Canadian Postal Service – Innovapost

Home » Success Stories » Canadian Postal Service - Innovapost

 

Flick Software and Innovapost – A perfect match

When one of the largest IT services and solutions providers in the country calls on you to help solve some tough problems, you listen and you deliver.  In fact, Flick Software has been contracted by Innovapost five times to help port business critical applications to a new mobile platform and help solve some tricky connectivity issues. Flick Software delivered and helped with the roll-out of the biggest Canadian deployment of next generation mobile business applications.

Who is Innovapost?

Innovapost is a leading IT services and solutions provider with substantial expertise in the postal and parcel delivery markets (owned by Canada Post and CGI Inc). It delivers mission critical, extremely reliable and highly scalable solutions to very large clients. Canada Post, one of Innovapost’s main clients, delivers over 11 billion pieces of mail, has over 60,000 employees and over 6,000 post offices.  You can just imagine how much data needs to be managed in real time.

Mobile Connectivity Issues

Managing the network connectivity used by a mission critical mobile device is tricky. You have to maximize the speed of the connection for the task at hand while minimizing cost and power consumption so the device has enough power for the whole shift.  The variables are in constant flux and data has to get through in all conditions.  This is a tough problem that has plagued many mission critical mobile deployments.

Highly Scalable Mobile Solutions

Now imagine that you want to equip delivery truck drivers and mail carriers with a mobile device allowing them to access and update information on the fly.  We are talking about over 10,000 mobile units that MUST remain connected and synchronized to the main servers and databases while in motion.

Furthermore, because of the huge number of devices, the mobile solution has to be extremely robust and reliable.  You can’t easily release small patches the way you would with typical web applications so you simply have to get it right.

Flick Software Brought on to help Solve Tough Problems

Due to Flick Software’s experience in delivering  robust mobile solution in complex environments, Flick Software was brought on to port some business application to Motorola and Intermec Windows Mobile devices.  This was delivered very successfully and the high quality of the work led Innovapost to contract Flick Software to help with the tricky mobile connectivity issues they were observing in their existing solutions.  Flick Software jumped in to help patch the former solution and was also contracted to develop a new mobile connectivity middleware solution that would be rolled out to over 35,000 units,  one of the largest deployments in North America.

Rolling-up many Sleeves

Large, highly complex projects require teamwork, problem solving and getting into the trenches to chase down and solve tough problems.  This often results in changes to the original requirements in order to deal with unexpected issues.  It can also sometimes mean that new skills need to be brought in to deal with unexpected challenges.

Flick Software was directly involved is resolving some nasty timeout issues between the mobile software, the hardware and servers.  The problem was patched and then ultimately resolved with a more permanent solution developed by Flick Software for the next major software release.

The demonstrated ability for Flick Software to lend a hand by bringing in multiple experts and rolling-up their sleeves to diagnose and fix the issue is one of Flick Software’s many differentiators relative to other options.

The Largest roll-out of its Kind, Everyone Happy

Flick Software was able to quickly integrate with the Innovapost team, help with overall architecture and design decisions and deliver the very high quality requirements.  The new software and Intermec devices were ultimately released into the field in very high volume … over 35,000 already and still growing.  As soon as the new solutions were rolled out, customer service tickets related to connectivity issues dropped dramatically, leading to happy customers and financial savings.

Flick Software and Innovapost are continuing their relationship and are in discussions to have Flick Software assist with some new projects.

Contact:

515 Legget Drive, Suite 310
Ottawa, Ontario, K2K 3G4
Sales@ flicksoftware.com
613 228 2461