Case Study Highlights
- Industry: Textile Rental and Laundry
- Services Client: Major UK Textile Services Provider
- Operations: 16 plants across the United Kingdom
- Technology Legacy: IBM i platform with RPG applications Core Challenge: 6-month deadline to replace failed third-party system
- Technology Approach: Rapid IBM i futurization using Profound AppDev
- Key Results: Met critical deadline, zero operational disruption, successful rollout to all 16 plants
Executive Summary
When a leading UK textile rental and laundry services provider faced a critical six-month deadline to replace a failed third-party system, they turned to Profound Logic’s integrated futurization toolkit.
By leveraging core components of Profound AppDev, including Profound UI, Genie, and Atrium, the company successfully transformed their legacy RPG applications into modern web interfaces while preserving decades of refined business logic.
The result was a complete futurization delivered on time, rolled out across all 16 UK plants, with zero operational disruption.
Company Background
A leading UK textile rental and laundry services provider operates 16 plants across the United Kingdom. With a heritage spanning over 200 years, the company has built its reputation on operational excellence and reliability, serving hotels, restaurants, healthcare facilities, and industrial clients nationwide.
Like many established enterprises, the company faced the challenge of balancing innovation with the need to preserve mission-critical systems refined over decades of operation. Their IBM i platform, running custom RPG applications, represented not just technical infrastructure but the accumulated business logic of an entire organization.
The Challenge
After investing 16 to 18 months in a third-party laundry management system implementation, the company made the difficult decision to abandon the project and return to their proven legacy RPG system. The failed investment left them with an urgent mandate: modernize fast, without going backward.
Green screens were no longer acceptable to users or customers. A modern experience was non-negotiable. And with just six months on the clock, the path forward had to be both immediate and sustainable.
The challenges were multifaceted:
- Impossible Timeline: Six months to implement across 16 plants ruled out traditional development or modernization approaches entirely.
- Limited RPG Expertise: Only two members of the IT team could read and maintain RPG code, creating a critical knowledge bottleneck.
- Hybrid Development Requirements: New C# development for customer service applications needed to coexist with existing RPG systems handling invoicing and batch processing.
- Zero Tolerance for Disruption: Mission-critical overnight batch processes and invoicing systems had to remain uninterrupted throughout the transformation.
- User Adoption Imperative: After a failed implementation, user confidence had to be rebuilt immediately. The new solution had to work and feel right from day one.
The Solution
The company selected Profound AppDev as their comprehensive futurization platform. Its integrated suite of tools, including Profound UI, Genie, and Atrium, provided everything needed to address each challenge without introducing new integration complexity.
Profound UI
Transforming the Core Profound UI served as the foundation of the futurization effort. Its visual design environment enabled rapid transformation of green screens into intuitive web interfaces without requiring deep JavaScript or web development expertise. The small development team could work quickly and confidently, maintaining all underlying RPG business logic while delivering the modern experience users demanded.
Genie
Instant Transformation Genie provided immediate relief by converting existing green screens into web-based interfaces without any code changes. This capability was essential for meeting the aggressive timeline. Critical applications were modernized instantly, giving the team runway to pursue deeper futurization efforts in parallel.
Atrium
Unified Navigation Atrium unified the entire application landscape under a single menu system, integrating Profound-futurized RPG screens and new C# applications into one cohesive experience. Users had a single point of entry regardless of the underlying technology, eliminating complexity and dramatically reducing the learning curve across all 16 plants.
Implementation
The implementation followed a deliberate four-phase approach that balanced speed with stability.
Phase 1
Foundation Genie was deployed across critical applications to immediately eliminate green screens and establish a web-based experience while deeper futurization work was scoped and planned.
Phase 2
Core Application Futurization Profound UI’s visual designer was used to systematically transform key business applications. Drag-and-drop development kept the small team moving fast without sacrificing quality or requiring extensive retraining.
Phase 3
Integration and Unification Atrium was configured to bring all applications, Profound-futurized RPG and new C# alike, into a unified portal. This phase established the seamless user experience essential to adoption at scale.
Phase 4
Rollout and Stabilization The complete solution was deployed across all 16 plants in a coordinated rollout that maintained full operational continuity throughout.
The coexistence model built into Profound AppDev allowed the company to roll out the mobile solution branch by branch, with legacy and modern processes running in parallel throughout the transition.The integrated nature of Profound AppDev was a decisive factor in execution speed. Because Profound UI, Genie, and Atrium were built to work together, changes made in one component were immediately reflected across others. Common security and authentication mechanisms applied across the entire suite, and familiarity gained on one tool accelerated productivity across the rest.
Results
The Profound AppDev implementation delivered across every dimension the company needed it to. From deadline compliance to user adoption, the outcomes validated the futurization approach at every level.
Operational Excellence
- Met the six-month deadline across all 16 plants
- Maintained 100% uptime for mission-critical batch processes and invoicing throughout the transformation
- Zero operational disruption during deployment
- Decades of refined RPG business logic fully preserved
Development Efficiency
- Interface development time cut considerably compared to traditional approaches
- Existing team reached productivity immediately using visual tools, with no extensive retraining required
- Unified platform reduced the complexity of managing multiple technologies
- Future-ready architecture established without wholesale system replacement
User Experience
- Business users transitioned from green-on-black screens to modern web interfaces with minimal friction
- Unified navigation reduced time spent switching between systems
- User confidence, damaged by the prior failed implementation, was quickly rebuilt
Strategic Positioning
The Profound AppDev implementation established a stable, modern platform that gives the company the flexibility to make long-term strategic decisions without operational pressure. Modern web interfaces have reduced the perception of technical debt and expanded the pool of developers who can support and extend the system. The coexistence model, where legacy RPG and new development work side by side, means the company can evolve at its own pace rather than on anyone else’s timeline.
Future Outlook
With Profound AppDev as their futurization foundation, the company is now exploring expanded mobile capabilities, IoT sensor integration for real-time equipment monitoring, customer self-service portals built on futurized applications, and a continued gradual migration of legacy code on their own terms.
The successful transformation has created the breathing room to pursue innovation strategically rather than reactively.
Conclusion
This engagement demonstrates what becomes possible when futurization is approached as an integrated strategy rather than a collection of disconnected tools. A failed 18-month project was answered with a successful six-month turnaround.
Sixteen plants were brought onto a modern platform without a single disruption to operations. And a team of two RPG developers delivered an enterprise-wide transformation using tools built for exactly that purpose.
It is not just modernization. It is futurization, and it positions the business for whatever comes next.
Start Your Futurization Journey
Ready to transform your IBM i applications with the same comprehensive toolkit? Profound AppDev provides everything you need to futurize at your own pace while preserving your valuable RPG investments.
Contact our futurization experts at Futurization@ProfoundLogic.com or explore the complete Profound AppDev suite at profoundlogic.com/profound-appdev.