Commissary App

Technology has progressed significantly since the first Apple iPhone was released in 2007.  When technology progresses, society does too.  However, one thing that is often overlooked is the end-of-life cycle of obsolete technology.  What happens to a firm when all of its hardware and software become obsolete?  How costly is it to replace all of their old computers with modern ones?  Will they be able to smoothly migrate proprietary software and data to the new technology?  If these questions are not answered thoughtfully, millions of dollars can be lost in the modernization process.

One of our clients recently faced a massive, nation-wide overhaul of their commissary computers because they had reached the end of life.  Replacing them with new computers would have required multiple maintenance patches as well as ongoing security patches, which is a costly, arduous process.  There was an urgent need to replace their computers with something functional as soon as possible, as these computers were used by their residents to order commissary items and send messages (after they are scanned for hidden words and symbols).  On the admin side, our client wanted to be able to continue to track past purchases and print receipts to provide evidence of transactions if a resident attempted to dispute an expense.  They called us because of Simtelligent’s reputation of delivering enterprise mobile apps, system integration expertise, and their track record with our CEO, Phillip Simulis.

Having done their homework, our client acknowledged that buying all brand-new computers would be costly.  Therefore, they inquired about the feasibility of replacing computers with tablets.  We researched the requirements for the tablets based off of the software installed on the computers in their commissary.  The goal was to design a user-friendly tablet experience that securely connected with the client’s databases and back-end processes.  Subsequently, we were able to reverse engineer their computer applications and improve the user experience with the help of our enterprise architect, security and UI/UX experts.   From there, we were able to build a proof of concept to get approval for mass production.

In the end, our client was so satisfied with our product that they sold licenses for the app to another firm in their industry.  Therefore, our solution not only reduced this firm’s costs, but it provided them with another stream of revenue!  Our client has been enjoying the benefits of our solution for over three years now.

Follow me on Twitter at @psimulis

Post by Paul Beninca

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