TiinTiin

COUNTRY Indonesia
PEOPLE INVOLVED 9
INDUSTRY Automotive

Introduction

Some sectors are heavily exposed to digital transformation, while others are slightly behind. With automotive, things are a bit complicated – the most prominent players in the industry do harness the benefits of technology, whereas some aspects and processes are still very traditional.

An example of such a process would be related to selling a car by a private owner or a company and inspecting it beforehand. How to revolutionize automotive sales and take it to the next level? A bold entrepreneurial company from Jakarta, Indonesia, decided to stand up to this challenge and disrupt the industry.

Read the story of Tiin Tiin and see what real digital transformation really means.

Feedback from project stakeholders

We believe that cooperation can be effective and can be a great adventure of realizing common goals.

They’ve delivered everything they’ve promised and the work has been perfect. I’ve never worked with such a reliable team, so we’re satisfied. They’re reliable, proactive, and eager to produce quality code. When they make mistakes, they’re honest. There have been several times where they point out suggestions for us to follow.

Renso Bek, CTO, TaaS Automotive

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Idea

The idea behind the project was to build applications as solutions for individual customers who need to buy a used car quickly and effortlessly, as well as for used car dealers who usually buy such cars to sell with profit.

The core aspect was to digitize car valuation and scheduling and performing inspections. The whole process pretty much operates traditionally, and the concept of this project was to transfer it online and enhance the experience.

Challenge

The challenges with this project were twofold. On the one hand, the CTO on the customer side approached ASPER BROTHERS with the whole plan for the project and architecture of the app ready, which was indeed very handy. Nevertheless, there was a significant number of flows for each process in the app, and each flow was slightly complicated, so it was challenging to plan and develop them properly, so that they are usable and reflect the initial idea.

On the other hand, the client required a large team to kick-start the work straight away. The challenge was to quickly start and scale up the project in an agile way, simultaneously delivering business value from the very beginning. We formed quite a large team in the quarter – 8 people. It was a team with completely different specialties; design, backend, frontend, DevOps; which delivered a working set of quite advanced applications in a few months from the start of the project.

The challenge was to maintain good quality code because of the size of this application. We had 90% code coverage by automatic tests and were writing TDD approach applications. For API documentation, we used swagger, for system/application documentation, we used confluence. Frontend applications are connected to API using the OAuth2 protocol.

Solution

Luckily, with a deep understanding of initially designed user flows within the app and with more experienced developers available onboard, we were able to embark on the project quickly. Together we’ve built a total of four applications, digitizing the process of automotive sales and car inspection.

The first Company-app is a back office to manage data from the whole application – admin panel + API. Second Customer-app is an application for people who want to sell their car (B2C) where you can make an appointment to see the vehicle and a specific valuation.

We also created a multi-tier referral program, meaning if someone outside the company would like to earn money on this application, he has the option to register as an “agent”. His job is to persuade people to sell their cars through this application. Then, at each stage his client goes through, he receives money. And where is this multi-tier? Well, he can have his own agents to whom he sends a referral link to register as his “subagent”. And then, when his subagent reaches one of the milestones, the agent also receives a percentage.

The third Inspection-app is for the mechanics to check the list of cars that were supposed to come in for a price survey that day. The mechanic is able to inspect a particular vehicle using his dedicated app.

Fourth Dealer-app auctions (B2B) for those who bought and sold cars from this company, so that they have access to auctions of cars that have already been reviewed by mechanics and the prices have been confirmed. The app allows for scheduling pre-sales inspections of vehicles.

Process of Collaboration

To make sure the project gets delivered on time, we put together a team that started development from scratch. It consisted of 3 backend developers, up to 2 frontend developers, up to 2 project managers, DevOps engineers, and a Project Owner – a CTO on the customer side.

The leading technologies used in this project were Laravel, Vue, and PHP 7.4 for frontend and backend development, Docker for app containerization, and AWS for cloud hosting services. Apart from that, the team also used Laravel Nova to increase productivity, Websockets to enhance communication, as well as MySQL, MongoDB, and Redis to store and manage data.

As the customer came to us with conceptual assumptions, we worked out solutions together based on selected technologies. The team worked in Scrum with bi-weekly sprints and maintained daily contact with the customer using a dedicated Slack channel. A few times over the week, they held briefings and a Q&A session to discuss issues and tasks to be solved during the next sprint. At the end of each sprint, there was always a demo presentation for the client, and retrospectives to talk about what went well, what went wrong and what could be done better.

Results

As a result, the team created four modern applications based on Vue and Laravel which exhaustively cover the backlog of requested functionalities and truly disrupt the industry. Each app significantly speeds up and facilitates the process of selling a car by an individual or a company.

We have also applied some innovative solutions like OCR. We send a photo to the service which returns us data about what is on the photo. Additionally, we also log in with the use of the SMS code.

Another important feature is that the bidding of the auction takes place in real-time. We used WebSockets, so the content for all users changes without reloading the page.

Thanks to the apps, companies and car dealers can buy a car that has been inspected by legitimate mechanics. It eliminates the need for an additional pre-buy inspection, saves from all the hassle related to that which translates into tangible time and cost benefits.

Summing up

The cooperation of ASPER BROTHERS and TiinTiin can truly be called a partnership. It not only resulted in a series of apps that enable business increase and further expansion into the new Asian markets but also is a tool that is really useful and addresses vital challenges of the sales process.

It was really a pleasure to work together on a project that revolutionizes the sector and proves that technology can have a positive impact on the way we do things. Not to mention, it was a great opportunity to make friends from the other side of the world.