Custom-Made ERP for the Construction Sector.
The creation of a custom-made ERP to help digitizing SMEs in the Construction sector using cross-platform technologies.
Client Profile
Industry: Construction, worker management
Size: SMEs
Business Scope: Field management, document generation & invoicing
Tech Stack
Flutter
Dart
Firebase
Challenges
The client required a comprehensive digital solution to manage their entire supply chain, from raw material procurement to customer delivery across multiple countries.
Field operations
To handle the operations on the construction site, it was mandatory to provide the workers with a mobile app that was working both online & offline.
User Experience
The mobile app was designed to be as simple as possible with a fluid experience for the workers using their phone while in action.
Need for Complex Document Generation
Some activities such as 'leak detection' requires to produce long and tedious reports. Our application allowed once the task was completed to automatically generate those reports, thus saving around 2 hours for each report!
Multi-Company
The initial client at several companies in the construction sector and it was important to provide an application that allowed each company to be centralized in the same database to allow for cross-company reporting.
Productization
To recoup on the investment, the goal was to license that application to other companies in the same sector. It implies that the application should be easily extendable & customizable.
Data Management
For the application to work properly while being scalable, special taught was given to the data structure and the hosting platform.
The Features
To address these challenges, we developed a custom-built ERP designed specifically for the construction sector, ensuring seamless integration between office operations and on-site activities. The key features included:
Invoicing & Task Management
Automated work order creation, real-time project tracking, and streamlined invoicing to improve cash flow management.
Maintenance Contracts
A dedicated module to manage long-term service agreements, ensuring timely renewals and reducing revenue leakage.
Document Generation & Reporting
Simplified generation of contracts, compliance documents, and financial reports, reducing time spent on creating reports & invoice by around 2.5 hours a day per admin staff!
On-Site Task Management
The task management on the worker side was kept as simple as possible, allowing them to see their task of the day in order. On each task there was shortcut to contact and navigate to the client. Once the task has begun, the process was simple and fool proof to ensure enough information was collected before closing the task.
✽ The application
Solution
iOS & Android Mobile App
The Flutter app provided field workers with real-time job updates, digital checklists, and the ability to build reports directly from the construction site. Usable both online & offline
Administrative Flutter Web App
To work seamlessly on as many devices as possible, we chose to build a web application in Flutter. This choice allowed for some codesharing with the mobile app, reducing cost for the client.
Scalable Firebase Server
On the server-side, we chose the Google's Firebase technology. both for the hosting of the application and the database It has the upside of being very scalable using NoSQL database which in our case was a good approach.
