Concrete Order Management Case Study

The client had already built an application using third-party tools with Stored Procedures exposed as WEB APIs, all managed in XML on a SQL Server database. They wanted to scale up without starting from scratch. The major challenges were: (1) limited framework components prevented modern UI development compared to current market trends; (2) only XML Framework and DB API were available, making backend tasks like file upload and PDF generation difficult; (3) the single-tenant architecture prevented pulling data from different APIs; (4) concrete plants were using physical tickets for trucks and uploading them to the portal; and (5) overcoming performance issues while delivering real-time data to the job site.

We analyzed the existing components and took a gradual approach to overcome each limitation: (1) implemented a custom HTML component allowing injection of modern UI code into the existing portal; (2) built a Windows Service with a plugin architecture enabling PDF generation, email sending, and file uploads; (3) created a separate Windows Service to pull data from external APIs and push it to the database at scheduled intervals; (4) replaced physical tickets with digitally-signed E-Tickets — critical during COVID when physical handling was unsafe; (5) migrated infrastructure to Azure, converting Windows Services to Logic Apps and ETL processes to Data Factory for real-time plant-to-portal data delivery; and (6) developed a mobile application for real-time truck tracking at the job site.