Disrupting the Automotive Auction Industry with a Business to Business Platform
Modernizing Poultry Farms with Internet Connected Feed Level Monitoring
Little Bird Systems approached Lofty Labs to create a customer facing application to allow users to monitor data generated by their innovative audio-based sensors for feed bins in the poultry industry. The team had deployed sensors on multiple farms and were storing data in a database, but had no user interface for analytics, reporting, or even internal oversight. The team also anticipated large scaling challenges with their architecture in the short term future as they prepared a large go-to-market strategy for their IoT (Internet of Things) enabled sensors.
LOFTY'S APPROACH
Little Bird Systems team during a discovery workshop at Lofty Labs Lofty Labs worked with the team at Little Bird Systems to re-architect the pipeline of their sensor data using a standardized API (Application Programming Interface) over the internet, allowing their devices to passively push data into the cloud. The API became the standard interface for retrieving data as well, and Lofty developed an interactive reporting interface to surface insights to Little Bird System’s customers. The API and analytics application support an ACL model that allows for flexible governance of data access where Little Bird's employees and customers can access only the data they are granted, without compromising the confidential data of other customers. LBS On ScreenLittle Bird's IoT infrastructure is now poised for massive scaling and sensors are being rolled out to multiple commercial farms. The API powered dashboard is in use by LBS employees, farm employees, and integration partners to efficiently monitor and replenish feed levels. Native mobile applications are now in development, taking advantage of the API at the architecture's core to provide consistent experience across devices. These applications can be developed at a substantially reduced cost as they leverage a pre-existing cloud architecture and data access. Little Bird Systems is now confidently approaching some of the largest poultry integrators in the world with the knowledge that their automated systems can scale to meet demands of any size
Frontline Liquidators approached us with a problem they had observed after many years on all sides of the car business.
New auto dealers are constantly trying to swap out the aged inventory on their lots, (the inventory that isn't moving, that is), with inventory better suited to their clientele. The status quo in the industry is to liquidate old inventory and purchase new inventory at auctions with a broker and auction house each taking a cut of the transaction. The Frontline Liquidators team believes that dealers know their business well enough to exchange inventory without the middlemen, and that the modern web has created an opportunity to facilitate transactions without stepping foot in the auction house.
When Frontline Liquidators approached us they had only an idea and were looking for a partner to help guide the product development process. In early discovery, we quickly identified that ease of use and simple adoption would be the primary drivers of the application's design. Car dealers are busy and don't have sophisticated IT structures to roll out applications. We started with a foundational web application platform with a responsive design that any one could use anywhere--a desktop, a tablet, an iPhone or and Android device. The backend platform is integrated with a major player in the DMS (Dealer Management System) industry so that customer inventory can be automatically be fetched from the inventory databases of Frontline's subscribers with the click of a button. Communication is a key component of Frontline's platform, so after receiving initial customer feedback and tuning the product it was clear that native mobile applications would have a huge impact on usability to get push notifications into the pockets of customers. We built iOS and Android applications using React Native, which allowed us to maintain a single codebase that can be deployed to the majority of mobile devices.
Frontline Liquidator's Web Application showcases vehicle inventory that can be traded amongst car dealers without a broker or auction house involved in the transaction. Frontline's Web and Mobile applications are united on a single platform that simulcasts listings and dealer communications across mobile devices and the web based application for desktop users. The platform is supported by our Mission Control product which guarantees 24/7 availability and reliability of the services.
Frontline has on-boarded 19 new-car dealers in the Ark-La-Tex area in just a few short weeks since the product has launched with plans to scale regionally and then nationally.
