With a long-term history on the market, Mark Information had already built a strong team of developers who were maintaining their main product, ProMark, which is developed in Progress OpenEdge. But as a market-leading software product, the pressure to keep up with emerging technologies is always high. Mark Information was looking for a team to understand the market and update the graphic interface, add new functionalities based on their end users’ needs, and create new client applications. Their back-end capabilities needed to be complemented by solid front-end skills, and that is where Wirtek came in.
Our collaboration started back in 2011 with a one-time project. Mark Information was looking to improve the user experience of their web-based user interface, ProPortal, but their in-house team didn’t have all the technical capabilities. Our team was tasked with implementing new Telerik components to their ASP.NET client application.
Mark Information was pleased with the initial results and decided to go further with the collaboration. The one-time project turned into a client team – or what we call a dedicated team – where they had people allocated to work solely with them. The dedicated team was split into two projects. One was focused on continuing the work on ProPortal, while the second started the development of another interface, called ProPC.
Our team working on ProPortal started a transition from Telerik RAD to Telerik Kendo UI for JQuery. This transition boosted the performance of the portal and set a solid base for future functionalities. Wirtek developers continued adding and upgrading controls and functionalities in ProPortal for another 3 years.
The second part of this project started when Mark Information decided to take the portal even further with completely new frameworks both on the front-end and back-end sides. They put together a team of their own but came to Wirtek for the extra support they needed on the front-end side. The transition to Angular and new back-end frameworks complemented the user experience of ProPortal, making it a much smoother tool for end users. The loading speed improved considerably (3-4 times faster than before); basically, everything was happening almost instantly. This is the platform most of the customers are using now (2021), and Mark Information is very happy with their product.
ProPC is another success story of the first years of collaboration with Mark Information, handled by Wirtek architects in partnership with the client’s team of developers. ProPC is a Windows-based terminal developed in C#, with powerful offline functionality for registrations of all kinds via PC or tablet – in the office and on the go. It was built as a solution for end users who needed to use the functionalities of ProMark in an offline environment. ProPC terminals are easy to use offline, and the information can then be downloaded and synchronized with the server. Even today, 5 years later, ProPC is still used by many Mark Information customers with minimal updates from the back-end team.
By 2016, Mark Information had established a seamless collaboration with their Wirtek team from our Cluj offices. They also had a long-term Progress Development team working from another service provider’s headquarters in Bucharest. As Progress is the backbone of their product, Mark Information was looking for ways to diminish risks and create a safe environment for their back-end team. They wanted a stable partner that could take over all their operations in Romania.
As a result of our long-term collaboration, Wirtek was a natural choice. We were there when they needed us to take on more responsibilities and provide a reliable environment for their Progress team.
This year we also ran a successful DevOps internship, and 2 of the participants recently joined us full time. A large number of the current team members are people that attended our previous internship programs.
The team from Wirtek and their colleagues from Mark Information forged a strong partnership that goes beyond collaborating smoothly on a day-to-day basis. Working together from the same office has made a considerable difference, and Wirtek’s involvement in recruiting, administration, and employee development has kept the team stable and happy.
We are proud to have helped Mark Information develop their product while also taking our relationship further to a strategic partnership with a new development center in Bucharest. Mark Information is always on top of their game; therefore, ongoing optimizations are a must. Since 2017, Wirtek and Mark Information team members have joined forces and started working together on a massive project that involves rewriting and updating all products. From the main platform to the web portal, mobile app, and client terminals, this is a long-term process that is still ongoing in 2021. The long-term benefits of this update are significant for Mark Information: Improved UI/UX to an update in security, improved loading speed, and many more.
Professionalism, trust, and excellent communication have been the basis for our collaboration. Now, Mark Information sees Wirtek as a partner they can rely on for technical advice, solutions, team management, and administrative tasks. Mark Information’s Progress developers from the Bucharest offices are now working as one team with Wirtek front-end specialists and testers to maintain ProMark as a top-of-the-line product.
Mark Information's Workforce Management solution ProMark is built on more than 40 years of in-depth Workforce Management knowledge from some of the most complex labour market agreements in Europe.
With ProMark, companies obtain information on their use of time and resources in real-time. And through integration to ERP and payroll systems valuable data becomes available when it is needed.
Mark Information is headquartered in Denmark with subsidiaries in Sweden, Norway, United Kingdom and Romania. Globally, we service more than 400 customers, 1,000 installations and more than 300,000 daily users with intuitive and user-friendly solutions primarily suited for companies and organisations with +100 employees in most industries.
