Project Overview
Pulse 2014 is an enterprise data analytical reporting app for use by field retail marketing agents to facilitate training, point of sale placement, availability and product demonstrations at retail outlets across the UK. Enabling business-wide collection of marketing data, Pulse 2014 provides real time information to users regarding workloads and scheduling.
Project Commissioner
Project Creator
Team
Paul Seaman - Technical Lead
Alex Sadaoui - Lead Developer
Jayne Sims - Project Manager
Malcolm Ayre - Client Project Lead
Raquel Saude - Creative Lead
Dung Nguyen - Android Developer
Wanchun Zhang - Android Developer
Matt Green - Android Developer
Chris Dawe - Windows Developer
Jon Tansey - Web Developer
Abayomi Alalade - Database Developer
Jeff Aitken - Test Developer
Project Brief
Workflow and process driven, Retail Marketing have been using their bespoke software Pulse to manage their entire business, since it was developed by Decoded Solutions in 2011. This encompasses the organisation and administration of all business units and everything from employees and clients to fleet and finance.
Within the last twelve months, Retail Marketing recognised the need for a new software platform to deliver enhanced core functionality and features to the business. Pulse 2014 has been designed to support the company’s growth, develop efficiencies across multiple business departments, and enable the right information to become available and be delivered across multiple devices.
The core functions and features of the original Pulse software have been retained and engineered into Pulse 2014. Using Decoded Solutions’ custom-built framework tool, which facilitates rapid application development, Pulse 2014 has been architectured with enhanced stability, performance, and scalability in mind.
Paramount requirements for the new Pulse software were to provide:
• Multi-functional features to enable all aspects of role to be carried out using the application
• All functionality available offline for remote working
• Reliability
• Security
• Accurate data monitoring
• State of the art touch optimized
• An enjoyable user experience optimisation for tablet and mobile
• Available across a range of operating systems
• Integration with existing systems
Project Need
Field marketing agents are the face of brands, engaging daily with retailers and customers, bringing both the brand and service to life, training store colleagues in the latest technology, implementing and merchandising key brand displays and supporting national retail events.
With challenging workloads and numerous products, outlets and campaigns to co-ordinate, field marketing agents need to be informed, responsive, and connected to the rest of the business.
Pulse 2014 provides a high performance tool to manage the many requirements of the field agent’s role outside of the office environment. With 100% use of all data available both on and offline and available on both mobile and tablet devices, the field teams are able to keep connected with their colleagues in the field and in the office.As such the app benefits from multiple business features designed to enhance communications within the field team and with the wider business, including:
•Recording market research on a store
•In depth data collection of any given users work-load, including Calendar, scheduling of site visits and logging and recording expenses.
•Seamless integration with numerous applications including finance and HR
•Vacancies:a listing of all vacancies within the company, providing the ability to apply for them
•Diary:a facility for the field staff to record their daily hour spent
Provided with an individual login, each field agent has a personalised view of their assigned locations, with both a listing and map and visits can be scheduled months in advance.
User Experience
Devised for use by hundreds of field staff, all juggling numerous business-critical tasks, intuitive design with straightforward processes and minimal training requirements was a must-have.
While the user journey through the application mirrors the original Pulse, there were a number of usability elements that were improved upon with the user in mind:
•Font - to increase accessibility and generate better reading quality
•Icons – changed to new intuitive icons which are easily identifiable
•Introduction different graphic elements and shapes to try to distinguish the different content areas, e.g. Columns of shops and clocks different from columns with data
•Colours – a refresh in colours, creating a calmer, lighter feel
•Grid – the new layout has a structure that is not so cluttered as the old one that uses visible line grid
Responsive web design was applied to ensure the UI design is flexible across operating systems as well as across desktop, tablet and mobile devices. Prototypes were used throughout the development process, to ensure the designs were scalable and would translate effectively across the range of platforms.
A high percentage of Pulse 2014 users work with tablet devices, therefore maps can be stretched and areas collapsed to visualize. The majority of information and input data is positioned towards the top of the interface to allow for the onscreen tablet keyboard.
Employee engagement is highly valued by Retail Marketing, creating a dynamic, personal and welcoming app was a key design consideration from the outset.
Project Marketing
The time and resource which has been invested in the project have been significant for Retail Marketing and whilst this software is first and foremost for their field teams they also appreciate the value it could bring to the field operations for organisations who run their own teams in house. Therefore, once tested and implemented within their own organisation Retail Marketing intend to use their own business as a case study and take the product to market to generate further revenue both for the software but also raise the profile of the organisation and demonstrate the breadth of services it can offer to clients.
Project Privacy
To ensure optimal security, all users require a personalised login to access the application. Custom user permissions, controlled by system administrators allow any aspect of the application to be closed to individual users, when necessary. Moreover, login access can be revoked at any time by an administrator.
Decoded encrypt login information and use a custom compressed format for the data transmission stream between the tablet applications and the server.
In Field Services
This category relates to applications developed in order to aid and facilitate organisations requiring mobility whilst out of the office.
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