Case Study:
System Upgrade And Maintenance for A Global Real Estate Service Provider
Vue
Microsoft .NET
SQL Server
Dynamic management of the property
Data response speed improved Significantly
In-house system to product
Client & Requirements
The client is a premier global real estate services firm managing commercial and residential properties across major urban centers worldwide.
In 2019, the client’s China branch approached Shinetech and another software company to work together to build a property management system for data entry and management. Shinetech was responsible for the frontend, while the other company was responsible for the backend development. Unfortunately, the slow data response times proved troublesome for customers after the system was deployed. In 2022, the client came to Shinetech again, intending to optimize and upgrade the system on a large scale and expect it to play a significant role in managing their properties and tenants. This time, the client commissioned Shinetech with complete ownership of the system buildout, spanning UI/UX design through API and database construction on both the front and back ends.
Our Analysis
Our team deeply understood the importance of the system to the client’s business, so we invested a relatively large amount of time and effort in the requirements mining and sorting. We went to the client site and conducted a one-month demand survey. During this period, we engaged in thorough communication with the client’s business team to deeply understand their operations. Through comprehensive analysis, we aimed to deliver customized solutions that addressed their needs and supported business growth.
According to the client’s requirements, we determined the main goals of the system optimization and maintenance:
- The initial system only has tables, which is very inconvenient to use. The new system needs to achieve dynamic management of the property. The charting of data is a vital optimization direction, allowing users to understand changes intuitively and quickly in tenants, rooms, and contract expiration.
- Significantly improve the data response speed.
- Detailed and reasonable functional module design to achieve seamless coverage of business management.
The Cooperation
To achieve the above goals, we have done the following work:
User experience design
Our UI&UX designer participated in the whole process of requirement analysis and research and thoroughly understood the client’s needs. The design won the client’s praise.
In-depth study and analysis of the original system
At this stage, we achieved these goals:
- We improved the slow response speed of the existing system.
- Maximize the reuse of existing code to reduce the impact of redevelopment.
- The code optimization process met the needs to address the future system scalability and compatibility issues.
Agile Development
The system’s development transitioned to an Agile approach, embracing practices like sprint planning, continuous integration, continuous delivery, and iterative development. This allowed individual modules to be deployed into use as soon as they were ready, rather than waiting until the entire system was completed.
The results
At present, the new system has been completed and put into use, carrying hundreds of business personnel online at the same time. Compared with the original system, it has 2.5 times the scale, 1 times the functions and 3 times the response speed.
The size of Shinetech development team has also been reduced from an initial six people (including PM, UI/UX, developers and QA roles) to two part-time people doing final acceptance maintenance.
In the middle of the project, based on good cooperation, the client handed over the development of its property management products and reporting system to Shinetech and Shinetech successfully delivered these two systems as well.
The product has been successfully delivered and entered the market with two buyers. At present, our team is providing custom development service for one of the buyers.
Report System
This system was built with Microsoft Power BI to create a tailored reporting solution. The goal was to develop a convenient platform for clients to analyze reports and make future predictions.