Client Introduction:

Our client 1stTransport Inc based in California, USA, are running a freight forwarding company in the field of logistics and transportation for more than few decades. They chose HighBrow to develop a ‘Shipment, Inventory and Container tracking system’ to help their clients keep track of their shipments using Alpha Five technology.

Application:

The requirement was to develop 3 modules:

• Container Tracking: Gives detailed information about the Container arriving into USA on behalf of 1stTransport.
• Inventory Tracking : This module provides comprehensive details about the stock position of the 1sttransport’s customers goods
• Shipment Tracking: The purpose of this module is to track the shipment and display the dispatch notes.

Client wanted to migrate his legacy PHP application to a cutting edge Alpha Five based app for the following reasons:

• The 3 modules were independent of each other and the client wanted to integrate them and allow the user to move from one module to another seamlessly
• Wanted to come out with a more contemporary look & feel with powerful reporting that had searching & sorting
• Wanted to provide a comprehensive search based on almost all fields
• Ultimately wanted to do this pretty quick

Few challenges:

• The data for all the above modules will be Auto-FTPed into the server at regular intervals as ‘Tab Delimited’ files, the data then needs to be imported into the RDBMS database
• Application had to retrieve the FedEx shipment tracking in real time

Solution:

HighBrow came out with a Hybrid model, that had a desktop application to create a Watch and import the tab delimited data into the RDBMS and a Web Application that serves as the Front end module. The desktop application became the 4th module – ‘Data Import Module’. The major highlights of the application were:

• Dash Board
• Comprehensive Reporting
• Powerful search and sorting
• Instantaneous Importing of data without any time delay
• Security based Access Rights
• Integration with Fedex

Customer Delight:

The client has got an overwhelming positive feedback about the application usefulness & simplicity from all his customers. He has decided to expand the functionality of the application by adding one more layer and making the application as a service, that he can sell as SAAS (Software As A Service).

Detailed Application Flow:

The application has got 4 modules, namely:

• Shipment Tracking System
• Inventory system
• Container tracking system
• Data import module

• Shipment Tracking System

The purpose of this module is to track the shipment and display the dispatch notes. In Shipment Tracking system we have the following details:-

• Tag# (this value given by the client)
• Shipper (Person sending the products)
• Consignee (Products receiving customer)
• Carrier (Transport company, which carries the products)
• Cust. P.O (Customer Purchase order number)
• Pick up date ( Transporter picked up date of the item)

You can drill down here to view more details, for instance, you can click on Tag# to view details about the shipment. This module contains the module to read dispatch notes from FEDEX server and display the same in real time.

• Inventory System

The purpose of this module is to display the stock that is received through Containers and Manufacturers warehouse-wise. The products will be distributed to the customers according to manufacturer / importer standing instructions. This application will display the warehouse-wise stock, customer wise stock and has exhaustive reports with filtering and sorting. The salient details are as follows:-

• Whse (Ware house code)
• Product Code (Product code)
• Description (Product description)
• Qty ( Quantity available in the Warehouse)

If we click on the Product code, it will show in detail about how the product has been distributed to the customers.

• Container Tracking System

Gives detailed information about the Container arriving into USA on behalf of 1stTransport. Container tracking has got the following important details:-

• Container # (container number)
• Vessel Name ( container company name)
• B/L# (Bill of Lading)
• File# ( Container identifying number)
• ETA (Estimated Time arrival)
• Data import module

This is an Alpha Five desktop application that runs in the background. This module uses the powerful ‘Watch’ feature of Alpha Five to keep tab of a particular folder in the server and the moment a file is uploaded, it will read the data and import it into the RDBMS database.