Portfolio Technology: IT Services

Delivering a complete Sitecore deployment solution for a manufacturing company

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
Altra Featured

Customer Background

Altra Industrial Motion is a global designer and manufacturer of power transmission and motion control products used on various industrial drivetrain applications. Headquartered in Braintree, MA, the multinational firm has 40 product lines with manufacturing facilities in 11 countries. Their product lines are categorized into clutches and brakes, gearing, engineered couplings, bearing assemblies, power transmission components, and belted drives.

Altra Industrial Motion

  • Industry

    Manufacturing

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Sitecore

Challenges

As the number of websites increases, so does the number of challenges related to design, languages, frameworks and hosting solutions. Altra Industrial Motion has been running several websites with various categories like corporate sites, market-oriented sites and brand-specific websites. The websites were built on different technologies such as .NET, PHP and other platforms; and thus, it was challenging to display dynamic data from the database and integrate third-party APIs. Additionally, the content managers faced issues in managing website content which prevented them from controlling and maintaining content on different sites.

Solutions

Softweb Solutions deployed Sitecore as a web content management solution. We evaluated its entire online network and consolidated all websites into a single point of control to maintain the brand identity and reduce the time to update content on different websites.

Our experts designed a flexible Sitecore CMS solution that supports region-specific content as well as multilingual websites and presents content based on the visitor’s location. It also allows integration with third-party tools on their websites. Our developers integrated Widen API to manage data securely and streamline the digital asset lifecycle. Managers can now have complete control over publishing, expiry and archiving of content. The solution permits the user’s versioning, permission and workflow functionality.

As part of the solution, we also developed an end-to-end iPad product catalog management system that allows the sales team and dealers to access product information anytime. With Sitecore as the back-end CMS system, the admin can easily upload and publish new content to the devices.

Sitecore deployment has also given the company access to its Experience Analytics tool, allowing them to track visitors’ geolocations and analyze user engagement and conversations. Furthermore, they can leverage business intelligence and decide how to create outstanding marketing campaigns. Our Sitecore deployment solution offers the following benefits:

  • Eliminates hassles of content management
  • Presents region-specific content and language
  • Maintains branding like corporate content, colors, and fonts
  • Enables managers to manage content and resources from a single back-end system
  • Improves outcomes and organized online entity
  • Allows integration with third-party tools
  • Delivers richer customer experiences
  • Allows anytime access to product information anytime, anywhere
Quate
We are really happy with the Enterprise grade solution that Softweb has delivered for the our group of companies. It has now become extremely easy to manage multiple sites and the content with the Sitecore platform. Softweb Solutions’ engagement showed real momentum right from the beginning and it has performed brilliantly to build a full-blown digital marketing solution using Sitecore. We are highly impressed at how Softweb met every deadline with tight project management. The Softweb team excels in providing great customer service and work integrity. We highly recommended their solution centric approach to achieve our objectives. – David BrooksbankDirector of Marketing (Altra Industrial Motion)
Altra

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Renovating banking and finance operations with app modernization

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
App Modernization Featured

Customer Background

Our client is a trusted brand in the banking and finance business. Headquartered in the US, the company has significant operations in territories across Asia, Europe, North America and South America serving millions of customers. With its established presence in commercial and retail banking and wealth management – the client’s unique competitive offerings have allowed them to stand out.

  • Industry

    Banking and finance

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Azure Stream Analytics, Azure Data Warehouse, Power BI

Challenges

The client needed a digital upgrade in their 30-year-old core banking capabilities. Their main goal is to stay ahead in the market and deliver tangible outcomes for today’s tech-savvy consumers. When they approached Softweb, their existing infrastructure included software developed in languages like PL/I, Assembler, JCL and CICS. They were managing their data in DB2, VSAM and ADABAS. Further, their reporting, monitoring, sorting and scheduling tools were also based on legacy systems.

The question was not about adopting a change. Rather, how efficiently the company can implement the change without affecting existing services and products that serve many consumers in their daily lives.

Some specific challenges were:

Inability to mine data

In the old systems, they had flat files. Data fields could not store the free text; hence, there was no functionality to mine the data, search for the data, run a specific business rule, etc.

New features integration challenges

The database had no graphical user interface. It was all command line or code-driven and incapable of enabling on a mobile platform. Integrations with technologies like GPS were not possible. Consequently, cloud integration was beyond thoughts.

Lack of documentation

The biggest hindrance was the lack of documentation of existing legacy systems. The goal was still focused on uninterrupted data flow, hassle-free maintenance, seamless integration and operational flexibility.

Solutions

We started the legacy application modernization by ingesting the data that emerged from the company’s disparate systems. Data ingestion helped the company channel vast amounts and different types of unstructured data from various sources. The data analytics pipeline does data preparation, cleaning, enrichment and near real-time analysis. The pipeline publishes its analysis through visualization. That’s how it generates insights to support business decisions.

In essence, we shifted the company’s IT model from on-premises systems to cloud-based and related innovative technology solutions. It implies a change from a complex, manual, time taking, rule-based approach to simple configurations such as the self-service analytics framework and data lake architecture.

With a data warehouse in action, the company’s departments can use different data sets efficiently. That makes informed decision-making quick and easier. For instance, there was no connection between the data of the legacy accounting system and the new insurance hand. With app modernization, a complete picture of the customer lifecycle emerges. Meaning, a home buyer applying for a mortgage now triggers an opportunity for the company to pitch insurance. That helps the company with incremental revenue. It also enhances the customer experience.

Apart from that, we made their services accessible via APIs. We modernized the company’s legacy systems by keeping their core products or services as it is. Further, we added the following functionalities by leveraging AI and ML models:

Churn prediction

  • Identify customers who are likely to churn
  • Develop loyalty programs and retention campaigns
  • Understand what causes a client to discontinue using the company’s services

Sentiment analysis

  • Know what customers want before they do
  • Increase customer-driven product enhancements
  • Improve customer acquisition and customer experiences

Customer segmentation

  • Develop a distribution channel led by data
  • Understand who are most valuable customers and why
  • Increase customer loyalty with customized content and interactions

Benefits

  • Promote personalized services
  • Full control over the customer life cycle
  • Massive savings in operating expenses
  • Nurture a data-driven brand perception
  • Create targeted marketing campaigns
  • Identify new business opportunities

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How remote access solution reduced operational costs for ABB

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
ABB Featured

Customer Background

ABB is a multinational company mainly dealing with power and automation technologies. It is the world’s largest builder of electric grids. The company has several product lines, including the popular TotalFlow range, that deliver pre-configured solutions to the natural gas industry for measuring and automating the process using remote control technologies.

ABB

  • Industry

    Manufacturing

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    MVC, ASP

Challenges

The company was facing challenges such as a lack of user productivity, poor product accessibility and no database system for storage and retrieval of data. They wanted a software solution that could give their engineers remote access to the ABB products on the client side. The client wanted to activate and calibrate the ABB products installed at the client’s location to improve productivity at an agile pace to increase ROI.

Solutions

Understanding the benefits of dynamic software development, our team of app developers collaborated with the company to offer a best-in-class solution. Our client gave us detailed information on what their business goals were and the technical capabilities they were looking for in the solution. Our team developed a Flex-based solution for ABB’s customers to get ABB TotalFlow products up and running quickly. Also, our solution, TotalFlow Measurement and Control Systems, gives ABB engineers the ability to remotely access the product catalog.

Benefits

  • Facilitates flow measurement and control experience
  • Helps ABB cut down on installation costs and service levels
  • Availability of system on the intranet for employees’ access
  • Different IP numbers for each of the ABB XSeries device solution
  • 35%

    Growth in user engagement

  • 45%

    Rise in sales

  • 25%

    Reduction in costs

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Legacy app modernization for better agility and scalability

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
App Modernization Featured 1

Customer Background

Being a leading management consulting service provider, the client offers a broad spectrum of services to heavy industries such as transportation, aerospace, mining, chemical and steel production. To help businesses work more effectively, the client provides comprehensive services to their customers. Their services include strategic planning, organizational development, and digital and operational transformation.

  • Industry

    Management consulting

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    ASP.NET MVC, C#

Challenges

Legacy application modernization has become essential for enterprises to meet the modern needs of customers. One of our client’s customers is a fleet management company that transports various goods around the United States. Hence, to keep tabs on driver performance, fuel consumption, company revenue and other KPIs, they were using an application built on the Microsoft ASP.NET 4.5 framework.

The old version of the framework limited the company’s ability to scale its business processes. It also made it difficult to keep up with the changing landscape. The reasons why the legacy app needed to be modernized are as follows:

  • Complex source code written with hardcoded conditions
  • Lack of technical expertise due to the small in-house development team
  • Risky traditional development and higher maintenance requirements

Solutions

As the end client was using a legacy app built using outdated technology, they were only able to add limited capabilities. Therefore, they were looking for a modern solution to make the app more agile and efficient. So, after a thorough consultation, our team of experts suggested that the end client’s app required a highly resilient digital ecosystem to remove old redundancies.

Based on the assessment, the team crafted a migration strategy for refactoring outdated server-side code and business logic with modern code and logic. The migration process involved three stages:

  • Migrating the server-side code: The compatibility of the existing application or the newly developed application on .NET MVC 5.2.7.
  • Transferring the existing data to the cloud: Aiming for a seamless and smooth data migration to copy the current Oracle data to the cloud.
  • Updating the framework to include reporting: Reaping the advantages of modern technologies to add the new report upload feature without downtime.
The app modernization solution designed by our team of .NET experts utilizes best practices to power the end client’s vision of a highly scalable app. Our approach allows them to preserve the functionality and interfaces of the existing application while moving towards a foundation for future modernization. It helps them to get real-time insights and keep an eye on some additional fleet management and driver performance KPIs. Furthermore, our solution also allows them to receive constant technology upgrades, enabling them to stay ahead of the competition.

Benefits

  • Provides real-time insights
  • Allows to cut business costs
  • Increases driver productivity
  • Efficiently execute daily operations
  • Helps to increase revenue streams
  • Enables to scale of the application
App Modernization in Management Services
App Modernization in Management Services

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Database modernization brings agility to a leading financial firm

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
Database Featured

Customer Background

The client is one of the leading financial services corporations, offering retail and commercial banking solutions. They are organized into four business groups: retail banking, commercial banking, wealth and asset management, and insurance services. The company provides a range of high-quality financial products to business and individual customers in the US.

  • Industry

    Finance

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Azure Database Migration Service, Azure Data Factory

Challenges

Database modernization from legacy systems is imperative for modern businesses to keep up with the rising demands of the business and stay ahead of the competition. The company had a data center portfolio with a complex network of sites and an outdated legacy infrastructure. Due to this, they were struggling to achieve zero-transaction loss. Moreover, due to the heavy maintenance, operational and performance expenses, managing multiple database sources was costing them a fortune.

The firm was facing several other problems, such as limited flexibility, complex integrations, inaccessible data, dwindling support and analysis of database structures. They wanted to resolve these issues and spend less time maintaining infrastructure. So, after thorough analysis, our team of experts proposed an advanced solution such as a consolidated repository under Azure SQL Database.

Solutions

Softweb Solutions carried out an extensive assessment of the client’s existing database system and data centers. Based on this knowledge, our experts helped the client migrate an enormous amount of data from a SQL Server (on-premises) to a centralized data repository under Azure SQL Database. The objective was to migrate database objects and data with minimal impact on the functionality of the system while maintaining data integrity. The migration process involved four steps:

Data Modernization for Finance Industry
  • Data analysis: Analyzing data is imperative that includes entity mapping, maintainability analysis, error-handling, etc. It enables determining data loss and documenting a robust database modernization strategy.
  • Pre-migration: Before implementing the migration strategy, it is significant to check data inconsistency, redundancy, stability, data type and length. Data cleansing is performed based on these findings.
  • Migration phase: Moving the data from source to the target with the help of data-based transformation rules. It also includes logging and reporting errors during migration to resolve the errors.
  • Post-migration: It becomes significant to ensure data quality in the post-migration phase. It includes planning, creating backups, quality testing and validation of results.

Database migration enables the client to utilize analytics to drive business decisions and improve operational efficiency with better reliability.

Benefits

  • Cost effective
  • Flexible scalability
  • Improved operational efficiency
  • Supports modern lightweight application
  • Auto patching and upgrade mechanisms
  • Greater security with disaster recovery
  • 90%

    Reduction in mainframe
    data-hosting costs

  • 50%

    Improvement in
    data access

  • 30%

    Reduction in
    development costs

Next Steps

Would you like to dive deeper to uncover a suitable legacy database modernization approach? If so, here is a quick guide for you:

  • Identify your existing infrastructure in which you currently have legacy data. It can also be the system you are looking forward to eliminating.
  • Check out the number of records or the amount of data in your legacy infrastructure. For example, 985,000 records / 5TB
  • Identify the latest database system in which you wish to migrate your legacy data. Don’t have an idea? That’s perfectly fine. We are right here to help you identify it based on your needs.

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Faster deployment of data ecosystem with microservices

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
Microservices Featured

Customer Background

The client is a device manufacturer, building smart devices along with applications, catering to various industries like retail, healthcare, manufacturing, agriculture and many more.

  • Industry

    Information technology

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Angular, Kubernetes, Docker, Azure Blob Storage, .Net Core

Challenges

The company offers a versatile range of products like sensors, smart devices, gateways, etc., to different industries. Hence, managing each of the offerings individually and treating each module as a different entity was costing them more effort, time and money. It was becoming a challenge to handle and segregate disparate data generated by each of their product and service. Managing so many products separately also required multiple resources. Often, a lack of communication between these resources would hinder productivity. Moreover, to provision requirements of their customers, there are several resources required that help the client to avoid unscheduled maintenance, unplanned downtime and lack of OTA updates.

Creating a system that offers everything under a single umbrella can be cumbersome, especially when it is built using monolithic architecture. A data ecosystem has various modules to manage, which often causes complications as these modules highly depend on each other. It has many endpoints like firmware, web, mobile, connectivity and applications. In such cases, developing, deploying and scaling applications become challenging.

Solution

The digital nature of the business world has completely transformed the way products are created, sold and used. This was no different for our client as they needed to focus on not only providing the best products to their customers but also offering value over their products.

After a thorough consultation with the client, Softweb Solutions suggested deploying microservices that are designed to scale with changing market demands. Microservices are micros, which break an application into smaller units called independent services that use separate databases. To orchestrate capabilities that connect smart devices, users, APIs and applications/solutions, we adopted the microservices approach.

To take such a route, our development team decided to use a technology stack that includes Kubernetes, Azure API Management, Docker and more such tools that are compatible with the client’s infrastructure and can be easily integrated for easy management of dataflow. Most of the technologies used are open-source which allowed our adept team of developers the flexibility to facilitate configuration and automation.

We created a data ecosystem using the microservices framework to avoid the bottlenecks of a central database and improve business capabilities, such as enabling continuous delivery/deployment of smaller pieces of the entire application. It also allowed the company to run maintenance of an individual service without interfering with the workflow of other modules. The data ecosystem helps not only our client but also allows their partners to leverage different modules like APIs, SDKs, dataflow, IoT platform to develop smart solutions and a marketplace to showcase their products and services.

Benefits

  • Efficiently create and manage different modules like user management, APIs, development environments, IoT platform, SDKs, etc.
  • Decentralized database systems for reliability and continuity
  • Simple routing for better traffic management
  • Continuous development and deployment without major interruptions
  • Efficient development and deployment of IoT solutions
  • 35%

    Enhanced user experience

  • 60%

    Faster deployment cycle

  • 70%

    Decrease in downtime

  • 30%

    Faster time to market

Data Ecosystem with Microservices

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Augmented CPQ for an immersive sales experience

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
Tinsley Featured

Customer Background

Tinsley Equipment Company LLC. is an organization based in Texas, USA, that offers bulk material handling equipment for a range of industries across the Americas.

Tinsley Equipment Company LLC

  • Industry

    Manufacturing

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Unity3D, HoloLens 1, HoloLens 2, .Net, Node.js

Challenges

Tinsley offers a wide range of precision measurement products crafted according to their customers’ requirements. Often, it was a challenge for the sales and production teams to get accurate spatial information at the client’s location to provide an exact quote and rapidly close the deal.

The technicians needed a catalog to display their products to the customers. It was not feasible to physically showcase a variety of products with custom designs or the required dimensions. Customer retention was one of the crucial aspects that the company wanted to address. Tinsley was looking for innovative ways to present and test the products in their consumers’ environments.

Some of the key challenges included:

  • Lack of correct measurements
  • Time-consuming process of information sharing with the engineering and sales team
  • Manual and repetitive process of quote generation
  • Prolonged sales cycle

Solutions

Softweb Solutions’ Augmented CPQ tool allows Tinsley to display products virtually from their catalog at the customer’s location. With augmented reality product visualization, the company can showcase its products in the form of interactive 3D holograms. This offers technicians a better sense of judgment on how the equipment will fit in the actual setting.

Tinsley’s users can get the look and feel of the product and how it can be integrated into their actual environment with our HoloLens app. Our MR solution also enables the sales team to share accurate quotes in real time, depending on the users’ requirements.

  • Precise manufacturing: Technicians share accurate inputs with the sales and engineering team to provide tailored products to their clients
  • Visual product configurator: Tinsley’s customers get seamless integration of physical objects in their virtual environment
  • Value proposition: The company reduces the quote cycle by sharing information in real-time
  • Quick sales closure: The sales team generates correct quotations to ensure faster deal closure

Benefits

  • Accurate measurements of equipment
  • Faster quote generation
  • Visual product cataloging
  • Accelerated sales cycle
  • Tailored manufacturing
  • 3D visualization of products
  • Improved customer satisfaction
  • Reduced time for quote approval
Quate
Warren Ferguson
This MR solution has aided our customers to better understand crucial equipment details that drive price differences, allowing them to either move forward with the project or table it until another time. This is a great service to save time and has helped Tinsley develop a reputation of transparency and honesty that, we are told, many customers haven’t seen in some time. – Warren Ferguson President at Tinsley Process Equipment

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https://www.softwebsolutions.com/portfolio/ar-product-visualization-tool-for-manufacturer.html

Digital transformation solutions for interactive catalog app

Posted on by Narendra Prajapati
Molex Featured

Customer Background

Molex is a leading manufacturer of electronic interconnectors. Its extensive product range includes everything from electrical; fiber-optic interconnect solutions to switches and application tooling. Engineers and product designers use these products in the following industries: aerospace and defense, automotive, alternative energy, consumer appliances, data computing, telecom, medical and several other sectors.

Molex

  • Industry

    Manufacturing

  • Technologies / Platforms / Frameworks

    Java, SQL, iOS, Android, C

Challenges

Maintaining a wide product range through data attribution and precise categorization is challenging. The client had an extensive collection of products. However, making a catalog in presentation is tedious and time-consuming. Also, the client’s marketing/sales team wanted to showcase their product catalog to the customers on the go.

Molex wanted an attractive product catalog application for the entire range of its products and offerings. So, they wanted their marketing and sales team to have a handy product catalog that they could carry anywhere with them.

Solutions

A consumer electronics manufacturer with a wide range of product catalogs requires standardized and accurate product attribution to scale volume growth. It is time-consuming to discuss minute details about each product with clients remotely. Our team of professionals proposed an industry-best digital transformation solution to address these issues. We built an innovative product catalog showcasing the client’s entire range of products attractively.

The product catalog app covers all the Molex products with their technical specifications and has a unique, diagonal scrolling showcase structure of products. It is an animated app with attractive and clear product images that gives the customers a fair idea about the product and its usage. Their customers can easily access their product library with the required details. However, the company was concerned about the download rate of the app. To address this, we specifically designed the mobile catalog app with a small size. This app enabled the client’s users to not worry about data or storage usage and browse their products easily. The company can also get insights about the number of app downloads, most-browsed products and more.

Additionally, we have provided features like:

  • Search feature to look for a particular product quickly
  • Diagonal scroll presentation of products
  • PDF viewer showcasing product details
  • YouTube videos for demonstrating products

Benefits

  • Receive product information at the fingertips
  • Enable the marketing team to make an effective presentation
  • Gain potential business leads
  • Increase business opportunities
  • 20%

    Increased customer retention

  • 15%

    Increase in sales

  • 30%

    Improved user experience

Mobile Apps using React
Mobile Apps using React

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