The Challenge

Authority Logistics Solutions (Authority), a third-party logistics provider servicing the hospitality, healthcare, store fixtures, and restaurant industries, approached Unidev with the need for a highly specialized and sophisticated enterprise-level application. They believed that, with limited resources and a minimal staff, a web-based application could manage most of the logistics process for a massive construction project, provide real-time data sharing, and allow them to become rapidly competitive in a market which normally requires expensive, proprietary, integrated systems and hundreds of employees.

The tools they envisioned would need to estimate, manage, track, and invoice the purchase, shipment and warehousing of materials, furnishings and equipment for the construction and renovation of hotels, restaurants, retail stores, and hospitals. Authority’s application would have to bridge the gap for users across the world, in four otherwise unrelated industries – corporate management, manufacturing suppliers, freight carriers, and warehousing – by providing them all with access to coordinate on the import of purchase orders, schedule shipments and deliveries, manage storage, track individual supplies, and obtain reports and invoices. Each of these industries follows strict rules and complicated procedures, and Authority would need to accommodate and respect all of those to be a success. They also knew they had to do it right, the first time, to succeed.

The Solution

Our Unidev team felt that in order to build a tool to help these people work smarter and more efficiently, we needed to understand what their jobs are, how they accomplish their tasks, the results to be expected, and their goals. We worked side-by-side with Authority’s founders to learn their business and processes, ask complex questions, provide ideas for improving workflow and efficiency, help identify ‘gotchas’, and document everything. As each feature requirement was established, Unidev designed user interfaces, workflows, data validations, and business logic to present to Authority for approval.

The development process focused on the prioritization of feature dependency and the supporting back-end and database architecture, building the application in logical steps. Unidev provided regular quality-controlled updates to a web-accessible test environment which Authority was able to access from anywhere, at any time, to review the most recent progress and then provide Unidev with approval, feedback, and change requests. Changes and improvements were then quickly implemented early in the process.

Unidev also consulted with Authority to provide appropriately measured server and hosting recommendations and handled all needs to get Authority’s application live to the world.

Technologies and platforms:

  • Microsoft .NET
  • SQL Server
  • C#
  • Entity Framework Core
  • Azure Blob Storage
  • Bootstrap CSS
  • Tabulator Data Tables
  • Backbone.js

The Result

The application achieved Authority’s goal and has enabled them to become a major player in the complex world of third-party logistics, and the industry leader in hotel construction logistics – holding exclusive contracts with some of the biggest names in hospitality. The customers, freight carriers and warehouses they work with have come to rely on the transparency and rapid sharing of data that Authority provides them – setting a new standard for the whole industry.

Unidev has continued to support the application since its production launch and are currently engaged with Authority in the development of a major new version of their application.

 

Client Testimonial
“We recognized an opportunity to improve reporting on third party logistics and we trusted Unidev to deliver. They listened to our needs, asked questions to ensure they clearly understood our business and how we needed the application to function, and communicated with us throughout the process. The result is an innovative application that scales to our business needs and improves efficiency,” – Tiffany Bollinger, Principal – Warehousing at Authority Logistics Solutions, LLC

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