Innovative Australian software Development Company (BusinessAware Solutions) delivers an Enterprise Quality Mobile Merchandising system for a leading national Hardware Chain.

Business Need

Mitre 10, a leading Australian hardware chain with over 420 stores nationwide required an innovative solution to be accessed across a range of device types and with a user interface native to those various devices.

The underlying technology chosen needed to be flexible to meet the demands of a short development timeframe, changing requirements, integration to a complex back-end ERP database and a diverse range of front-end devices. It also needed to provide both a mobile and web interface.

Solution

BusinessAware provided a team to rapidly develop the system that would run on iPad devices and traditional laptops and chose Sencha’s mobile development framework – Sencha Touch.

We needed a mobile framework that could perform well under heavy load, had deep functionality and a solid architecture for building enterprise class applications. Having reviewed the current state of play of cross-platform mobile technologies some time ago we were definitely keeping our eye on Sencha’s mobile development framework.

Roger Hawkins – BusinessAware

Because Sencha Touch is a cross-platform mobile web technology built on HTML5 standards, it enables the development of multiple front end interfaces using a common framework,overcoming the need to code for specific platforms. Sencha Touch allowed BusinessAware to implement an industry-best web architecture using a tiered MVC approach to support both web and mobile interfaces.

BusinessAware developed a completely touch enabled mobile tablet application with an intuitive interface for quickly displaying and capturing hardware orders.

The mobile device platform (and in particular the tablet as a subset of this) has very particular UI and user interaction characteristics. When designing this type of app it is important to understand how these devices will be used, they need to be intuitive, especially by non-technical users who may never have picked up a tablet before. A clear design metaphor is crucial to the success of tablet based apps.

Tash Bickley – BusinessAware

The success of the solution has been demonstrated through its enthusiastic uptake by Mitre10’s trading partners and its ability to meet the demands of a large amount of business successfully transacted through the system. Part of the process has involved gathering feedback for future enhancements to the system.

There was a great deal of enthusiasm for the system both within the organisation (at both business and IT levels) and with our trading partners. The feedback from users and IT supporting the system has been extremely positive. This was the first major mobile application to be rolled out in the business and we can see great potential for this technology to help us retain our edge in the hardware industry. BusinessAware proved to be the right partner to deliver this highly innovative solution within our time and resource constraints – it has been a great outcome all-round.

Senior Business Analyst – Mitre 10