About the Client

Include Software is a landscape management application service based in Annapolis, MD. Their integrated asset management solution, iCREWtek, serves over 250 companies throughout North America. The iCREWtek mobile application allows customers to connect their employees in the field to the same systems they use to manage resources and time allocations. A variety of clients use their software including landscape contractors, maintenance companies, and snow removal companies.

The Challenge

While originally developed by another provider, the iCREWtek iOS application had been occasionally maintained and supported by Segue for several years. With the release of a new version of iOS, iCREWtek needed a significant revamp in order to function properly. Include Software was also interested in branching out to create an Android version of the app. Additionally, iCREWtek used a proprietary middleware library that was expensive to license and limited the scalability of deployments. iCREWtek needed to be fully revamped as a modern mobile application without depending on the existing proprietary middleware.

The Solution

Segue’s experience in developing mobile applications that are fully functional while offline (without an internet connection) was applied to the iCREWtek application, providing dramatic improvements to the app. Segue also redesigned their middleware layer to use open-sourced software, which integrated seamlessly with the rest of the iCREWtek infrastructure. This reduced expenses by removing the licensing for the proprietary software, reduced operating costs by sharing cloud-based resources with existing infrastructure, and reduced scalable costs by using more efficient middleware software that remained performant with reduced resource assignment.

The iOS application for iCREWtek was completely rewritten using modern coding procedures against the new middleware. Attention was given to the user interface to improve the user experience while keeping the application familiar for current users.

In the previous version of iCREWtek, the user would sometimes have to wait for the device to acquire GPS coordinates or to synchronize data with the server in order to continue using the app. In the revamped version, these operations are handled automatically in the background so the user can get back to other tasks instead of waiting for a strong enough cell signal to complete the work.

Finally, the revamped version of iCREWtek also includes advanced metrics so Include Software always knows the landscape of their user base.

The Android version of the application was written to mirror the appearance and functionality of the iOS version.