Italian Craft and Modern Technologies – Cooperation between PRT Group and Inetum

Customer Communication Management system

The company’s core service is the mass distribution of documents in the fields of generation, serial printing and shipping. PRT Group’s clients are large organizations and public institutions who send massive quantities of documents to their clients, such as notices, invoices, contracts, advertising brochures and catalogues.

Complementing this service is the company’s flagship product PostaPronta, a Customer Communication Management system that facilitates the management of outgoing Communications. The system allows you to send all documents automatically by means of any selected distribution channel: apart from traditional mail, documents may also be sent by e-mail and certified e-mail Electronic Invoice, as well as on Facebook Messenger.

This is a solution designed for smaller companies, allowing them to handle all outgoing mail using a desktop application that works with end devices such as scanners and printers. Documents can be sent directly to the delivery house using the application, then printed and sent electronically or by post.

Additional tasks:

• the transfer of data relating to shipments to the cloud (Azure) from a local server,
• concept work – an analysis of architecture and the assumptions regarding the introduction of new functionalities, the search for optimal solutions, and work on the concept of the new system architecture,
• modernization and optimization.

Electronic Invoice

A web application used to generate electronic invoices, integrated with an external service that verifies the data, as well as certifying the invoice. The application is also integrated with the PostaPronta application.

The Inetum specialists were tasked with creating an application together with a set of the most important functionalities and integrating it with the certification service and the PostaPronta application. Integration with the CCM system was challenging due to the fact that the data entered in the desktop application had to be sent to two web applications – the Fattura Elettronica application, which validates the data format, and then to a separate application to certify the invoice. The solution was to “sew” the Fattura Elettronica application directly into the desktop application, which guarantees efficient communication between the two.

Because a huge amount of data has to be processed and archived in the process of generating and sending invoices, and errors in file management on physical disks may occur, the company decided to migrate to the cloud. After analyzing their requirements, the Inetum specialists proposed the Azure Blob Storage service, which guarantees low costs while meeting all the system’s needs, including the need to process invoice files multiple times.

Messenger Bot for PostaPronta

The PostaPronta application was extended to incorporate a bot in Facebook Messenger, which allows users to send documents directly from Messenger. All data is sent in the chat window, and the bot automatically verifies it and suggests the next steps. The prepared document can then be sent by post or in electronic form. Inetum specialists were tasked with implementing a bot provided by an external company and testing its operation.

• Modernization – implementation of the MVVM model (Model-view-viewmodel), which guarantees the simplification and testability of the code, and facilitates the subsequent development of the system.
• Optimization of the app’s operation – the implementation of newer technologies and more efficient architectural solutions, as well as transferring data loading to other threads, made it possible to significantly accelerate the operation of the app.
• Development of system functionality – which made it possible to meet the clients’ expectations in terms of the company’s services and the capabilities of the software provided.

About the client:

PRT GROUP is an Italian company which operates on the global printing and business communication market, offering its clients a variety of solutions based on modern technologies.