Modernizing a legacy inventory management system for a UK based automobile OEM firm

The Daffodil team began the development by planning out the best way to create new users, multiple types of clients, and accommodate multiple vehicle types. They had a series of meetings and brainstorming sessions with the team at the client’s end. Team Daffodil innovated extensively to help the client understand what their business really needed. After continuous deliberations, the team was able to assist the client to concretize their technical and functional expectations from the final software solution.

An intra-linked user hierarchy was created for several OEMs, groups and sites to be added to the system. The hierarchy in the software system was in line with the functioning of vehicle inventory management in the physical world. To further bridge the differences between the physical automotive industry and the VIMS, new business rules were formulated which were not in existence for such software systems. These rules would eliminate marketing conflicts when several brands at a single site would be added to the system. In addition, user access would now be directed to the appropriate brand to avoid access conflicts.

In the former system, only the VIN and Vehicle Registration Number (VRN) could be used to fetch vehicle details. This would not allow a search for vehicles for which only orders have been placed (as these only had Order IDs assigned to them). In the modernized VIMS, details of vehicles in various stages of readiness – with VIN, VRN, or Order ID – can now be fetched. A new image library was created with Azure Blob which allowed vehicle images to be uploaded in bulk. Instead of linking images with vehicles individually at the time of uploading, this can be done later, providing easy image management. 

Blazor WebAssembly, a relatively new UI development technology, was used for seamless code sharing between the back-end and the UI, reducing time-to-market. The development was highly Agile and productive, by hosting web services on a hybrid cloud computing environment. Because of this, identity management for multiple clients was made simpler. Because of hybrid cloud hosting, the future scaling of workloads for the addition of several more clients would not incur extra costs or effort.