There is a solution: IT volunteering for the humanitarian project Common Help UA
IT front: the war has adjusted activities of AgriChain and ASTARTA IT department teams. They became the digital support of the Common Help UA humanitarian project, involving partnership solutions and facilitating the work of volunteers that operate with cargo, injured people and donor organizations. From this article you can learn about the challenges that humanitarian project faced and solutions offered by IT volunteers.
Website and accounting of humanitarian aid balances
The AgriChain IT team developed a website for the Common Help UA humanitarian project, which became the face and voice of the project. You can find information about the project, partners, read the reports and contribute to the support of Ukraine.
All humanitarian hubs of the project work on the principle of food warehouses. Accounting and control of the movement of goods are extremely important, due to logistics and distribution of goods during the war became difficult or impossible.
Therefore, the team of ASTARTA IT department in just three weeks has developed a software product, which provides the accounting of goods balances. It can form applications for “shipment” to a specific recipient, distribute product balances to recipients and present documentary write-offs of product items: drugs and products, and so on.
Pavlo Borisov, Head of IT Products Development and Support Department:
“The first stage of the project was implemented by Roman Stoyko, head of the software development and implementation department. During his weekend he made almost half of the configuration of the future decision, which was finalized later by other specialists of the department. The next stage was the implementation of warehouse accounting decision. This means that our team needed to develop a document “Supply” and implement the document “Relocation”. This was done so that volunteers could understand which humanitarian aid is delivered to the Central Hub and which is transferred to regional ones. Then we began to develop a report so that information on balances at the Central Hub could be monitored. The next step was to work on organizing the process of loading the nomenclature. And it was started the most interesting, we argued hotly. Because this process could be implemented in different ways: through the application, downloading from Excel spreadsheets or adding the information manually. But during the discussion, we decided to download information from Excel spreadsheets. So today, users can create their own documents and use the appropriate functionality to load the nomenclature into the document “Supply”.
Well, at the final stage, we have developed a document that fixes the shipment process. And on this basis TTN and the act of acceptance-transfer of the goods are formed. We also worked on reports that help users to get information both as suppliers and custumers. They also provided the opportunity to upload data what regions the humanitarian aid was spent. All this hard work was done to ensure that the volunteer work of the Common Help UA project to be clear, organized and efficient as well as it is possible. “
In turn, the AgriChain team supplemented the application with interesting solutions. Our colleagues have integrated it with a web resource that can find the name of the product by barcode.
“Our solution works very effectively, but only if the bar code meets the requirements of the international classification of goods EAN-13. There is a single European database of goods, based on this standard, and application draws information from it. Four days after receiving the application for the scanner development we presented a prototype, then finalized it several times. And we have already classified the next batch of cargo with the help of the application, ”said Maksym Sukmanyuk, AgriChain Technical Director of Development Department.
Classification of goods
When the Common Help UA humanitarian project began to receive the first humanitarian aid from European partners, volunteers faced such problem as goods classification. The boxes came with different contents. For example, one could contain pasta, canned food, sweets; another – medicine. The classification of medicine was the most problematic, the contents of the box could differ by groups, such as dressings, cold medicines, insulin, and so on. Or trade names with the same active ingredient were different, and they were signed on Portuguese or Italian. Because of this, the volunteers in the warehouses spent a lot of time understanding the product group, and there were delays in delivery from a few days to a week.
“How was this problem solved? We developed a mobile application in which the volunteer could scan the barcode on the package, make a few photos of the drugs and indicate their name. This information has been uploaded to Google Spreadsheets. We had arrangements with a pharmacist volunteer who could group these drugs for action in a quiet ambiance.
Terrasoft and co-operation with donors
The AgriChain team also helped to automate the process of co-operation with current and potential donors. Every day, a team of volunteers makes requests for help to 10-15 international organizations. Also work is held with specific legal entities or even communities or municipalities. Specialists are at different stages of negotiations with each donor. Therefore, the administration of this process in Excel spreadsheets was difficult, because the work was done manually.
“In order not to waste time for developing a solution for this task, we contacted Terrasoft, the developer of a Creatio platform for various types of business processes automating. And they agreed to transfer licenses to the humanitarian project Common Help UA free. This allowed to automate work with donors in a few days and make it more efficient. The program maintains a database of donors (current and potential), their classification and distribution among those responsible, all activities and their results are recorded. Thanks to the report designer, work with donors is monitored daily. Together, the AgriChain and TerraSoft teams have configured the Terrasoft tool for the needs of the project, ” – said Maksym Sukmanyuk.
The AgriChain team plans to integrate existing systems and expand the use of the Creatio platform for processing applications for assistance: fixing, changing status, monitoring balances, and building reports that will be available in mobile and web applications. This will allow to make the expanded report not only for participants but also for project donors.
About the company:
AgriChain IT solutions are created for large and medium-sized agribusinesses, individual applications solve the problems of agricultural producers cultivating from 5,000 hectares.
Contacts:
sales@agrichain.ua –
sales department
support@agrichain.ua –
technical support service
info@agrichain.ua –
office manager
Office address:
Developed in Ukraine
About the company:
AgriChain IT solutions are created for large and medium-sized agribusinesses, individual applications solve the problems of agricultural producers cultivating from 5,000 hectares.
sales@agrichain.ua – sales department
support@agrichain.ua – technical support service
info@agrichain.ua – office manager
