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Exciting new user experience for business management software

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Businesses can more easily schedule and track people and equipment with new business management applications powered by Magnetize and built by Company-X.

Pukekohe-based Magnetize launched new business management software after Hamilton software specialist Company-X spent six months redesigning and rebuilding its existing desktop and mobile app from the ground up.

The result is a vital tool for businesses struggling to schedule people and equipment with full visibility from quote to invoice.

Before coming to Company-X for help, Magnetize had spent seven years and millions of dollars with offshore software developers in India building its feature-rich business management software. Users loved the features but found the desktop app overly complicated and cumbersome, and the mobile app unusable.

Magnetize technology partner The Instillery recommended a user experience (UX) and user interface (UI) review and suggested Company-X as a technology partner. UX and UI designer Briana Christey reviewed the existing software and interviewed users concerning their experience.

“We were talking constantly with The Instillery general manager Richie Jenkins about our frustrations, our desire to bring development back to New Zealand and to partner with the best,” said Magnetize chief executive Paul Lyons. “He said, ‘If you’re going to do this, you’ve got to get Company-X onboard.’

“We had development goals but just as important to us was a good cultural fit. We met with the Company-X team, they are outstanding and have exceeded our expectations, which are high and, as they say, the rest is history!”

Company-X senior software architect Luke McGregor examined the existing software and recommended a replacement approach as the best and most cost-effective way of resolving the usability issues and modernising the technology.

“I found UX issues scattered across pretty much every aspect of the application that meant we would have to rethink every page,” McGregor said.

McGregor recommended a replacement approach as a cost-effective way of resolving the usability and security issues and modernising the technology.

“At that point, when you’ve got that much modification you want to do in that capacity, it’s cheaper to just start again,” McGregor said. “That’s kind of a sad reality of it.”

As a result, Company-X led a full product development process which resulted in the design and build of an entirely new, easy to use, version of Magnetize from the ground up.

The project included exhaustive interviews with the Magnetize team as well as existing and
prospective users.

“Throughout the project we stayed focussed on the Magnetize clients and their pain points and knew that if we employed the best methods or the right methodology, we would be on the mark,” Christey said.

In the redesign and rebuild, Company-X humanised the user experience.

“Humanising the experience is about adopting a user-centred approach and thinking about real people, going about their workday, who will be using this software,” Christey said.

“Sometimes we would role-play a phone conversation or speak aloud user stories to clarify the contexts we were designing for. At every stage of development, we went back to users and a group of potential users to get their input and feedback. Being user-centred keeps us on track to solve real problems in the best way.

“In Magnetize, users can create a job in a few seconds because we’ve simplified the number of fields and clustered information into logical groups,” Christey said.

Magnetize is used by a wide variety of industries including civil engineering, construction, earthworks, hire, rental and transport companies.

Magnetize handles quoting and scheduling and is integrated with accounting software Xero for invoicing. It allows for the hosting of associated job-specific files like photographs, and health and safety documentation such as Microsoft Word documents and PDF files.

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