Freyform

Case Study by Nukomeet · 13/2013

Freyform is a web application used by Freyssinet by sales departments all around the world. It simplifies the process of ordering the elastomeric bearings from quotation to production.

Project background

Freyssinet brings together an extraordinary range of skills in the civil engineering sector. They offer integrated technical solutions in the fields of construction and structural repair.

Freyssinet is a world leader in prestressing, cable-stayed structures, construction methods, structural accessories, structural repair and strengthening and structural maintenance. It is a part of the Soletanche Freyssinet Group, a world leader in the soils, structures and nuclear sectors.

The quotation and ordering process for elastomeric bearings was complex and laborious. The increasing number of projects at Fressinet forced the client to search for a new approach.

Our involvement

Nukomeet's role was to analyse the current approach, to identify the possible optimizations in that process and then to build a new solution. We started with a consulting sessions to understand the problem. Then, we transform those learnings into wireframes describing the new optimized process.

We decided to build an internal e-commerce platform with notions such as a product list, a cart or a user account. The application allows sales people working in different departments across Freyssinet to coordinate their work as if they were using Amazon. They can to add products to carts, confirm its content and generate quote with a pre-invoice.

Our analysis showed that the the communication and legacy external systems were major problem. We addressed the problem using a solution with two, independant components: a simple REST API and a regular web application written in Rails.

Services we have provided

Consulting

Web Application

API

Hosting

Technologies

We used Ruby programming languge along with Rails framework.

Ruby on Rails is a web application framework using Ruby programming language. Rails is a MVC framework, providing default structures for a database, a web service, and web pages. It encourages and facilitates the use of web standards such as JSON or XML for data transfer, and HTML, CSS and JavaScript for display and user interfacing. In addition to MVC, Rails emphasizes the use of other well-known software engineering patterns and paradigms, including convention over configuration (CoC), don't repeat yourself (DRY), and the active record pattern.

Impact

The application allows Freyssinet sales people to coordinate between departments in a more efficient way. It helps to easily transform quotes into orders and sent them to production.