Geospatial

We’re using state-of-the-art technologies to help one of our partners, rascal Systems transform the retail industry.

rascal systems

• Established: 2004
• Industry: IT services for the retail industry
• Team size: 50
• Location: United Kingdom

rascal systems is one of the biggest software providers working within the retail industry. Their unique solutions simplify in-store and category management processes as well as loss prevention meeting the growing demands of a fast-changing industry. Currently specialising in the News, Lottery and DVD categories, their intuitive handset technology scans, collects and interprets real time data as stock is ordered, arrives at retail, hits the shelf, is sold and gets returned. This end-to-end approach reduces shrink, removes paperwork and streamlines stock management to save on labour; all while increasing data visibility, financial control and store profits. rascal works with clients of all sizes, in all sorts of sectors – from supermarkets and high street shops, to convenience stores and petrol.

What has Spyrosoft’s role been in the project?

The Rascal project took place over a long period of time. We had to work with legacy code, and this necessitated the creation of new architecture and documentation. The initial scope of our work was focused on defining which elements of the solution are functioning and how, and how to take this project further.

Spyrosoft’s team has not only been able to take on the challenge but they have also gone above and beyond the project requirements. Our initial audit revealed spots requiring improvement followed by hand-in-hand planning of the new architecture.

The very first task was to organise the code and provide the documentation. It gave us the foundation for listing the most urgent fixes. During the last six months, we have been able to provide a development environment while monitoring the continuous integration and deployment. We have also set up a new test environment.

The next stage was to improve the solution’s performance without adding new hardware and making  maintenance as easy as possible. We focused on combining all common purpose applications and splitting the biggest monoliths into microservices. In all newly created applications, we use .NET Core and the latest .NET framework while maintaining the old ones. This way, we can provide the necessary technical assistance to the rascal systems team.

With regard to further development, we are constantly in the process of identifying new opportunities as the scope and the requirements of the project are changing. We have also been proactive in preparing integrations and automated UI tests, wherever possible.

For the Support Dashboard application, which will be the hub between all the others, we use Blazor as a UI Framework. The technology is a new addition to the .NET family and it has been its first implementation at Spyrosoft.