Dutch retailer De Mandemakers Groep saves 3,000 hours a year with OutSystems low-code mobile app

Background

De Mandemakers Groep's measuring department ran a fully manual documentation workflow: paper forms, end-of-day scanning, email submission, and next-morning ERP entry. With 25 fitters visiting eight to nine homes a day, the clerical overhead totaled roughly twelve hours of daily overtime and introduced risk of transcription errors at each handoff step.

What Was Implemented

• Engaged OutSystems low-code platform with local partner Synobsys (Beyonder Group B.V.) to develop mobile applications
• Built an in-store shopper experience app (product info, digital shopping lists, store locations, customer rewards) in three weeks as a proof-of-concept sprint
• Built the Inmetersapp: a mobile app for measuring customers' homes for bathroom fixtures and kitchen appliances, replacing all paper documentation
• App captures measurements and job data on-device; eliminates end-of-day scanning and next-morning ERP re-entry
• IT team of ten developers; OutSystems provided the rapid-development runtime

Results

The Inmetersapp eliminated approximately twelve hours of overtime per working day across the 25-person measuring department, amounting to 3,000 hours saved per year — equivalent to more than 1.6 FTEs . The manual error surface introduced by scanning and re-entry was eliminated. The three-week build of the in-store experience app demonstrated the speed of the platform and gave DMG confidence to proceed.

Lessons

• Low-code platforms let small IT teams (ten developers here) build and deploy production mobile apps in weeks, not months
• Starting with a bounded proof-of-concept (the in-store app) validates the platform before committing to more complex builds
• Replacing paper-and-scan workflows with mobile capture delivers both time savings and quality improvements in a single step
• Named platform partners (Synobsys / Beyonder) play a critical role in localized implementation and support