A Logistics and Direct Sales Company using XAF

About ISDK and their Project

ISDK a software developer focusing on complex business applications, integration and corporate mobile solutions for large and middle-scale companies. They chose to use Devexpress for business systems and Microsoft SharePoint for corporate portals due to their scalability and reliability. With these tools, they didn't need to think about basic development and other things that take up time, such as database setup, low-level data layers, low-level UI drawings and so on. They basically used out-of-the box capabilities so they could focus on the core business needs.

This case-study is a good example of applying XAF to solve their needs. They managed to use it as a base for a complex system that's built on top of it. With a lot of integration and custom business features.

Their Customer

The Customer is an international company that provides a wide range of logistic services in over ten different countries around the world. They deliver contract logistics solutions and are a service provider for international direct sales companies.

One of their main objectives is to provide product distribution for POS terminals within a secure network.

The customer's IT-department decided to use XAF to create a POS Terminal Network that was launched as a pilot project in five countries including Brazil, Russia, and South Korea. It has a centralized control system using a POS-server which monitors all kiosks within the network.

In addition to monitoring the operation and status of POS terminals, the server also generates reports and provides analysis on all customer transactions. It also manages software versions, packages, and configuration files of POS-terminals.

There is also a special module for importing tabular data into Excel and creating charts with summary tables to view reports within the POS-Server.

The project's specifications were to:

Monitor remote terminals health and stable online operation.Collect fiscal transactions and buyers' order data.Process orders and further transmission to ERP via web-services.Manage and distribute software packages.Maintain Security with country-level rules.Generate sophisticated reports.Create a detailed audit and log system.

There were also several other technical aspects and issues that also need to be solved. They needed to create complex user-interface forms with a lot of sections, tabs, custom buttons, and auto-refresh lists. As well as an always logged-in feature.

90% of the communication within the system are operations with the remote terminals. This data transmission needs to be implemented via secure SSL (https). It also needs to quickly transfer large files between the server and terminals.

They also needed to generate reports from several different data sources, along with a remote web-service.

Along with a complex XAF website, they need to deploy databases and web-services within demilitarized private and public network zones.

About 80% of the project's objectives and features were met using the standard XAF/XPO methodology. Using our framework, ISDK could quickly and easily add modules for Appearances, Audit, Reporting, etc. The other 20% was met using common .NET and JavaScript.

After several tests, the system was finally launched in go-live mode in late 2015. It currently performs operations for more than 100 remote POS terminals. All distributed to several different countries around the world. It's handled more than 180K orders from purchases made at the sales terminals. The connection and terminal status log contains over a half a million records as well.

Overall, the project was a success. The POS-Server is one example in ISDK's long experience using XAF's robust and reliable platform. Thanks to XAF, they were able to create and maintain a secure network to for logistics and direct sales with little coding effort. See how XAF can speed up your production by visiting https://www.devexpress.com/xaf.

Processing Orders and CRM using XAF

Another great example of ISDK taking advantage of XAF is within their CRM and Order processing system. One of their customers is multinational company that designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture.

The challenge for this project was to simultaneously automate the work of several different divisions within these companies. Including a trading house, a central-distribution warehouse, stores, and a call-center.

Here you can see a diagram of the core business process. It's quite complex in terms of logic. They need to be able to integrate several separate IT-systems like ordering, cash desk, stock management, SMS messaging, and so on.

ISDK built a system based on the standard client-server scheme with specific features including a SQL-Database, Web application UI, plus several job-services. The Frontend and data management was fully implemented using both XAF and XPO.

The ASP.NET application UI forms were deployed at the IIS-server. And on the backend, are the XPO classes' data and XAF controller's logic layer, along with the windows and web services accountable for integration functions and business rules.

They also chose to take advantage of the Reports Module so they could easily create reports.

The system was developed using our XAF technology. And it needed to accomplish complex tasks and calculations almost instantaneously. And this starts at the point of purchase. Orders need to be created to suit the buyer's needs. The order forms created by XAF need to be intuitive in filling, advising, and offering the most suitable options. After filling out the minimal requirements within a form, it then needs to calculate costs and delivery time. This was handles using standard XAF webpages and the conditional appearance module.

The next challenge was the need for data synchronization between the company's central warehouse and more than ten retail stores located in ten different regions throughout Russia. They needed to ensure that there wouldn't be any double booking of goods from the warehouse, leaving them short of stock and unable to fill orders. They also needed to synchronize each store's activity from different time zones with different start times of the trading day. This was met by developing a special data-cache layer under the XPO control, along with a windows-service which periodically updates the layer with data collected from other sources; primarily the stocks and warehouse management system.

They chose to use the audit trail module with minimal customization to track data changes, order processing status, and some business activities for each store's employees.

The system also needs to generate and print multi-page forms with complex structures. This is due to their strict legal rules for payment receipts and accompanying documentation for each product sold. ISDK chose to use the reporting module from XAF. Because of the complicated nature of the forms and data being loaded on the fly, they needed to code some special scripts. They found that these scripts are part of the reports module and they also allow unlimited form transformations and data processing.

ISDK also need to create a dashboard as a way for management to analyze data; along with panels for alarms of any problems. Users must also be able to drill down for specific details within an order. To meet these challenges, they used the KPI and Pivot Chart modules. It should be noted that initial data gathering and processing for quick load into panels and pivot charts was implemented by developing a certain job service. Developed as a windows-service, it processes and caches data in the background.

The system was successfully implemented and used in specific retail stores since the beginning of 2015. Over 48K orders have been created and processed since its launch. More than 1000 items are stored in the program stock module, and the customer database has around 96K people. The system also supports the work of more than 1500 employees in ten different regions of Russia.

ISDK LTD
http://www.isdk.pro