Our customer in this case is famous for its drilling tools, but the majority of their revenue has been generated through fastening programs. Around two thirds of almost 20.000 employees, in 120 countries worldwide work directly with the customers. As they daily deal either in sales or in field of engineering, this means a total of more than 200.000 customer contacts every day.
Their need has been to develop software that would help its users to find the best solution for their problem using only products and methods developed by our customer. Final result of the software would include detailed documentation and instructions for implementer in the field.
Business needs for the new software
- Increase the number of users of their engineering software over the competition software.
- Win confidence in software reliability within and outside the Company.
- Ensure that implementing different anchors and their systems for fastening are properly dimensioned and installed.
- Win more customers for their anchors and increase the revenue in anchor fastening business.
Main idea for the software was that it would help users to find the best solution for their problem and create instructions for problem solving based on our customer’s products and methods.
The major design requirements for the new software
- Intuitive and effective GUI that would support both advanced and occasional users.
- Flexible architecture which that would support easy extension to new regions, languages and design standards.
What kind of solution did we develop at Agito?
Agito made competitive analyses of existing software products and then developed software solution with integrated customers’ calculation routines. It is designed for construction engineers as for the end users and enables planning concrete fastening with the help of mechanical or chemical anchors. Software is used in sales stage activities and in project design stage activities as well.
- The software enables presentation of the construction model in 3D and 2D view.
- Ribbons, wizards and other usability approaches enable simple and clear entry of dimensions, loading, material properties and other properties of the existing or future structure. The solution alerts the user about possible errors and discrepancies when entering data and finally drafts a table of possible solutions.
- When making calculations, software considers the selected geographical region and unit standard, design method of calculating and safety standards. The anchor list can be limited to those available in the region.
- Agito integrated customers’ routines which guarantee proper engineering design calculations, selection, use and installation of customers’ tools and materials according to safety standards of a particular region
- The final result of the software includes detailed documentation with calculations, design plan in accordance with the chosen standard and installation instructions.
- Solution includes automatic updating system over the internet, which updates both software code versions, product data, related compliance certificates and calculation algorithms, methods and international standards.
- Agito included additional translation tool which allows the customer to translate user interface labels and preview them directly (for worldwide international versions; plan is to have versions for more than 120 countries around the world).
One of the significant attributes of the software is intuitive and user friendly user interface which guides user through the design process. The graphic user interface follows the 2007 Microsoft Office System UI Design Guidelines.
What benefits does the solution bring to our customer and their end users?
Optimal draft and correct installation of fastening products
Use of the uniform software enables end customers to choose the most suitable product to solve their problems, while at the same time allowing these products to be used and installed properly.
Lower costs of winning new business and completing projects
Custom software allows its users to draft a very accurate list of requirements and draft a project plan as early as the project-winning stage. This helps our customer to build greater trust and allow quicker decisions by end customers. A plan drafted in the sales stage already serves as the basis for the actual plan in the design stage, thus cutting costly and time-consuming harmonizing in taking the project from the sales stage to the design stage.
Shorter project planning times
The use of effective software cuts the project planning time both for our customer as well as contracted project engineers.
Building trust in the brand and promoting sales
With the help of software that it provides free of charge, our customer builds trust in its own brand and expands the range of potential customers, while ensuring loyalty of existing customers.
Simple updating
Our customer provides its users with new software versions through Agito Auto Update module. In this way customers can access and use the latest software version, product data, related compliance certificates and new calculation algorithms, methods and international standards.
Customer satisfaction
Quotes are available upon request.