Case studies

After a requirements analysis and functional specification, we assembled a virtual project team, including a specialist industrial IoT partner, and built a vendor-neutral monitoring platform:

• One open standard: sensors and scales from several manufacturers, some decades old, were brought onto one open protocol, so the client isn't tied to any one vendor.
• Live data on site: mass flow, concentration, turbidity, conductivity, pH and temperature on every line are recorded at second intervals and stored in real time on the client's own server.
• Dashboards per sensor: every measurement has a red tolerance band. If it's breached, the system automatically sends SMS alerts to the responsible people, within seconds.
• An early-warning band: our own addition, a narrower yellow band that warns before a value reaches the critical zone, so the team can act before a loss occurs.
• Management reporting: consolidated figures in SQL Server and Power BI.
• Room to grow: the platform is designed for expansion to 80–100 sensors.

The system was delivered to specification, on time and on budget. Instead of finding losses weeks after the fact, the client now sees problems as they develop and can step in before they cost money. Management has reliable, consolidated figures instead of month-end spreadsheets. With all intellectual property handed over, the client then took the system in-house, fully independent of any vendor, including us. It was our second project for this client, following a custom label printing system.

We took over the existing code base and provided dedicated developers working on agreed monthly tasks, with sprint planning, a shared backlog and automated deployment. The founder kept control of acceptance testing. Our team rebuilt the carers' app on the same framework as the web portal and added secure sign-in, role-based permissions, real-time chat and push notifications, multi-language support, remote device management including remote wipe, and background location tracking. We published the app on Google Play and the Apple App Store and kept releases flowing. When the platform moved from building to running, we switched the client to an on-demand model, so they paid only for the capacity they needed.

The platform went live in UK care homes. One customer, an award-winning group rated "Outstanding" by the care regulator, replaced its legacy server-based system with it and rolled it out across all its homes. It reported six- to sevenfold more recorded care within weeks. The partnership worked so well that the client later invited us to take the platform to the South African market under licence.

We built a mobile sales-order system that feeds orders directly into the company's ERP. It was introduced step by step: customers first, then products, then prices, then orders, so the sales force adopted it with confidence rather than all at once. Later we added route planning, monitoring of rep visits and in-store market research.

• Over 90% of orders electronic within three months.
• Orders received by 17:00 had trucks loaded by 22:00, and the warehouse night shift was no longer needed.
• Order-capturing staff were moved into more valuable roles.
• The client eventually took over the source code for its own in-house team, which is exactly the independence we build for.

We built a cloud platform (SaaS) that generates and maintains the health and safety file for each site automatically. Contractors capture the required information once, the platform keeps every file complete and current, and auditors can be given secure, read-only access to inspect a site's file remotely, without a visit.

• Legal compliance assured for every site, at any time.
• Remote, read-only audits, saving auditors and contractors travel and time.
• Large savings compared with paying compliance consultants to maintain files by hand.

We built a platform that manages the entire process in one place: the client's application is captured once and submitted to several banks, their offers are collected and compared side by side, and every application is tracked through to the final decision.

• One application instead of many, for both the client and the broker.
• The best offer identified quickly, with all bank responses in one view.
• Full visibility of every application's status, from submission to final decision.