Franchise Web Application
Fish Window Cleaning
Fish has mission-critical software for its over 250 franchisees, where downtime results in lost profits and productivity. When Fish Window Cleaning needed to choose between modernizing or rebuilding this application, they turned to Lelander for guidance. Collaborating with the product owner, Lelander developed a realistic roadmap within a set annual budget, with modernization through Agile methodology becoming the clear path forward.
Over the past two years, this partnership has delivered a more reliable, flexible, and user-friendly web app.
Project Features
- Agile methodology leadership, coaching, and training
- Cloud migration to Microsoft Azure
- Replacing manual FTP upload with cloud storage APIs
- Developing a new .NET codebase for enhanced flexibility
- Refactoring the front-end code with the Bootstrap framework
- Reskinning the UI for a branded, user-friendly experience
- Integrating USAePay for online payment and token storage
Challenge
For over 40 years, Fish Window Cleaning has led its category. Like many organizations, however, Fish faced a crucial decision: modernize its app to improve usability and efficiency, purchase off-the-shelf, or rebuild from scratch.
As a national franchise company headquartered in St. Louis, Fish relies on essential software to support over 250 franchise users in managing their daily operations. From adding and editing customers to organizing job routes, handling work orders, reconciling payments, processing payroll, and generating reports—a lot runs through their web application. While this app has been indispensable, growing demands made an upgrade inevitable.
Technical debt was holding Fish back. Outdated data storage methods were expensive, and the infrastructure had limited scalability. The aging software and codebase also restricted access to modern third-party libraries and made reliable automated backups difficult. To top it off, the UI was overdue for a much-needed refresh.
A realistic, prioritized, and budget-conscious approach was essential to move forward successfully.
Solution
After identifying the web app’s pain points with the product owner and applying insights from our discovery process, we devised a plan to modernize Fish’s existing investment. Using an Agile methodology, Lelander divided the project into focused epics. First, we migrated Fish to Microsoft Azure to improve cost efficiency, scalability, performance, and security. With the app now cloud-based, Fish can easily adjust its infrastructure to meet evolving business needs.
Next, we replaced manual FTP uploads with cloud storage APIs, offering global availability, consistency, and automated backups. We developed a new .NET codebase to support this shift, opening access to modern third-party libraries. Then, we refactored the frontend framework with Bootstrap, enabling more efficient, mobile-friendly user interface updates.
Most recently, Lelander completed a big wish list item for Fish – integrating an online payment processor within the application.
Our project manager worked closely with the product owner to prioritize tasks, ensuring each development cycle delivered production-ready code. With our expanded dev team of five, we’ve shifted from just a couple of updates per year to releasing bug fixes and feature enhancements monthly.
As we continue working with Fish, we’re committed to reducing technical debt and delivering new capabilities.