Omnis allowed service company to build their own web solution for managing retail refrigeration

The demand for freshly prepared and healthy food in convenience stores, small town/village stores and in the catering trade has grown over the past decade. There is also a demand for this type of food in gas or fuel stations, which in many locations have replaced traditional town & village stores. To keep this food fresh and looking good for customers, the demand for refrigeration, cold display cabinets, and high quality shop fittings in the catering trade, shops, mini- and supermarkets has also grown. There are several multi-national companies manufacturing such refrigeration and retail display equipment (Johnson Controls, Porkka), along with associated products such as air conditioning and climate control systems, and it is now a multi-billion dollar/euro business. As a result, there is a large and growing market for servicing, maintaining and repairing this equipment, and a corresponding market for software to manage this type of service operation.

Kälte + Shop Service GmbH (KSS) is a service company working across Germany. Since June 2001 they have handled the entire order management and maintenance for their customers. One of their customers is Johnson Controls, a Fortune 1000 company, and KSS carry out all maintenance and repair work on their refrigeration, climate and electronic devices installed in over 1,100 Shell gas and fuel stations across Germany. KSS is also in partnership with European manufacturer Porkka, who specialise in refrigerators, medical chillers, freezers, as well as cold rooms for commercial use, carrying out all servicing and warranty management for them.

Over the course of a year, KSS handles approximately 10,000 orders and coordinates more than 250 service companies. This level of business results in about 50,000 transactions, requiring a powerful data management system. When they first started in business, KSS tested and used various database programs, but none of these products was able to satisfy their exact requirements. In January 2005, they decided to use a MySQL database and chose Omnis Studio to build the application for data entry, order management and reporting. The MySQL database and Omnis are hosted alongside a web server and support the complete management of their business and the order entry by their customers.

“Omnis provides great flexibility in creating forms and reports. This flexibility and the speed with which modifications and enhancements can be made were the determining factor for us in choosing Omnis. We make modifications and enhancements to our system all the time and it's very easy to do this ourselves with Omnis Studio,“ said Robert Maier, Managing Director of KSS. “Another important factor for us was that we were able to develop the application for desktops and the web using a single development system. This reduced the development time and effort for us significantly. The user interface and the forms in the web version look the same as the desktop version and work exactly as the developer intended them to. And if, for any reason, we want to change the database, with Omnis we know we can, and keep the application and the user interface without changing a thing.“

It's interesting to note that Robert Maier is not a professional software developer, but using Omnis Studio, as well as training and consulting provided by Raining Data Germany, he was able to develop a solution to manage his business.