HP Slashes Development Time by 40% with Kendo UI

The challenge

With a popular bring-your-own-device policy, HP’s internal enterprise apps needed to support a wide range of popular mobile devices, ranging from Windows phones to Android tablets. However, in order to do so, HP’s development team was spending months working on apps for each of the different platforms.

“Our mobile apps for sales are used in more than 100 countries, and HP sales reps are very demanding,” said Benjamin Thatcher, Solutions Architect, HP. “We couldn’t just focus on one particular platform. We had to take a hybrid-app approach, and this led us to our search for libraries and plug-ins that would provide the right functionality, and also keep the experience that the users would expect out of a native app.”

Beyond the complexities of developing an app for multiple platforms, there was also the issue of providing a great user experience. “We don’t want our sales team spending time navigating through complex IT systems; we want them out there selling,” he said.

Thatcher and his team evaluated multiple solutions, including some open-source libraries and vendor solutions. Neither option was ideal—open-source libraries required a lot of tinkering with the code to get it running, while vendor solutions lacked the necessary functionality and support.

The solution

Eventually, Thatcher and his team selected Progress® Kendo UI® component library to develop the multiplatform app its salesforce needed.

“Normally, we would have to develop specific code for each platform, but with the HTML5 Cordova applications and Kendo UI controls, we were able to have a single codebase for all three platforms,” Thatcher said. “The Kendo UI framework enables us to do some really advanced UI stuff with graphics, visualizations and the like, and create rich experiences that wouldn’t have been possible with native app development.”

The combination of rich functionality and expert support enabled the HP development team to quickly turn out the apps it needed. “Progress support is incredible,” said Thatcher. “When we ran into issues during development, Progress was right there with immediate feedback. And, most of the time, they provide us with exactly what we need in the first response.”

The result

HP is using the Kendo UI controls to enhance existing apps with more functionality and visual appeal in addition to creating new apps. Since adopting Kendo UI, HP has reduced the time to market of new apps by 30-40% compared to before. “It used to take us months to develop a new app,” Thatcher said. “Now we can get out a Kendo UI app for all three platforms in a matter of weeks.”

Between faster time to market and an overall superior user experience, HP’s sales team has been ecstatic with the apps built using Kendo UI. Feedback questionnaires sent to users throughout HP revealed a 10% increase in the user satisfaction after deployment of the new mobile app.

Developers love working with Kendo UI as well. “The Kendo UI framework is a joy to use,” said Thatcher. “And, it’s easy to integrate the tools with our existing projects, whether it’s a .NET app, HTML or JavaScript.”

With mobile apps playing a huge role in how modern businesses operate, Kendo UI gives HP the necessary edge in creating beautiful mobile experiences for employees and customers.