We had the opportunity to present at the Columbus Chamber of Commerce’s Logistics Council annual event alongside our partners at InQ, a consignment inventory trading platform. We presented our journey building their custom web app to support the circular economy.
The InQ app was designed to optimize and realign medical inventory using big data and an AI-assisted trading engine. Building this trading ecosystem was not easy. It took extensive app design, robust backend development, months of time, and hundreds of thousands of lines of code!
Here’s what we learned throughout the process:
Inventory Management Systems Aren’t Perfect, and That’s OK!
If you’ve used inventory management systems (IMS) like SAP or Move Medical, you know how rigid and complex they can be. When introducing InQ’s new trading app for industry use, the biggest pushback was around inventory accuracy. Many organizations didn’t trust their existing IMS data to start a trading program. They also weren’t confident that their sales force maintained accurate inventory counts for their territories.
Initially, we treated this as a software problem, but it wasn’t. It was a behavior problem that became a huge selling point. Let me explain.
Once we launched the trading platform, salespeople immediately saw its value and how it could improve their bottom lines through faster sales cycles. Overnight, sales reps and inventory managers began working together to locate missing inventory, and updating the IMS accordingly. Contrary to what organizations believed, InQ actually improved the accuracy of an IMS! This proved one of our core beliefs: great app ideas can drive user behavior.
Behavior Change Starts with Great UX and UI
A critical component of our app development process was creating a user interface (UI) that felt modern, responsive, and accessible. Legacy systems like SAP are notoriously difficult to use. We knew our app had to be the opposite: fast, intuitive, and centered on the needs of all stakeholders.
So we asked the right questions to validate our app development approach, including:
- Inventory Managers: What tools do you need to track inventory effectively?
- Directors and Above: What KPIs are critical for evaluating inventory efficiency?
- Sales Managers: When should approvals be required, and who needs visibility?
- Sales Reps: How can we make this app a daily tool that helps you serve your customers?
This deep dive into user requirements enabled us to better tailor the app for each user type. The result was a streamlined platform that integrated with medical device companies’ existing workflows, enabling better adoption without overwhelming users.
Big Data Requires Big Thinking
App development for large organizations always involves scale. InQ’s platform had to process massive amounts of data in real-time, including trade distance, shipping costs, product priorities, and more.
No two companies had the same logic or preferences for trades. So we built a modular engine using AWS, combining serverless functions with dedicated processing power.
The result: a robust backend that could compute millions of trade permutations on the fly and adjust according to organizational needs.
This wasn’t just about UI and UX, it was about sound architecture. Strong app development means balancing a sleek front end with a scalable, reliable backend.
Tech Integrations Must Always Be Frictionless
Our users weren’t just sales reps, managers, and inventory specialists. We had to win over the IT departments, too. That meant ensuring the platform fit smoothly within each organization’s tech ecosystem.
We collaborated with IT managers to comply with:
- SSO (single sign-on) requirements
- IMS update frequencies
- Can we get permission to integrate directly with your IMS, or do we need an alternative data dump?
We also focused on minimizing UI friction. From login to trade completion, IT monitored each action. Great app design eliminates barriers, making the experience as effortless as possible for end users and tech managers.
Behavior Change Overcomes Psychological Hurdles
One of our biggest challenges wasn’t technical; it was emotional. Many users feared that our software would replace their jobs. But the reality was quite the opposite. This app was designed to support inventory professionals, not to substitute them.
We had to lean into our marketing to change the narrative. We doubled down on the benefits of using the platform:
- Automation to reduce manual tracking errors.
- Notifications to trigger shipping and receiving workflows for better visibility.
- Trading rules to prevent bad trades from happening.
After understanding the full benefits, inventory departments saw that the app helped them do a better job.
Visibility and Transparency Always Matter
Again, a benefit of the InQ platform was the unexpected visibility it provided. Companies confirmed that inventory wasn’t always where it was supposed to be: sometimes shockingly in garages, car trunks, or storage lockers. With our app, users began to re-inventory items they had forgotten about or were too lazy to track in their IMS.
As adoption grew, inventory accuracy across their organization improved, bridging the gap between field knowledge and their IMS.
Marketing Was the Final Key to Success for InQ
Despite powerful UI/UX and a solid backend, internal adoption within medical device companies still needed a big push. That’s where our common sense marketing agency came in.
Our team further supported client adoption through:
- Sales sheets for crucial conversations.
- User guides for faster customer onboarding.
- Quick-start manuals to alleviate sales support.
- Info sheets tailored to stakeholder concerns.
- Customer success representatives to ensure happy clients from the get-go.
Our web design, creative teams, and app developers collaborated to deliver marketing collateral and support for InQ’s real-time sales conversations and onboarding process.
The Bottom Line
As a Columbus app design and development and digital marketing agency, we immersed ourselves in InQ to:
- Build a platform that powered behavior change.
- Drive inventory optimization.
- Embrace the circular economy.
From UI/UX to big data processing and stakeholder marketing, we delivered a product that solved real-world problems and helped the environment in the process.
Want to build an app that drives real change?
Connect with Uplancer to learn how our app design and development services can transform your ideas into digital solutions that drive change.
