Design and Development of Asset Management Mobile App for a Large Real-Estate Firm

Overview
For organizations with assets distributed across multiple locations, maintaining accurate and updated asset inventory can be time consuming, yet is critical for business success.
We delivered an Android-based tablet application for an organization that runs regular inventories to audit their assets. This application leverages the cross-platform mobile framework PhoneGap, giving the client the freedom to run the application on different devices and platforms. By hosting the back-end on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the production environment could be set up quickly with high scalability.
We worked with a leading Real Estate Firm that runs regular inventories to audit their assets.
Deliverables
The core deliverables of this project were:
• Automatically generate asset locations using Google maps and publish to an Android-based tablet device
• Store content in a local database on the device so it is not dependent on a network connection
• Enforce business rules on the tablet and validate data automatically before submission to ensure accuracy
• Upload inventory data in real time to a dashboard, allowing administrative review and employee tracking
• Adapt easily to meet future needs
Project Summary
We transformed a paper-based asset inventory process into a distributed mobile application, which employees could use while auditing business assets located across a wide region.
With the paper-based process, employees regularly tracked assets by using a Google map print-out with highlighted asset information. Employees supplied updates to administrators via phone calls from the field. Once the inventory data was collected, the information packets would be reviewed and recorded into a database for reporting purposes, a process that took multiple weeks to complete.
The new mobile application developed by our team automates a large part of the paper inventory process, adding efficiency. To expedite the project, We utilized Amazon Web Services (AWS) to rapidly set up a production environment. AWS also allows the application to easily move to a larger instance to meet computing demands.
The client’s preferred device is the Android-based Samsung Galaxy tablet. To ensure that the application could adapt to any future device changes, we used the crossplatform mobile framework PhoneGap, allowing the application to run on different devices and platforms.
We began by improving the process used to create asset information. Administrators can now plot the locations of assets by simply entering address points, which then pull information about each region from an inventory and automatically generate a Google map. Administrators have the ability to review asset locations and maps before publishing directly to the employees’ mobile devices.
Inventory and map content are stored in a local database on the device. Now inventories can be completed even when a network connection is not available. The mobile application contains a list of the asset locations yet to be visited, a static map, a live map that operates when a connection is present, and directions from asset location to asset location.
After completing an inventory of each asset, the mobile device attempts to automatically upload the new data to the application server. If no connection is available, the data is stored in the mobile device until a connection is available and an upload is possible. What had been a multi-week process of entering data by hand, now takes minutes as the mobile devices upload their results directly into the database.
This real-time uploading of inventory data allows the administrative team to track employees’ progress via a widget on the application’s dashboard. In the case of a mobile device failure, the inventory information can be taken off the device’s backup card and entered into the system by hand.
Conclusion
The mobile application we developed to streamline our client’s asset inventory process added greater efficiency at all levels of the application. The inventory experience is enhanced with the new application utilizing a GPS marker to let the employee locate themselves at any time. The business efficiencies introduced with this mobile application are expected to save multiple weeks of labor per inventory, which can now be reclaimed for other business-critical tasks. Furthermore, by leveraging the cross-platform mobile application framework PhoneGap and utilizing Amazon Web Services, this application can easily adapt to meet changing business needs.