Custom Apps & ERP Integrations Portfolio
Custom 'headless' Drupal Application
The client, a large fitness studio, needed a custom scheduling application for pairing customers with personal trainers. Their new scheduling application was a perfect example of a decoupled or headless Drupal application! The application needed to be used on a desktop, tablets and mobile devices. Our client wanted to be able to sell this app on the Amazon suite of SaaS (Software as a Service) applications. The investment wasn’t just to solve a one-time problem but to create software that can be sold and used over and over again giving the client long-term residual income.
The application used the Drupal platform built in PHP for database connections, queries, business logic and modules. The front-end and user interface was written in Angular, a common front-end language. This was used instead of built-in Drupal tools because Angular offers more flexibility and a front-end developer could work independently from the back-end developer. This allowed the front-end developer to spend more time with the customer creating a truly user centric custom experience.
Making this solution decoupled has the added benefit of not locking the customer into Drupal. If the decision was made later to go with a different platform, the front-end could simply be scraped, saving a lot of new development time.
Creating a ‘headless’ Drupal application is also less expensive because front-end developers don’t need as much experience as a full-stack PHP or Drupal developers. We are able to give a cost-effective alternative to a pure Drupal application. Drupal is a fabulous and powerful platform - all we did was right-size it for the customer by being creative and strategic.
Integration with NetSuite
Our client just installed NetSuite, an ERP system that helps businesses manage their accounting, inventory, procurement, human resources, and ecommerce. They have a small project management application in a CMS to keep track of clients, tasks, personnel and project budgets. The data in the CMS holds the information for the project and the data in the ERP holds the invoices, bills and accounting for the projects. Wouldn’t it make sense to bring the project management system into the ERP system so all the data about the projects are in one place? Yes, most organizations want their data to be together in order to do financial and strategic reporting and analysis and to streamline training and employee's involvement in the systems. In fact, ERP systems are more important than every before as companies grow larger and more complex.
We recommended a full integration with the project management application and NetSuite. Integrations have gotten easier over the last decade as APIs are getting better as we get smarter. APIs are a set of programming rules and tasks that help different applications communicate with each other basically linking applications, websites, and databases. The project details could be linked with the data about the budget in the ERP system as long as we used the correct technology stack. We decided upon using the MERN stack which is an inexpensive way to leverage open-source technology. See our blog about the MERN stack here. We made a front-end with React, a popular open-source language, that looked just like NetSuite, pulled all the data over to NetSuite’s Oracle database and linked them together with the API. Because these two systems now share a database, this customer can leverage the data by making strategic reports about the project budgets. They can examine the budget data in relationship to accounting, procurement, inventory and ecommerce. This solution greatly enhances the data visibility, efficiency and overall business performance bringing several departments and all the data together.
Data Visualization Project
The client, a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization headquartered in Santa Rosa, CA, which provides critical services and support to Veterans and their families. They focus on underserved (mostly rural) areas in California, Arizona, and Nevada. Services include transitional housing, permanent supportive housing, homelessness prevention, employment services, mental health, and behavior health.
Using Microsoft Power BI and publicly available data from the US Census Bureau, Housing and Urban Development (HUD), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), DSoft Technology designed and created an interactive dashboard to visualize Veteran demographics and the services available. Map boundaries include state, county, and HUD Continuity of Care (CoC) regions. The Power BI solution has filtered reports to compare different geographic regions at a point in time and to view the same region for changes over time.
This data visualization platform produces geographically oriented, actionable knowledge for the client's resource allocations within currently serviced area and identifies new areas for investment. The client anticipates using this tool in planning their expansion of services to other states.
"DSoft Technology configured Power BI for Nation's Finest leaders to more easily slice and understand demographic data by geographic area and trends over time. This is a powerful capability to inform investment decisions that will serve Veterans where their needs are greatest." - Chris Johnson, President & CEO, Nation's Finest