Background

The idea for SNUBA was conceived in 1985 by Michael Stafford, who was then a ski shop owner located in the small mountain community of Soda Springs, California.

Having spent many years traveling, snorkeling, and scuba diving, Michael recognized a vast gap between the number of people snorkeling and the number of people scuba diving. He believed there was an opportunity to develop this market. The word SNUBA popped into his mind immediately. SNUBA is the perfect cross between snorkeling and scuba diving. SNUBA participants breathe through a regulator attached to an airline that receives air from a tank nestled in an inflatable raft on the ocean’s surface. With SNUBA, one can dive up to 20 feet below the ocean’s surface!

Requirements & Challenges

Snuba International Inc wanted to get a mobile application developed to provide operators a convenient way of booking snuba diving for customers. They were initially using a web platform but operators were not able to use it for booking on remote islands because of the non-availability of the internet. We were asked to enhance the online platform and develop an Android application from scratch.

Key Challenges:

Enabling the operators to book snuba diving from remote islands where the internet was either not available or was intermittent
Providing detailed region-wise and operator-wise booking reports to the administrator

Our Solution

After an in-depth assessment and consultation, we developed the following solution:

An Android app was developed for Snuba International Inc, to enable their operators to book snuba diving for customers in a hassle-free manner
The problem of intermittent Internet was resolved by storing booking data on the mobile database when the Internet was not available and then syncing it with the server whenever the Internet became available
Extensive region-wise, operator-wise, customer demographics-wise reports were implemented to enable the administrator to analyze booking data and to formulate their future sales policies

Key Benefits

Operators could use a mobile platform to do the bookings despite intermittent or no internet on remote islands
Administrators were able to view aggregated reports
Snuba International Inc saved about 70% on-development cost compared to the cost that it would incur if the software was developed by local US developers

Result

The Android app and enhancements to the online platform enabled Snuba International to streamline and speed up its business process. Operators were able to do the booking from remote islands without the availability of the Internet. Administrators were able to analyze region-wise booking reports to formulate future sales policies.