Once a customer or sales rep selects their custom Trellis, Pickets/Panels, and/or Gates, they submit their e-mail where our backend will calculate the price, generate a spec-sheet, and send PDFs to the sales team, manufacturing team, and the customer.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
An award-winning app that provides instant quotes for custom Trellis products.
Genia's sales department needed to give a presentation to hardware stores throughout New Zealand to launch their new line of custom Trellis, Panels, and Gates. An idea was pitched that would allow these hardware retail stores to receive instant quotes for these products and make their jobs easier. Prior to this, a sales rep would have to manually call and ask our company for a quote. The challenge was to finish a prototype before the presentation in 2 working days. Thomas (backend) and I ended up getting it in done in two iconic 11 hour shifts. Since then, the app has evolved and continues to receive rave reviews from hardware stores throughout NZ, increasing sales for the Motueka Pickets brand. In 2022, I received Genia's Innovation Award for this app which contributes towards the goal of continuous improvement and innovation.
A customer or sales rep selected two products with these custom specs.
Trelli on the bottom right during a tradeshow in Auckland.
My coworkers and I receiving the first ever Innovation Award at the company-wide meeting in Motueka. It was a nice surprise. Had I known prior I probably would not have worn my Biggie Smalls tee in front of 100+ people with a Microsoft Teams blanket fort background (pictured on the two screens live from Wellington, NZ).
HOW IT WORKS
WHAT I LEARNED
- I am able to crank out an app for demo-purposes in under 20 hours. While quick, the code I produced was not carefully thought of prior. Thus, architecturally, the app was built on shaky grounds. As the app became more widely adopted, we continued to build on-top of the codebase until realizing that adding simple features was harder than it should be. This resulted in a lengthy architectural refactor down the line.
- It is very easy to go overboard with animations. During development, I had to take a step back and realize Trelli is a simple calculator-like app for sales people and DIY renovation folk. Another 10 valuable hours of fancy animations would not necessarily produce a big ROI. The full fledged consumer app version will be made in the future and so maybe then would slicker animations suffice. Know your audience!