Travel management software: all in one app
Expense claims went through five separate desktop applications, one per type of expense.
App development for companies
Apps for your customers, your suppliers and the people who work inside, offline too and connected to the ERP: native, web app or installable, and how to choose.
Where we have already done it
Fleet management software: fifteen vans, hundreds of spare parts
Fifteen vans carrying hundreds of spare parts, and nobody knew what was on which one.
Production line management: new software to optimize lines
The state of a production line could only be seen by walking over to look at it.
Native app or web app for a company?
Native if the work goes through the phone’s hardware or people spend hours with no signal: reading barcodes in a row, reading a tag, printing a label. Web app if the people using it are connected, and sometimes on the shop floor too, on industrial terminals with a barcode reader. You decide by looking at who will use it.
The apps we write end up in the hands of three kinds of people, sometimes in the same project: your customers, your suppliers and the people who work inside the company.
What changes with an app
For Rosetti Marino the problem was business trips. Employees, 1,200 across sites around the world, went through five desktop programs to get a trip reimbursed: one for flights, one for ferries, one for credit cards, one for accommodation, and approval had to be requested inside each one. We wrote a single app that talks to all five: the request starts from the phone, the approval arrives there, and attachments and messages sit together with the request.
With a service report, a signed delivery note or a quality check something similar happens: a piece of data that today travels on paper and is typed in later. Between the moment something happens and the moment it enters the system hours or days pass, and in the meantime the data gets lost or changes. An app records it where it happens, when it happens, so at the end of the month the numbers are there.
Native app, web app or installable application
Native when hardware is needed (rapid-fire barcode reading, camera, NFC, label printers, industrial terminals with a physical keyboard) or when people work without a network for hours.
Web app when users are connected and change device often: nothing to install, it is updated in one place.
Installable on the phone when you need a bit of both: it sits on the home screen, works offline, and updates without going through a store.
Work outside the office
An app used in a warehouse, on a van or in front of a line needs large targets, high contrast and few screens. In the sun it has to stay readable, and where the network does not reach it has to keep working and sync when it comes back.
They decide whether the app will be used or worked around, and to know them you have to go on site before writing code.
Integration with the systems you already have
An app that collects data and keeps it to itself is only half useful: the office keeps copying. Most of the work is bringing what gets recorded on the phone into the ERP, the MES, the warehouse system or the CRM, and sending back what is needed for the next round. For Rosetti Marino the five programs stayed where they were, with their suppliers and their contracts: the app talks to them through an API layer, and whoever uses it does not know which of the five is answering.
How we work
In phases, each with a date. What goes into each is decided together, and you move on if the previous phase delivered the numbers it needed to. At the end the app is in the hands of the people who will use it, on real data.
Publishing on the stores, distribution to company devices only and maintenance are part of the work and are accounted for from the start.
How long a phase lasts, what it costs and what we need from you is explained in how we work.
What stays with you
Source, documentation, signing keys and environments. The app is yours, including the account it is published under.
What happens if it goes wrong?
Guarantees- The code is yours
- You can stop at any phase
- If something does not work, we fix it
- Maintenance can have guaranteed times
- The project does not rest on one person
Frequently asked questions
Why does a company have an app written?
To get a piece of data into the system at the moment it is created. Service reports, delivery notes, quality checks and readings today go through a sheet and an end-of-day typing session, and something gets lost along the way.
Does the app connect to the systems we already have?
Yes, and it is the main part of the work. Without that connection the app becomes the place where the same data lives a second time, and someone has to reconcile it by hand.
Who owns the app published on the stores?
You do, including the account it is published under, the signing keys, the source and the documentation.
How long does it take?
It depends on how many systems the app has to read and write. For the apps we have built so far, at least two months before people use it in their work.
Tell us about the project you have in mind.