Production • Netherlands • SMB

Equinet - Case Study

equinet-logo

Mobile farrier application streamlining and managing hoofcare

Jan Solecki
Jan Solecki INBOUND TEAM LEAD

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The Company and Product

Mustad Hoofcare Group is the world’s largest seller/manufacturer of hoof care products. They have been serving farriers, horse owners, and veterinarians since 1832. Equinet, Mustad’s mobile application, marks a milestone in the company’s digital transformation.

 

Globally renowned for their innovative products, the application, Equinet, takes Mustad’s service offer to the next level. In the hands of a farrier, the application assists with the daily administration tasks allowing for both appointment and inventory/supply management regardless of location or network connectivity.

Project image
sebastiaan-ordelman
Together with the team of React Native and Ruby developers, we came to the conclusion that if we wanted a minimal marketable product that supports offline mode, we had to eject from Expo and refactor the MVP to a decent foundation; resulting in a crash rate of 0%. Sebastiaan Ordelman HEAD OF EQUINET AT MUSTAD HOOFCARE GROUP

Scope and Highlights

  • 1555COMMITS AND COUNTING
  • 4MARKETS LAUNCHED
  • 1ON-SITE MEETING AT MUSTAD'S OFFICE

The Digital
Transformation

From the manufacturing and sales perspective, Mustad’s roots run deep. The company has a long history and thorough mastery of their craft. By creating Equinet, Mustad gets in direct contact with end users and learns from the market.

This data and direct feedback can help shape the product catalog, shipping, services, and even sales. On top of that, it’s possible to execute production forecasting, build products, and serve farriers better.

The Challenge

Mustad came to us to build an MVP they wanted to further develop into the minimal marketable stage. The project scope expanded beyond initial plans and the original MVP faced challenges adding additional features, preventing the application’s launch. In order to move forward it was decided that ejecting from the MVP’s current framework would be necessary.

In addition to changing frameworks, we also faced the challenge of creating an app designed for a non-digital audience that would function without an internet connection and handle native device functionalities. Working offline was crucial as the designated end user would often be in locations lacking data service.

Key challenges of the project included:

mustad mobile view
mustad-mobile-mockups

The Process

Based on iterations and feedback, the exact look of the components evolved over time. This Agile approach worked quite well throughout the development process.

For offline support, we used Watermelon, a library to sync device (SQLite) and backend (PostgreSQL) databases and exchange data by API connection. 

A restful API would be used in most cases, but now it’s a push-and-pull API where all the changes would be synced when there is a connection. It’s quite a different approach with its own challenges.  

To achieve native component inclusion for camera and picture handling, native components which were available for React Native were included. 

Again, for each new challenge, we were able to choose the appropriate tool or solution. Image attachment management is settled with Firebase. We started using Cloud Firestore, a NoSQL document database. It is not a relational database and this posed a challenge since this was a completely different way of thinking about databases.

Our team decided that moving from an MVP to a minimal marketable product required ejecting from the MVP’s Expo framework. In order to include the required features there was no option but to abandon the Expo framework. In the process, many components needed to be changed, it was almost a rewrite of what the team started with.

This is how we make it happen:

anna-wojcik
Having a solid technical foundation and knowledge, the Mustad project became not only a coding challenge but also evolved into a true partnership. Our Team takes an active part in creating the product itself by constantly putting an input about the flow, suggesting different approaches, and designing features together with the product owner. Having this amazing trust from the client, together we create an inspiring workflow. Anna Rakowiecka PROJECT MANAGER

The Outcome

Equinet, originally an MVP project, was developed it into a minimal marketable product. Alongside Monterail developers, external resources were also successfully engaged to reach this goal. Since then, the product has been launched in 4 markets and Mustad is actively helping farriers with their businesses.

The end user benefits by having scheduling, invoicing, inventory, images, and more in one application. As a business, Mustad is able to provide an unprecedented level of customer service and better understand their clients and manufacturing processes.

Key benefits for the client:

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