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EquipShare

EquipShare is a web platform for renting truck and trailer equipment

Solution:

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION SERVICES

Industry:

Logistics

Business size:

Enterprise

Outcome

We successfully developed a platform in a short time span. As a result, a product has made it easier for customers to onboard and share assets, to find a truck, and send the rent request.

From the business perspective, this online marketplace improved their flexibility in managing fleet capacity and boosted their revenue.

Business
challenge

weaknesses

  • Good attention to GDPR was required
  • Flexibility in production deployment
  • Work through an intermediary

strengths

  • A clear list of functionality to be implemented
  • Minimum Lovable Product which fairly easy to develop
  • Some features are simplified

Project
Description

A large manufacturer of forklifts named EquipShare wanted to create a digital platform for sharing industrial assets. The online rental of forklifts was a good start to see how customers would react to the idea.

Kion Group had several brands for various parts of the world.

They wanted to select 3 of their customers and help them work with the platform. To reiterate, every customer will have several locations with different trucks operating there. The customer will be able to rent the forklifts internally within its own set of locations. The customer will be able to rent forklifts from the dealer.

Digital Platform & Technology

The stack of technologies was initially provided by the client. To better align with the business model, ensure flexibility and efficiency, we decided to stop on the following technologies:

Communication Framework

Based on the client`s requirements, we diversified our communication tools to ensure clear and effective task flow, documentation sharing, team meetings, etc.
Skype
Slack
Email
Jira
redmine

Specification

The specification is always required to enable a clear understanding of architecture, business objectives, overall goals of the product, design, features, and list goes on.

Goal:

The project initially was at the Proof of Concept stage. We needed to create a Minimum Lovable Product and then take into account behavior data and feedback from the users.

As a consequence of being in the PoC phase, some features were omitted or simplified.

The main goal was to develop vital features for the platform, incorporating blockchain technology, and make customer surveys and prototyping.

Main flow:

The main flow for the user included simple functionality like user accounts, product data, search with filters, cart, contracts, check-in / check-out processes, truck history, reports, user behavior analytics.

The following entities were based on Blockchain to ensure their authenticity: users, trucks (including photos and maintenance history), contracts.

There were several secondary features like information about the customers, FAQ, ability to reach out to an expert, and multilanguage capabilities.

Team

For each project, we select a tech and design team with relevant experience and a sharp skill set in the required technologies.

Backstage

We always try to shed some light on the processes behind the scenes to make sure we`re on the same page with our clients.

Whiteboard Meeting

Although most of the developers are solo players, our team always strives to maintain a team-based approach and tries to dissect each project with great attention to detail. This is where whiteboard meetings come into play.

Brainstorming

Sometimes our brainstorming is happening online, sometimes it`s purely office-based discussions. Anyhow, discussing the ins and outs of the project is a must for our tech team where everyone is welcome to express their thoughts on possible obstacles that may happen during the development and how to avoid them.

Dev Meeting

Deadlines, speed, and quality of the development process is paramount. This is where our team leads and project managers come into play and monitor the status of each task. That way all the deadlines are met, and the client is satisfied.

Internal Communication Flow

With a clear board of tasks, Jira was our main communication tool. We also complemented it with additional tools like Email and Slack. All epics and tasks were added to Jira. The description of functionality was added to Confluense.

Project Management Methodology

The scrum approach was chosen as the most optimal option both for us and for the client. Sprint started on Wednesday, meet-ups, as well as any other team-wide activities were coordinated with the time zone of the client. Demo and retro happened on the last day of the sprint. The team had a retrospective, sprint planning, and task grooming after each 2 weeks sprint.

Project timeline

01

CONSULTING

  • Initializing calls with the clients to learn more about the project and expectations
  • Introducing our vision on the project, our resources, and solutions we can offer
  • Estimating approximate deadlines and budgets for the project
02

Product DESIGN

  • Setting up development guidelines, project management methodologies, and specifications
  • Defining product`s UX, content layout, and the overall set of features
  • Allocating engineers and designers for the project
  • Working on prototypes based on the overall architecture
  • Daily meetings with the team every day
  • Meetings with the client every day
03

Product Engineering

  • Describing all system components and their interconnections in a unified way
  • Working on both frontend and backend architecture
  • Improvements, bug-fixes, testing, and stabilization
  • Final launch

Design

Working on product design, we primarily develop its architecture, as this has a great influence on how the design will be built in the future, and how ways of promoting and upgrading the product will be organized.

Implementation
On Client’s Side

1.

Launch

Before the initial launch, we have followed up with the client to check every single sprint is completed and everything runs smoothly.

2.

Transfer

As we worked on the client`s Git, there were no issues with the project`s transfer.

3.

Education

No post-support or education was required from the client.

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