How Application Modernization Services Automated Legacy purchasing applications for an Automotive Supplier

TKS Industrial is a world leader in construction of paint-shops for automotive OEM plants. TKS had built a custom-written database software to support their engineering and purchasing team to automate the project planning and purchasing process. The software they had was built on Microsoft Silverlight, which was no longer working properly. With Silverlight’s approaching end of life, they knew they needed to modernize their applications to gain efficiencies and to add functionality.

Requirements for Application Modernization Services

To start the project, TKS Industrial put together a set of specifications outlining the scope of the project. This mainly included writing application software that would keep track of the equipment that they purchased for jobs and its cost.

They wanted a technology partner to write a custom database application from scratch and provide long-term assistance. They also wanted a partner who could understand their current business workflow and help automate it using the new application. Regarding hosting, they knew a big opportunity created during application modernization is to move to the cloud for better accessibility. Therefore, another big requirement was helping to make this migration to a cloud-based service.

To stay ahead of the competition in Automotive Supplier ecosystem, digital transformation and automation are key initiatives that leadership focuses on. Both these initiatives drove the decision to modernize their current applications and excel based workflows. The decision to modernize their applications was one that required they work with a technology partner who understood Microsoft technologies and manufacturing systems and processes. And since application modernization is a long term, some would even say continuous process, they took care to find a technology partner that met those needs. SharpQuest met those needs.

What Application Modernization Services Did for their Legacy Systems

SharpQuest provided application modernization services that allowed TKS Industrial to move off Microsoft Silverlight based applications and Excel based workflows and move into the cloud based web applications. SharpQuest used MS-SQL server, ASP.Net MVC, C#, HTML 5, jQuery to write the software applications, and a set of developer efficiency tools (such as Telerik Kendo UI web controls and Telerik Reports) to modernize their applications.

Before they started, SharpQuest took the time to get to know their business. They reviewed the initial specifications with TKS Industrial engineering and purchasing teams. As the project moved forward, they had discussions to clarify what were the actual business needs and user process to meet those needs. SharpQuest believes that Programmers should not program exactly what users do in their day-to-day work, they need to identify what is the real need for the work they do and propose a way to automate it so that the technology can bring process efficiency along with the automation.

While initial scope was to create applications for Engineering and Purchasing teams, overtime, SharpQuest has continued to expand the application by adding modules to automate other operational workflows such as Sales, Budgeting and Supplier Portal.

Here are the key things that application modernization services delivered:

Automated workflows of all business units

Developed supplier portal to increase deal flow

Improved data integrity and security

Cleansed data and implemented analytics

Migrated database and applications to AWS (Amazon Web Services) Cloud

Application Modernization Services Paid Off for the Automotive Supplier Company

Application modernization sounds great to automotive and manufacturing suppliers who know they need to do it at some point. But prioritizing it can be hard to do amongst product demands. For the automotive supplier company, the payoff has been so impressive that their only regret has been not starting it sooner.

From a qualitative standpoint, the company knows the accuracy and consistency of data going into the system is better. But the real benefit has come from their ability to improve productivity so much that they can grow revenue. In the first year since modernizing applications, sales proposals doubled. Over three years they saw purchase orders double. Furthermore, thanks to the addition of a dedicated supplier portal, they now can onboard an average of 80 net new suppliers each year. All of this adds up to significant revenue growth for the company. You can read the full TKS Industrial success story here.

Not convinced that application modernization is right for you? Read other manufacturing application modernization stories here.