Recruit Retail Services (RRS) provides a service to the retail sector whereby they collect returned goods from stores, sort them onto pallets and facilitate the collection of these goods by the manufacturer.

With the ever-growing legislation regarding the disposal of goods, especially electrical items, it became apparent that the RRS system needed a major upgrade. The IT department of Carlisle Group, the RRS parent company, chose to outsource the development and deployment of the system to Carrera.

Initially, it was decided to streamline the collection and return process through the use of ruggedised mobile devices. These devices, sourced from Intermec, support GPRS; WiFi; Bar code scanning; signature capture and photographs. In addition, a new warehousing system was developed for use at their Head Office facility in Northampton.

The RRS project was developed entirely within the MS .NET Framework 2.0. This included both the host application and the .NET compact framework environment. The database was MS SQL Server.

As a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner with mobile computing accreditation, Carrera are well placed to provide solutions in this leading edge area of technology. The phenomenal growth in the use of mobile computing is presenting business with more challenges and Carrera can help companies to maintain their competitive edge.

Mike Fitzgerald, the IT Director of the Carlisle Group commented “We all knew this would be a very challenging project from a technical perspective. Although we encountered problems during the development, I was always impressed by the unwavering level of commitment from everyone involved in the project. The system we now have in place will enable the RRS team to expand their business and be more competitive within their marketplace.”