The customer

Based in Norway, the customer operates as a union of electrical contractors. The trade union includes 500+ members, helping them to make deals with four major wholesalers. As of today, the volume of purchases is over €49 million. Founded in 2004, the company has offices in Oslo, Stavanger, Trondheim, and Bergen.

The need

Within the trade union, member organizations developed a custom PHP-based system to purchase electrical appliances from the wholesalers. However, the app was built on top of an outdated technology stack. As a result, it was hard to maintain and extend functionality.

Previously, the association had collaborated with Altoros to deliver an ecosystem of tools for calculating project costs, HSE management, etc. Satisfied with the engagement, the customer turned to Altoros again to develop a web system—for checking stock status, comparing prices, and making orders, as well as for integrating it with the existing tools. As the trade union planned to get early feedback from members and showcase the product to the union’s board to discuss financing, there were tight deadlines for the delivery.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• To enable comparison of goods, relevant information (prices, images, stock status, etc.) had to be retrieved from multiple sources in real time.
• Those sources included the union’s and wholesalers’ product bases, as well as EFObasen, a Norwegian base of electrical appliances.
• For order generation, the organization employed a custom format, noncompliant with conventional order generation standards and highly prone to errors.

• 500+

  partner companies

• €49M

  the volume of purchases

• 2–3

  weeks for feature delivery

The outcome

Collaborating with Altoros, the trade union developed a web app that enables 500+ member organizations to compare electrical appliances offered by partner wholesalers across prices, stock status, discounts, etc. The modernized technology stack helped the association to improve the app’s maintenance. Thanks to a thought-out roadmap, the customer shipped in new features every 2–3 weeks, validating their feasibility on the go. In addition, the organization automated order generation and laid the foundation for order format standardization. Not only this prevented unexpected errors, but also contributed to easier onboarding of new members and wholesalers accustomed to conventional order generation formats.

The system was successfully presented at the member board meeting, and the customer was able to get a budget for further development.

The customer

Based in the USA, the company is a provider of independent benchmarking services around employee retirement planning. Founded in 2007, the customer offers 240,000+ retirement income plans to over 200+ organizations.

The need

When the customer turned to Altoros, all the calculations behind pension planning were performed in Microsoft Excel spreadsheets. This approach was both time- and effort-inefficient, as well as highly prone to human error as all the calculation formulae were created manually.

Collaborating with Altoros, the company wanted to develop a solution for automated calculations of retirement plans.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• The company offered highly customized plans, which involved sophisticated calculations for multiple scenarios. As the calculations were interconnected and affected each other, as well as the final result, it was important to elaborate a comprehensive logic behind them.
• The calculation speed across hundreds of organizations must not exceed one minute.

• 30

  seconds

• 8

  calculators

• 240,000

  plans

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer automated the calculations behind retirement income planning. With 8 calculators responsible for specific scenarios, it is now possible to perform simultaneous calculations across hundreds of organizations in just 30–40 seconds.

The customer

Operating globally, the company is a leading provider of process safety management technologies to the petrochemical, as well as oil and gas industries. Headquartered in the USA, the organization has offices in the Asia Pacific and MENA regions.

The need

One of the plants our customer was serving had a paper-based process of monitoring equipment. To report data to operators, field workers manually took equipment readings, which was time-consuming and inefficient.

Relying on expertise at Altoros, the company wanted to build a system that would allow field workers to instantly fill out equipment readings, while ensuring video and audio connection with operators. The system had to be delivered in tight deadlines, as the customer intended to pitch it to one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• Video and audio connection between field workers and operators had to be enabled in the conditions of blocked Internet at the plant.
• The field workers must be able to scan QR codes placed on the equipment and collect such data as a serial number, model, etc.

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer built a system that facilitated equipment monitoring. In the conditions of blocked Internet due to security reasons, the solution is capable of providing video and audio communication between field workers and operators. Thanks to the development being completed in just two months, the customer was able to get funding from one of the world’s largest petrochemical companies.

The customer

The customer is the UK-based institution conducting early stage pharmacology research. Accredited by the Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency, the company has conducted 500+ clinical trials over 15+ years in the industry.

The need

On a regular basis, the organization recruits volunteers to participate in clinical studies. The company built a custom CRM solution based on ASP.NET WebForms to administer the process and manage volunteers' data. The system comprised 12 modules responsible for storing and manipulating contact information, medical history, appointment and screening details, research results, reports, etc. At that moment, the system held the data of 260,000+ volunteers with 400+ new ones being added each month. However, that custom-built CRM no longer sustained the existing loads and had issues with functionality extension.

Relying on .NET development expertise of Altoros, a Microsoft Certified Partner, the company wanted to optimize performance by migrating to a modern technology stack without any data loss.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• It was crucial to ensure proper security as the system stored and processed sensitive information (contact details, medical data, etc.).
• Report generation was an important stage of the clinical trial process. However, it took up to 5 minutes to generate a single report.
• To interview volunteers, the customer wanted to integrate Twilio as a video conferencing tool. The app enabled to schedule calls—attended by up to 10 people—and automatically create conferencing rooms for the purpose. However, the tool did not automatically end calls if no one showed up or forgot to do it manually, charging $0.004 for each subsequent minute per participant. This could cost up to $600 a year.

• 260,000+

  volunteer base

• 150x

  faster report generation

• 2 mins

  to deliver a feature

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer modernized its CRM system that manages the data of 260,000+ volunteers by migrating to a modern technology stack. Now, the app is capable of sustaining the loads, even with 400+ people being added per month. Thanks to the engineering efforts, the whole bulk of sensitive information was properly protected and migrated without data loss. With the optimizations in place, the company also facilitated report generation by 150x, enabled feature delivery in 2 minutes, and saved up to $600 a year on Twilio usage.

The customer

A Belgian IT vendor turned to Altoros to build a BPM system for thousands of students and teachers.The project is a customizable BPM system for managing educational and executive processes in a Belgian school.

The company is an independent IT vendor located in EU (Belgium) that builds Ruby-, RoR-, and JavaScript-based systems.

The need

The customer turned to Altoros to develop a Web system for managing educational and executive processes in a Belgian school. The organization already had a legacy Silverlight-based app that lacked flexibility and had poor performance. The system should have been integrated with two governmentalservices: KBI (which provides access to students’ personal data) and DaVinci(which aggregates data about courses, certification, etc.).

In addition, the customer wanted to develop a similar white-label BPM system that would allow for managing abstract entities (e.g., students and courses), processes (triggered tasks), and forms (data inputs/views).

The challenges

In the course of the project, the following challenges were defined:

• Since analysts may set up and change data structure and relations, retrieving, writing, and presenting data can become a non-trivial task. The problem escalates when working with objects connected through indirect relations.
• Most existing BPM systems/tools (e.g., Bonita) do not support service integration and customization of forms in real time. They are limited to a set of simple forms with basic interoperability and are hard to maintain.
• Availability of the system in the offline mode implied proper data synchronization, with changes saved in a queue.
• Dealing with personal data, the system should be highly secure.

The outcome

The system has been successfully implemented in the Belgian school. Daily, it is used by thousands of students, teachers, and administrative personnel. This customizable solution allows for saving tens of thousands of euros on expensive BPM/ERP suites with excessive functionality.Flexibility of the application enables to easily maintain the system and integrate it with third-party services. It is planned to enable system’s deployment to cloud platforms, such as Microsoft Azure. Furthermore, people with little or no technical background can manage and customize the system,using the declarative languages written by our engineers.

In the end, partnership with Altoros allowed the customer to develop a white-label solution tailored to BPM needs of education, healthcare, finance, insurance, and other industries—thus, creating an additional revenue channel. The customer has built a number of POCs for several organizations.

The customer

Based in Israel, the customer is a software provider to the healthcare industry. The company’s main product is a smart inhaler that enables pulmonary delivery of therapeutic molecules and phytosubstances to patients suffering from intense pain, nervous system disorders, sleep, anxiety, and leukemia.

The need

Each smart inhaler has a preloaded cartridge with a medical substance. The device was developed to administer low doses, minimizing various side effects up to 90%. Initial trials were conducted at an Israeli hospital, where doctors distributed devices among patients on an individual basis. This procedure involved making prescriptions, keeping record of patients and assigned inhalers, monitoring inhaler regimens, etc.

Relying on Altoros, the startup wanted to build a web platform for doctors to track patients and devices, as well as a mobile app for patients to monitor and optimize inhaler usage, get reminders, etc. Targeting at a global market, the customer strove for scalability and high availability. With a minimum viable product (MVP), the company planned to raise additional investment for future development.

The challenges

Under the project, the team at Altoros had to address the following issues:

• A mobile app was to gather sensitive information—personal data, drug doses, etc.—from inhalers via Bluetooth and send it to the web platform. However, Bluetooth connections are highly prone to cyber attacks. Given the sensitivity of data, security was a top priority for both the web and mobile systems.
• It was important to ensure uninterrupted data transfer between the mobile app and the web platform, even with unreliable Internet.
• While different mobile devices could use different Bluetooth protocols, it was crucial to prevent any contradictions when pairing with the inhaler.

• $50M

  investment

• 90%

  reduced side effects

• 2-3

  weeks release cycle

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer developed a web platform for the doctors to assign and track smart inhalers, as well as a mobile app for patients to monitor and optimize inhaler usage, get reminders, etc. With the delivered prototype of the web system, the company was able to test feature feasibility and present the solution to investors, raising $50 million. Thanks to the chosen architecture, the organization laid foundation for high availability and scalability, as well as ensured advanced security across the web, mobile, and inhaler systems. By following Agile best practices, the company managed to implement new features every 2–3 weeks. Cross-platform mobile development helped the customer to significantly reduce expenses, avoiding the necessity to build separate Android and iOS apps, as well as support two different systems.

The customer

А UK-based software provider collaborated with Altoros to develop an IoT system that automates workflows within a smart house. The solution manages a number of scenarios, such as tracking energy consumption, turning on/off household appliances, monitoring house security, etc. Unlike other alternatives on the market, the system stores all the sensitive data locally on a physical hub. Altoros team provided support services to the customer and ensured uninterrupted work of the customer’s services.

The need

The customer wanted to deliver an IoT solution for a smart home, automating the following scenarios:

• Optimize energy consumption (turn the lights and thermostats on/off)
• Control central heating (align the temperature with the weather)
• Manage household appliances remotely (raise the blinds, set up an audio system to wake a user up at specific time, etc.)
• Control boiler receivers (e.g., heat up at preset time)
• Monitor house security (send alerts in case of smoke/leak or unpredicted entry movements)

Having cooperated with several development teams from EU, but not satisfied with the results and the quality of code, the customer turned to Altoros to fix the issues and accelerate delivery.

The challenges

Under the project, the team had to address the following challenges.

• Dealing with sensitive data, the solution needed to be highly secure.
• The offline mode had to be enabled so that the system does not fail without Internet connection or when nCube servers are unavailable.
• On connecting a new device, the system needed to recognize what type of a device it is to trigger the appropriate behavior.

The outcome

Partnering with Altoros, the customer was able to get additional Kickstarterfunding at the prototyping phase. The product was later successfullydistributed to house owners across Europe, Americas, and Australia.

The company is planning to enable the system not only to differentiatebetween 15 types of devices connected, but recognize exactly what thedevice is—an audio system, a smoke detector, a kettle, etc.

This cross-platform solution is also supposed to be able to work with solargenerators in the near future. The developers designed an API for other IoTvendors/partners to provide access to nCube’s cloud in AWS.Integrating with Amazon Alexa, the team is going to enable the application toidentify a house owner’s voice and take a necessary action.

The customer now wants to create a white-label product—targeted at energy, telecom, and real estate organizations—to generate additional revenue.

The customer

The customer wanted to build a solution that would estimate time spent on pre-installation procedures and set job priorities. The goal was to cut overhead expenses, increasing productivity of technicians.

The need

Prior to engagement with Altoros, the customer’s worker schedules were created manually. The company wanted to build a solution that would estimate time spent on pre-installation procedures and set job priorities. The goal was to cut overhead expenses, increasing productivity of technicians.

The company tried to create an automation system internally, but was not satisfied with deliverables. So, LIXIL turned to General Electric for assistance. As a partner of GE, Altoros joined the engineering team to accelerate the development of the planning system and also fix performance bottlenecks.

The challenges

During the project, the developers had to address the following challenges:

• The existing process of building job schedules was overcomplicated—due to default settings and limitations of an OptaPlanner-based data processing module.
• The validation mechanisms for data-entry forms required unification.
• A decent level of security should be ensured, since the system was integrated with a number of IoT / mobile devices.

The outcome

As a result of this cooperation, the customer has automated job planning for its installation teams. Altoros has also helped the customer to fix performance bottlenecks of the automation system: the speed of data processing was increased by 2x, while data entries can now be found >10x faster. In addition, the customer service has been improved, since pre-installation procedures and logistics now take less time. The delivered solution has enabled the company to save around $1,000,000 per year. Using the GE Predix IoT platform has helped the customer to save extra $150,000 on cloud infrastructure operations / support.