Alliants
Ruby on Rails & React team for a suite of hospitality apps
1 — About Alliants
Alliants is a software development company from Southampton, United Kingdom. They focus on hospitality and retail applications and have worked with companies such as Mandarin Oriental, Four Seasons, Jumeirah, and many more.
We were introduced in 2016 because they needed experienced Ruby on Rails developers to work on a hospitality application for an undisclosed brand. Our collaboration helped massively to the success of the project and that application later became a suite of applications for that brand.
2 — The challenge
When we were introduced to Nick, they were searching for experienced Ruby on Rails developers to finish a time-share application. The team that previously worked on the application was strugling to finish it in time, and the success of this project would secure them a second batch of applications.
The project was ambitious: a digital transformation. Replacing an old desktop application that only the staff used and made them less-efficient with a new web experience. The application would not only allow the staff to perform their tasks but also would allow their customers to manage their shares and reservations. It would support online payments, run complex automatic allocation algorithms, and handle a lot of complex rules that exist thanks to the very nature of the business. On top of that, the client wanted to migrate their data from the old desktop application to the new one.
"If there's a problem with a customer or anything, they'll stand in the trenches with us until it's done."
Nick Daniels | CPO & CoFounder
3 — The solution
When we got our hands on the project, the application wasn't in its best shape. The first thing we did was to get to know the domain and do small features so everyone was more confident about their work and felt closer to meeting the deadline. Soon after, the bigger and most valuable features were developed in parallel as more of our people joined the project: the data migration (customers, reservations, finance), the automatic allocation algorithm, online payments, self-service, etc.
4 — The outcome
Our first project working together was a complete success. Not only the project was finished in time, but the client was delighted with the result, as it significantly improved their day-to-day work and provided their customers an exceptional web experience.
On the business side, it was also a complete success. This project secured the next batch of projects for the same client.
Since then, we became a key partner to them, provinding Ruby on Rails, React, Node, iOS and Android developers, and QA analysts, that have taken part on more than 10 products, including their Alliants Experience Platform.
