid
Charting Widgets
UI Widgets (main UI building blocks)

Data exchange and work logic of HTML5 components is standard – call (usually asynchronously) for Web services located on a company’s SharePoint portal.

Developed solution allowed integration of 3 key corporate systems that were complete disparate before. System provided top and middle management with single tool for analysis and management of project and technical tasks. In total system monitors more than 200 projects and program tasks.

Mobile client for tablets includes dashboards for aggregated project information – target KPIs and dates, actual statuses and key issues with the ability to quickly create and assign tasks. Average mobile application response time with stable Internet connection is 1 second or less.

About 20 top and middle-level company managers including its president use this system.

Apr

Bank SharePoint Portal. Branches and ATMs directory and map

SharePoint, UI-designadmin

Customer

Russian bank, in the TOP-10, with large branch network over the country

Bank has more than 1000 branches across Russian Federation. Branches are different in functions they perform: servicing companies or individuals, working with deposits, types of ATMs etc.

One of the goals of corporate SharePoint portal development was to give bank employees access to this information.

Service development goals – to consolidate all information on bank branches and ATMs, to provide users with convenient access to this information, to implement flexible search with the ability to show results on the map, to manage information amendment rights.

Specifics of this project included the following requirements:

IE8+ browser support;
Each bank branch can be either point of service or point of sales;
Branch information change approval process shall start only when certain fields are changed;
Only employees responsible for the region of the amended branch can approve changes;
Some information about branches is stored in external system and uses BCS for its retrieval;
System should include interactive map of Russian Federation with split to federal districts for searches within federal district and region;
Search results shall be shown on this interactive map;
System shall support full-text branch search by region, city, address, name and properties;
Each branch shall have its data card with information and photos.

Project development and implementation included the following:

System architecture, functional and graphical design works. Deliverables – functional UML diagrams and UI mockups;
Branch data import;
Interactive map of federal districts development using svg-format. When user clicks on federal district, system selects regions belonging to that district. When user selects a region, system shows the list of bank branches. This solution was also adopted for work in old IE8;
System supports full-text search for all branches in Russian Federation using SharePoint search function;
User can further filter search results by parameters, also quick search by text is available;
Search results include shortcuts to services provided by corresponding branch;
Search results are shown on Yandex map;
When user clicks on branch the system opens its data card with information and photos;
Administrators get associated with regions via lists with simultaneous user addition into corresponding SharePoint groups for rights assignment;
System has fully interactive interface and all user interactions are done without page reloads, using JavaScript libraries: SharePoint CSOM, jQuery, knockoutjs and web services;
Development of user and administrator documentation;
Customer key users training;
Full system testing, go live and putting system into full production mode.

System was deployed into corporate portal in autumn 2015. Information on about 1500 branches and 3000 ATMs was imported.

System response time for any search options is within 2 seconds because there are very few requests to data source – most of the time information goes from SharePoint index.

System has easy-to-use interface and can be quickly deployed.