App, website and call centre, rebuilt on one foundation
Romans wanted app, website and call centre to work as one brand, and to move as fast as its ideas.
At a glance
- 01
Client. Romans Pizza, a national restaurant brand.
- 02
Industry. Retail (restaurant chain).
- 03
Delivered. Mobile app for iOS and Android, website, call centre, admin and CRM.
- 04
Time to go live. A few months.
- 05
Our role. Discovery, design, architecture, engineering and delivery, by one Innovation Pod working alongside their CTO.
One brand, every way a customer orders
The business wanted to move faster, try new customer experiences and make ordering feel like one brand, whichever way a customer chose to order.
Each channel had been added as the business grew, so a new idea meant building it once per channel. They wanted to build it once and see it everywhere.
Starting again sounds right until you remember that every store still has to take orders tomorrow.
Patch it, or start again?
We started again. Live in a few months.
Patching would have carried every old limit into the next version of the product. So we built one foundation for every channel instead of another app.
How we built it
One team owned it end to end, from discovery and design to architecture, engineering and go-live, working alongside their CTO. These were the decisions that mattered.
One backend under everything
We built a single backend that serves the mobile app, the website, the call centre and the admin tools alike. Menus, prices, promotions and customer accounts live in one place, so a rule is written once and everything built on top of it follows. We designed it from the start to take more channels later, so in-store and operational systems can run on the same services instead of each getting a backend of their own.
Built to share, not to duplicate
We chose a cross-platform approach for the iOS and Android app so it shares components and logic with the website, call centre and admin. A feature is designed and built once, then adapted where a channel needs something of its own, such as a call-centre agent's screen versus a customer's checkout. That changes the economics of building anything new: the next idea is built once and reaches every channel, instead of being rebuilt for each one. It's also a large part of why the team could move this fast.
One home for the data
Customer, order and menu data now lives in one database in the cloud, where the whole platform is hosted. Every channel reads and writes the same records, so a customer looks the same whether they order in the app, online or by phone.
An admin built around how the business runs
Rather than bend the business around an off-the-shelf tool, we built its own CRM and admin from the ground up. It follows how menus, promotions, vouchers and campaigns are actually run, screen by screen.
A call centre that works the way the stores do
Call-centre orders go straight to the right store. We added a delivery flow for orders paid on delivery, so stores can send them out with their own drivers and card machines.
Connected once, used everywhere
Payments (including mobile wallets), maps, notifications, analytics and social sign-in are integrated at the platform level, not separately in each channel. The pieces a customer touches at checkout now work as one whole, and fixing or improving one of them improves it everywhere.
A team that grew with the work
It started with one developer on the mobile app. A second joined for the website, and as the call centre and admin came in, it became a full pod building every channel in parallel, with its own designer leading every screen and a project manager keeping the phases on track.
Live without stopping the business
We didn't switch everything over at once. The call centre went live first in a handful of stores, a controlled launch that proved the shared backend under real orders while the business kept trading. The customer-facing app and website then launched together, and the platform rolled out across all 280 stores.
"The Codehesion team is phenomenal, and the team is flying through the work." Dimitri Kambas, CTO, Romans Pizza
Set it up once. It's everywhere.
Their marketing team creates a promotion once, and customers see it wherever they order. Their own teams run menus, vouchers and campaigns without waiting on a developer.
The customer data is theirs, in one place.
The platform keeps up with the business now, and it has been extremely stable since go-live.
Still building together
What began as an app replacement became the base for everything they build next. New systems plug into it, and we're building them with their team.
Sometimes the job is building the foundation a growing business needs next.
If this sounds like your platform
Patch it, or start again?
The shared two-step form, with "What brings you here?" set to "Our legacy systems hold us back".
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