Mendix Drives Complete Rebuild Of Legacy App For Global Geo-Data Enterprise

BOSTON – February 16, 2023 – Mendix, a Siemens business and global leader in modern enterprise application development, announced that global geo-data specialist Fugro has launched a cloud-based, mission-critical equipment management system built with the Mendix low-code software development platform. With Mendix, Fugro created a modern cloud-native platform in seven months that provides insight into the management of critical equipment, replacing its legacy equipment management system (EMS).

Fugro is a Dutch company that operates globally and has annual revenues of  more than $1.5 billion. It unlocks insights from geo-data both on land and at sea through integrated data acquisition, analysis, and advice. To ensure they’re providing the most efficient service, Fugro is constantly reassessing its software portfolio. Unexpected downtime or inaccuracies in equipment once in the field is risky and can be incredibly costly. Fugro’s marine characterization business line needed to update its EMS.

The EMS application is responsible for tracking the status of thousands of pieces of equipment, detailing location status, whether its certifications are up to date, or if an item is in need of repair. EMS also helps Fugro meet regulatory compliance measures. However, the EMS tool was reaching the end of its lifecycle. Fugro planned to completely rebuild its EMS system, asking Mendix partner EGALiT to create a new version of the mission-critical application with low-code.

“We wanted to make a clone of our system, and that was the reason we chose to use Mendix”, says Frank Ruhs, director of asset management for marine site characterization. “It enabled us to recreate what we already had in a secure cloud-native environment, providing a solid solution for the next five years. Also updating to a cloud-based environment with offline capabilities offers a new level of speed, accessibility, and productivity.”

Intuitive and automated employee experience

Besides migration to the cloud, Fugro had important additional requirements for the new system. It had to be flexible and maintainable in the long-term and work well with the other systems and data sources in the Fugro ecosystem. Fugro was also looking for a more intuitive and automated employee experience. Lastly, the system needed to be precise and compliant. Meeting these extensive requirements was not the only challenge for EGALiT’s low-code specialists. At its core, EMS manages a high level of complexity with 60,000+ rows of equipment with unique data points, 5-6 employee user groups, and hundreds of certification parameters. However EGALiT was able to rebuild the system in just seven months. 

Fugro’s low-code EMS application was rolled out to its workforce in July 2022. Thanks to the decision to rebuild its existing EMS, Fugro was able to smoothly transition to the new system without extensive user training.

Learn more about how Fugro transformed its equipment management system to a cloud-native platform.

About Mendix

Mendix, a Siemens business, is the only low-code platform designed to address the full complexity of enterprise software development challenges. Deploying point solutions to departmental problems solves things at a micro level—but if you want to make a significant impact on your business, you need to go bigger and build powerful portfolios that move the needle sustainably and strategically.

With Mendix, enterprises can take on more complex, transformational initiatives by engaging everyone in capturing requirements, forming ideas, and embedding value assessment throughout the lifecycle of the software portfolio.

Focus on the right problems while relying on governance and control to avoid unnecessary risk. Mobilize your organization. Build the change readiness muscle. And when the next big idea drops, turn it into an outcome quicker.

More than 4,000 organizations in 46 countries use the Mendix low-code platform. An active community of over 300,000 developers has created over 950,000 applications – and counting.