Shorr Intellistock v2
Shorr Packaging is an industry-leading, award-winning distributor of packaging products, equipment and services. We represent the best-known packaging product manufacturers and brands in the industry and are one of the largest independent packaging distributors in the nation. Founded in 1922, we are an established, employee-owned company with a long history and success record, all attributed to one simple principle - listen to the customer.
Project Overview
Shorr Packaging reached out to Red Foundry with a desire to modernize a native iPad application they had developed in-house, designed to support warehouse managers and sales representatives to access the Shorr product catalog, capture product inventory levels, allowing for calculating target inventory levels and placing replenishment orders based on historic usage.
Shorr wanted to build on the success of their v1 application by expanding its reach and improving the user experience through:
- Modernizing the UI/UX
- Expanding to additionally support Android tablets
- Adding support for handheld mobile phones to expand their Customer Managed Inventory program.
- Offering a web version of the application.
- Improved reporting and forecasting capabilities.
Challenges
Growing pains
As Shorr has grown, the needs of its customers have become more sophisticated. Larger clients are placing more frequent and complex orders requiring next-day delivery. The existing application had reached its breaking point, and to continue to support the business's needs, Intellistock required foundational updates in user experience, development efficiency, and the underlying codebase and key libraries.
Legacy Codebase and change management
Over the years, Intellistock v1 evolved from a simple tool into a sophisticated platform used to manage inventory levels for key national customers. The application developed organically based on user requests, with little to no documentation, and included support for numerous edge cases and customer-specific flows. The project required a thorough understanding of the existing app and legacy systems to maintain feature parity while improving user flows without alienating existing users.
By collaborating closely with the client, app users, and reverse engineering the existing native Swift code, we were able to confidently rebuild the application using modern technologies while preserving legacy functionality. This approach minimized the changes required to the legacy backend systems, allowing for simultaneous support of both the v1 and v2 applications during a planned transition period.
Weak internet connectivity at client warehouses
Customer warehouses often experience limited to no internet connectivity. Therefore, mobile devices needed to provide essential functions offline. To address this, a SQLite database was utilized to store all product data and historical customer information, enabling users to view and collect data while offline. The data is uploaded once connectivity is restored.
Results
Modern Redesign & Cross-platform support
Through a discovery and design process, Red Foundry captured and confirmed the existing requirements from the v1 application and worked with the client to simplify and rethink the user experience. The application was replatformed using React Native and extended further with React Native for Web, allowing deployment as native iOS and Android applications as well as providing online access via a web browser.
Simplified Customer Onboarding
Clients with multiple similar warehouses were duplicating the catalog setup manually, which took hours and introduced errors. To streamline onboarding, a product catalog cloning feature was added, reducing the setup time for customer warehouses from hours to minutes.
Advanced Forecasting
To meet complex customer needs, we developed a new forecasting feature that predicts necessary inventory levels and reorder quantities by calculating minimum and maximum inventory targets based on forward-looking customer sales forecasts and historical usage data.
Ready to get started?
We see our clients as our partners and are invested in their success. We ensure what we build for our clients will have a positive ROI. We never build anything just for the sake of it.
