New project • Web development • Design • Testing
Suomen Suoramainonta Oy is Finland’s largest direct marketing company. Its distribution network reaches nearly 2.5 million households every week with paper flyers. Distribution companies operating all over Finland together with Suomen Suoramainonta Oy constitute the SSM Distribution Group. Together they produce the largest private and nationwide unaddressed distribution network in Finland. About 1.2 billion distribution products go through their distribution network every year.
With this level of complexity, SSM needed a better way to manage the distribution of flyers from warehouses to the people who deliver them. Increasing the efficiency of their system allowed SSM to cut costs and provide a better service to their clients.
Our challenge was to help SSM optimize the distribution of millions of leaflets across all areas for each distribution day, enable the creation of highly customizable printouts of distribution instructions and manage a distribution plan with a 2-year perspective.
One of the technology challenges included creating a web application with a window-based interface that end-users were already accustomed to using.
Another was building full bidirectional data synchronization between two services via message queues on each data change in any of the systems. We also had to create an admin panel for message queues and a detection system for synchronization failures.
Java
PHP
jOOQ
Vaadin
Liquibase
We developed the backend using Java 8, Spring. Our team used Vaadin for the web view and its communication with the backend. RabbitMQ facilitated data synchronization between the system and other applications in the client ecosystem.
The project started in August 2016. We started with a scrum team of four, which grew to eight in 2017. Once we reached the goal and the rollout to other distribution groups started, the project went into maintenance mode with minimum development and a smaller team.
“Espeo’s approach to project management stands out — particularly their use of scrum. The team encourages frequent video conferencing as a way to foster teamwork and bridge cultural gaps. Espeo’s ability to tap technical experts in their area for various tasks is also valuable.”
Jani Kaski
Director of development
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