The challenge
Relax Agro buys, stores and delivers eggs, a product with thin margins and fragile stock. The business ran on Excel sheets and paper registers, so the office never had one up-to-date view of orders, stock and money owed. Deliveries were hard to plan and follow, and problems surfaced only when someone sat down to reconcile the sheets.
What we built
We built one egg distribution app with a mobile app and a web dashboard on the same backend. The office manages orders, stock and payments on the dashboard, and the delivery team works from the app. Because both call the same API, a delivery marked in the app shows up in the office straight away. We still develop and support the platform as the business grows.
Why an egg distribution app instead of more spreadsheets
Excel and paper work while a business is small. As Relax Agro grew, the same order lived in several places: a sheet in the office, a note with the driver, a payment written down later. Every day ended with someone matching them by hand, and mistakes in stock or deliveries came to light late.
The goal was simple to state: one place where an order is created, delivered and paid, seen the same way by the office and by the people on the road.
How we approached it
We kept one backend for everything. The web dashboard and the mobile app call the same API, so there is no second system to keep in step. The API is documented with Swagger, which let the web and mobile work move in parallel instead of one waiting for the other.
We chose Flutter for the mobile app so one codebase serves Android and iOS, and React for the office dashboard, where people work at a desk with larger tables and reports.
Architecture
- API: Node.js and Express over MongoDB, one service for the whole business.
- Mobile app: Flutter, with push notifications through Firebase.
- Web dashboard: React, for the office team.
- Access: each role signs in to its own screens, so people see what their job needs and nothing more.
See our mobile app development, web application development and API development services for how we build these parts.
The hard part: one record that everyone trusts
Moving off spreadsheets only helps if people stop keeping their own copy. That meant the app had to be quicker than writing it down, and the dashboard had to match what really happened on the road. Building both on one API was the decision that made this work: the office and the delivery team look at the same data, not two versions of it.
The trade-off is that the backend carries the whole business, so changes to it are made carefully and released in step with the app. We accept that cost because the alternative, separate systems for office and field, is exactly the problem Relax Agro had with Excel and paper.
What changed
- Orders, stock and deliveries are in one system instead of Excel sheets and paper registers.
- The office sees orders, stock and payments on one dashboard instead of piecing them together from sheets.
- The delivery team works from the mobile app, so the office knows what was delivered without a phone call.
The platform is in daily use, and we keep developing and supporting it. The same approach fits other agriculture and agritech businesses and logistics and supply chain operations that still run on spreadsheets.
We ran orders, stock and deliveries on Excel and paper. Now everything is in one app, and the office and the delivery team see the same numbers. KaliIO keeps building with us as we grow.
