SRM Software and Project Management Consulting to Speed Up Development and Optimize Costs

Summary

A US-based supply chain services company was turning its internal procurement and quality-control solution into a digital platform for direct supplier–manufacturer cooperation — a single dashboard combining an SRM system, an eSourcing solution, and a quality management tool. With the SRM build outsourced to a third-party vendor, the company engaged INNERLUXES to audit the project, review the architecture, and apply project-management best practices. In 10 weeks, INNERLUXES delivered prioritized improvements that sped up the launch and optimized costs.

About the Client

The Client is a US-based company rendering full-cycle supply chain services for the manufacturing industry. Its digital supply chain management solutions are used by leading automotive, electronics, and electrical engineering companies.

Project management required improvement to ensure effective delivery

The Client wanted to help its customers make supply chain processes more resilient to global challenges. It decided to take its internal procurement and quality-control solution to market and turn it into a convenient digital platform for direct supplier–manufacturer cooperation, providing three SaaS products in one dashboard: a supplier relationship management (SRM) system, an eSourcing solution, and a quality management tool.

The Client needed project management support and wanted to speed up the product launch, so it outsourced the development of its SRM solution to a third-party IT vendor. To maximize the efficiency of that cooperation and accelerate the project flow, the Client decided to involve professional consultants to audit the project, identify areas for improvement, and assist with implementing project management best practices. INNERLUXES was chosen as a trustworthy tech partner with deep experience in IT consulting and supply chain software development.

SRM software development project audit and consulting on improvements

INNERLUXES provided the Client with an experienced delivery manager and a solution architect to act as impartial project auditors. Our team explored the available technical and process documentation and interviewed the project stakeholders on the Client's side to elicit their requirements for the project flow. INNERLUXES's experts also participated in the third-party vendor's Agile processes, including daily Scrum meetings, to understand the company–vendor interaction specifics and assess the project pace.

Having analyzed the as-is project state, INNERLUXES's delivery manager and architect documented the project management and requirements-gathering inefficiencies they found and offered pragmatic steps to address them, categorized by severity and prioritized by value for the Client. Their advice spanned all critical project aspects and included:

• Setting clear financial KPIs to track project budget utilization and investment payback.
• Creating a feature release schedule to better manage the backlog and progress for planned features.
• Assigning individual task owners to clearly see and control role-specific responsibilities in the development flow.
• Measuring sprint velocity and reconsidering sprint duration to avoid overloading the pipeline with unfinished tasks.
• Persistently documenting the requirements so the vendor understands the company's needs and goals, which also facilitates the change-approval flow.
• Obtaining the necessary testing documentation from the vendor to stay transparent about QA processes and outcomes.
• Integrating automated regression tests into the CI/CD pipeline to streamline releases and promptly spot and fix issues.

SRM software architecture review to identify and fix potential flaws

The accuracy of the SRM product's technical design was a key priority for the Client, since design issues could compromise product quality and lead to high maintenance costs. The company asked our architect to conduct an independent review of the SaaS SRM's architecture and point out its weaknesses and possible problems.

INNERLUXES's Azure expert thoroughly analyzed the SRM app's infrastructure, the interactions between software components and external systems, the database structure, and data access points, evaluating the architecture for maintainability, security, and performance. Following the review, our architect provided a comprehensive audit report describing the architectural pain points and their potential operational and financial impact, plus detailed guidelines for improving the architecture to achieve greater system stability, better data protection, and optimized maintenance costs.

Development process improvement to speed up the SRM product launch and optimize costs

• Within 10 weeks, INNERLUXES performed an in-depth SRM software development project audit and prepared a comprehensive report on the SRM's architecture issues and their potential impact.
• INNERLUXES's expert advice on project management helped the Client speed up the SRM product launch and minimize risks through more efficient development processes, fixed collaboration and communication flows, and better control over project progress.
• Thanks to the architecture review and enhancement consulting, the Client could prevent the SRM app's performance and security issues and reduce maintenance costs.

Technologies and Tools

Azure Cloud, Azure DevOps, Confluence, Draw.io, Microsoft Teams.