Building the app behind the one-hour delivery promise
Building a mobile app experience to streamline order fulfillment
Dematic is the second-largest global supplier of material handling solutions in manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution, supplying everything from conveyor systems and complex scanning technology to small-business fulfillment solutions. Dematic’s Americas headquarters in Grand Rapids, Michigan, has long served as a hub for the company’s engineering and innovation work.
As consumer expectations for same-day and even one-hour delivery took off, Dematic built a configurable micro-fulfillment solution to help retailers keep pace, and brought in Vervint to design the mobile app and data infrastructure that ties it all together.
Keep pickers fast and accurate
Help retail employees efficiently pick items from automated systems, fast-picks, and store shelves through one connected app.
Design around real workers, not assumptions
Test with retail employees unfamiliar with the system to make sure the app worked for the people actually using it.
Ship fast without cutting corners
Deliver a fully functional, cross-platform app in about three months, in time for a major industry conference debut.
Making the complex simple
The ecosystem behind next-day, one-day, and one-hour fulfillment relies on advanced, interconnected technology: ERPs, warehouse management software, mobile applications, web services, IT infrastructure, and physical devices all have to operate seamlessly to deliver a good experience, not just for consumers, but for everyone involved in the fulfillment process. Vervint’s task was to build an app that integrated with the existing order fulfillment infrastructure at retail stores, connecting to a central system and helping employees efficiently pick items from automated systems, fast-picks, and store shelves, starting with a proof-of-concept to validate the basic design and functionality.
Designing with the people who’d actually use it
Vervint relied heavily on user testing throughout a fast-paced design and development process, running hands-on, in-person sessions with retail workers unfamiliar with Dematic, the micro-fulfillment solution, or the app itself, gathering real-world usage data that shaped features and improvements at every stage. The team built the native app on Xamarin, giving Dematic a cross-platform experience across Android, iOS, and Windows, with integrations for laser, barcode, and camera scanning, manual barcode entry, and warehouse and inventory software to minimize out-of-stock issues and handle order substitutions.
Vervint delivered the fully developed app on an accelerated three-month timeline so Dematic could showcase the micro-fulfillment solution at its Material Handling and Logistics Conference. Since then, Dematic has partnered with retailers to place micro-fulfillment solutions in stores, giving them an edge in customer satisfaction.
With a fast, tested app behind their micro-fulfillment solution, Dematic is positioned to help retailers everywhere keep the promise of same-day, and even one-hour, delivery.
