The Client
A European product company, leader in the field of electronic shelf labels, servicing the retail chains around the world. The company's offerings to its customers include the complete range of hardware and software components, and the associated tools and services required to bring innovative applications to the electronic shelf label market.

Business Need
Though the company was active in software and hardware, its true core competency lay in inventing new line of products for the retail market. Desiring to concentrate on this area, the company wanted to find a partner who could take care of the software R & D part of the package. Since this client, like many others, was interested in cost optimization, it wanted an offshore partner who could guarantee low cost while ensuring world class quality. Speed was also important, because the client could make use of the same to improve its market penetration. If these needs were taken care of by an offshore partner, the company would be free to concentrate more on intellectual property, an area it was already good at.

The Challenges
Quick response time and the ability to intelligently display information on a small screen are the key issues that Appulse had to handle. Apart from this, Appulse also had to do the following:

The client was promoting the hardware with new features aggressively. The biggest challenge was to develop the software which could support all the evolving features of the hardware completely. This required fast turn around time from requirements gathering to development and final release. Appulse followed the principle of staggered release with improved features to meet the client requirement.

Testing for ESL handheld is very different from checking normal software. One has to ensure that both speed and functionality co-exist. The usage of proprietary and in-house testing tools made this process a little more difficult.

Besides the above, the development of ESL integration of ESL with different vendors back office system was a big problem as it had to be customized for different customers. The integration had to be simple and robust, failing which the advanced functionality of the ESL would never reach across to the user.

Appulse Solution
Appulse tackled the challenge of delivering the client's requirements with a team of 20 people, who worked on this project one year. The team consisted of a Business Analyst, Technical Architect, and Associate Technical Architect, Project Manager, Product Manager and onsite coordinator apart from the team members. The first task was induction of the team members and training to get this project going with right mix of motivation and cultural and domain awareness .The project matrices and reporting tools like bug zilla were configured and put in place for this project.

A vision document was generated with active collaboration of the client to capture the business idea and the needs of the client. Next a requirements workshop was conducted to capture complete software requirements. Appulse used use case modeling, interviewing sessions and use of rational tools to capture complete requirements for the proposed system. To gain more knowledge Appulse’s analyst did extensive research on the retail domain, visited retail stores and interacted with the retail and the sales team. Appulse team also studied the existing system at the deployed site. The requirements captured were validated using interactive use case modeling. The system design was done by using component based architecture using tools like Rational XDE. Extensive use of design patterns for scalable, robust and adaptable system were used.

A support team was constituted for providing support to the client for beta and final product release. The support team interacted with the client on day to day basis providing dedicated support in solving critical and minor issues in fastest turnaround time possible.

There was also a requirement from the client's side to provide level 2 support for solutions deployed in vertical applications. Though Appulse at that point of time, had only some degree of retail knowledge, the quick ramp-up on multiple projects ensured that the deliverables were handled to the full satisfaction of the client.

Appulse also made significant contributions to the client's own in-house development group. Appulse played a major role in helping client innovate DMPL (Dot Matrix Pricer Labels) which unlike other labels were able to display pictures and figures. The quality of work achieved was enhanced by the capabilities of the offshore unit, which, thanks to Appulse' rapid staffing model, could easily add or remove manpower based on the client's requirements.

Benefits
The cutting-edge solution provided by Appulse delivered the following benefits:

The excellent product quality helped the client improve its market share, enter new markets and deliver solutions.
The low cost factor helped the client to get an edge and trim its R & D budget at the same time.
Appulse helped the client in developing a Dot Matrix Display which was an innovation in itself.
The high degree of predictability reduced implementation and usage woes, which led to happier end users and limited the burden on the help desk.