Collective Goods, formerly Books are Fun, offers novelty products to customers through corporate book fairs and school display programs. Sales Reps visit more than 55,000 locations across the United States; setting up displays, fulfilling orders and collecting cash, check, and card payments. Collective Goods helps schools and corporations raise money through fundraising opportunities, giving back to the communities it visits.
DevIQ provided technology strategy, user experience & architectural design, & full-stack end-to-end development for CG, including iOS, Android, & Web Client development, as well as back-end API server & administrative web services using proprietary API servers & Node.js Acceleration framework.
As a long term partner of Collective Goods, we are proud of our role in their growth and digital transformation. We have faced the challenges of today’s market and software together and built amazing products that improve the quality of life of many people in Colorado and across the country.
Challenge
Making the transformation from paper to digital, after 24 years of successfully doing business on paper. The business challenge was to create a user order experience that is easier than a simple paper order form; transitioning from cash and check transactions and paper tally sheets into Paypal and Card payments with a mobile app for iOS and Android, and a tablet Kiosk.
“DevIQ is incredibly customer focused. They consistently go beyond what we’ve asked for to fully immerse themselves in our environment and deeply understand our needs. Their network has also benefited us tremendously. DevIQ has been a true partner in understanding and helping shape our vision for stronger customer engagement, and making that vision become a reality.”
Randi A.COO & VP of Strategy, Collective Goods
Solution
Understand the business model, identify opportunities for improvement in the stakeholders’ journeys, designed user-centered mobile apps and an Order Management System that integrates with Collective Goods’ structure.
Key Features
Full commerce capabilities. The app has a catalog, payment methods, purchase history, etc.
Braintree Payment Integration. CG’s customers can now use their debit and credit cards or use PayPal to buy. The convenience is not only for customers, but for Collective Goods’s system as well, as there is now full visibility of sales data (quantities, products, locations, order history).
Swipe, scan or manually enter card information. DevIQ pioneered reliable credit card swipe capabilities on Android for IDTECH readers.
Order Management System. Orders and money are managed automatically instead of manually, and they are traceable in case of errors. Simplified sales rep workflow.
Notification reminders let users know if a sale event is coming, ending, to deliver cash/check or when an order is delivered.
Location. Catalogs available are based on a specific geographical location.
Architecture
Fully automated CI/CD pipelines for deployments (dev, stage, prod) including unit testing. Maintaining dual web/API stacks for front-end (API) and backend APIs (BAPI) using Elastic Beanstalk. The API supports both web and mobile clients (Android & iOS). API & BAPI run on Node.js and the web client is a modern JS SPA (single page app). BAPI allows CollectiveGoods to push data RESTfully to DevIQ from their monolithic .NET system: upcoming events, displays, and display inventory, all in the form of JSON. Those events are consumed and then available for the web and mobile clients to pickup where applicable. All Node.js logs are output to Cloudwatch. Two instances run as a minimum for both API and BAPI. EB stacks have scaling triggers based on metrics tested with a custom load test to signal additional EC2 instance on demand. Route53 health-checks inform teams of downtime. Purchase of Reserve Instances for all resources to reduce long term customer cost.
Technologies
- Native Custom iOS & Android applications, mobile and Kiosk versions.
- Braintree & PayPal SDK integration, including Swipe for Kiosk.
- Card.io SDK integration for scanning credit cards.
- Test Driven Development (TDD)
- Jenkins
- DevIQ Blueprint Epic
- HTML5 / CSS3
- JavaScript
- bootstrap 4
AWS Container Services
- EC2
- RDS
- SES
- SNS
- ALB
- MongoDB
- Elastic Beanstalk
- Cloudwatch
- Route53
- Git
- Node.js
- REST
Result
DevIQ helped CG make a significant change to the business and a major leap forward in adopting and using technology—which has enabled them to expand into new markets, such as parents and friends in addition to teachers and school staff.
Customers now have a direct connection to company through the iOS & Android apps, as well as the self-service tablet kiosks, instead of just facing the sales rep.
As a result of this digital transformation, a shift to a drop ship and eCommerce model is possible, which is also what customers expect and are more used to.
Sales and market data visibility, more people reached, significantly increased sales, estimated savings of 50% — a true digital transformation that, paired with the company’s rebranding, have even triggered a business model shift and overall growth.
Use the links below to try the app and check out Collective Goods’ sites for further information.
