The new mobile application for Estonia’s leading energy company Alexela provides customers with all the tools needed to quickly and conveniently get an overview of everything that is important for them – ranging from information about Alexela’s services, all the way to an overview of recent transactions and consumption. In addition to creating the application’s back-end business logic and the integrations with various other services, Uptime was also tasked with creating the app’s user interface in cooperation with Alexela and the digital agency ADM Interactive.
Uptime approached the project with a clear vision and understanding: in an increasingly mobile-focused world, the customer needs to get a quick, clear, and convenient overview of everything that is important to them from their smartphone.
Thus, it became clear that the app must be able to provide an overview of Alexela’s services, show the customer their transaction history, and provide an overview of their consumption history. In addition to this, the app got a feature that added the ability to start navigating to the nearest Alexela service station or convenience store with just a few taps on the screen.
Among other features, the application also enables the user to:
- sign up for Alexela’s Home Card, which enables them to benefit from Alexela’s loyalty program;
- quickly navigate to the most suitable service station or convenience store;
- track and monitor their transaction history, invoices, and Home Card benefits;
- sign up for electrical and natural gas services;
- request a visit by Alexela’s Fuel Taxi, which delivers fuel to private residences and businesses in certain regions;
- join the Community Program and thereby reduce the environmental impact of their journeys.
Every project offers its own challenges
Aleksandr Požidajev, Uptime’s project manager responsible for the project, said that just like with any development process, creating Alexela’s new app offered a number of exciting challenges.
“The largest of them was ensuring smooth operations between different external systems and the management of their interdependencies – the mobile app ties together Alexela’s services in several areas to offer the customer a unified experience and the opportunity to view all necessary information in a centralized location,” he said.
Požidajev explained that in order to successfully achieve this goal, it was necessary to integrate, among others, customer information from a CRM, information about transactions made with fuel cards logged in a custom piece of software, information from a CMS about the service stations themselves, and information about electricity and gas contracts from their own special system. But, of course, the work doesn’t end here as more interesting features will be added to the app in due course.
Tanel Viin, IT Manager of AS Alexela, said that it was Alexela’s goal to get closer to their customers by using a mobile app, and doing so by offering added value to the customer. The app helps to save the customer’s valuable time but also gives them a better overview of everything that’s important: an overview of locations, discounts, receipts, and electricity and gas bills.
“What made the project challenging was the fact that many different worlds had to be woven together into a cohesive whole: electricity, fuels, convenience store services, but also a community programme which enables the customer to contribute one cent of a discount provided to them on fueling to the county/community where they would like to have a tree planted. The work with our mobile application is definitely not over, it is a continuous process,” he said.
Uptime’s technical solution
Uptime was responsible for both the back end and front end development for Alexela’s new app, for which these technologies were used:
- The front-end of the application is built on JavaScript’s framework React.
- The app’s containers are built on the basis of operating systems, i.e. the Android container using Java and the iOS container using Swift.
- The following technologies have been used in the back-end of the mobile application: Azure Cloud, Azure DevOps CI/CD, .NET Core, PostgreSQL, Radish cache, RESTful API integrations, Application Insights, NGINX, and others.
Alexela’s app can be downloaded here:
Android – https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=ee.alexela.iseteenindus
iOS – https://apps.apple.com/us/app/alexela/id1549876996
