A leading vehicle logistics company came to OutSystems partner Green Lemon Company with a significant challenge: build, test, and deploy two customer-facing portals in four weeks. Green Lemon Company's response? No problem. Having escaped the restrictions of their legacy logistics system the company can now keep its customers better informed—and happier—while saving time and money on back-office admin.
68% TCO saving compared to .NET build
3 developers
2 portals built in 4 weeks
5x faster than hand-coding
"The new dealer portal ensures we meet SLAs with key customers without having to increase headcount. Dealers are happier, and the work of our back-office staff is easier and more efficient.”
Challenge - One of the U.K.’s biggest providers of vehicle remarketing logistics services is responsible for 75 percent of all vehicle movements in the U.K. Its 1,900 drivers move more than one million vehicles every year. These movements include transport of new cars from factory or port to dealers and collection of used cars from dealers and fleet operators.
The company wanted to streamline communications and order fulfillment for two of their most prestigious accounts. By implementing custom portals to be used by these dealers, they would be able to reduce unstructured work, thereby eliminating hundreds of emails and phone calls from daily operations.
With a pressing deadline for delivery, but insufficient in-house development capacity, the company needed to bring in some help. Luckily, elsewhere in the company, some colleagues had experience with the OutSystems low-code development platform. They introduced the Head of IT to Green Lemon Company, an OutSystems partner, that was able to meet an extremely tight delivery timeframe.
Solution - Using OutSystems, a small team from Green Lemon Company created the two portals concurrently, and both now enable the logistics company to offer an enhanced level of service to its customers.
The prestige car dealership portal allows dealers to place orders for cars while customizing specifications to meet the requirements of individual customers (think custom trim and high-spec stereos). Dealers can track the progress of customer orders through to delivery slots, and staff at the logistics company can use the portal to manage requests and schedule deliveries without having to compose emails manually.
The other portal enables car dealers across the U.K. to easily see the progress of customized vehicles through inspection and delivery. Dealers receive notifications and updates on the portal rather than having to phone or email to request a status update.
One challenge the Green Lemon Company developers were able to take in their stride was integration with an ancient and heavily customized legacy logistics system, which the company was unable to rip and replace. The task was made easier by the strong integration capabilities of the OutSystems platform.
Both portals went live within four weeks of starting development, with 80 percent of the core functionality completed in week one. “Thanks to OutSystems pre-built components and one-click deployment, and the help from Green Lemon Company, we’ve greatly improved customer experience, while at the same time improving efficiency,” says their Head of IT.
Green Lemon Company have been delivering software and services to the Enterprise marketplace since 2003.
Results - OutSystems rapid development capabilities meant that the Green Lemon Company team completed the apps five times faster compared to hand-coding and estimate a 68 percent saving on the lifetime cost of ownership of the applications, compared to developing, maintaining, and supporting a traditional .NET build.
Dealers using both portals now have greater visibility of order progress, with a single source of the truth available through self-service, without having to call or email. That saves dealers a lot of headaches, and it saves the logistics company time and money responding to routine inquiries.
As their Head of IT puts it, “We can meet our SLAs with these key customers without needing to increase headcount. The dealers are happier, and we’ve made work easier and more efficient for our back-office staff.”
