3M Speeds Mobile-App Development and Gains

Real-Time Insight with Cloud Solution

“Integration with Xamarin Studio and Visual Studio,

Customer: 3M
Website: www.3m.com/MVSS
Customer Size: 88,667 employees
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Manufacturing
Customer Profile
Based in St. Paul, Minnesota, 3M is a
leading global designer and producer of
more than 55,000 products and
technology solutions for a wide range of
industries.
Software and Services
 Microsoft Azure platform
− Microsoft Azure
− Microsoft Azure Mobile Services
 Microsoft Visual Studio
− Microsoft Visual Studio 2013
along with built-in functionality, made Azure Mobile
Services the best choice….Having the right tools and
capabilities to put a stable, robust, and functional
solution together in two days is a great story.”
Jason Fox, Mobile Application Architect, 3M
3M, a leading manufacturer, wanted a better way to track assets
in one of its business divisions. Challenged to deliver a solution
in a weekend, it used Microsoft Azure Mobile Services with
Microsoft Visual Studio and the Xamarin development platform
to rapidly create a tracking app that syncs with the cloud and
runs on multiple mobile devices. With real-time insight, 3M is
improving customer relationships and support for business
expansion.

Business Needs data collection and reporting. The

3M Company produces more than 55,000
products for industries including
healthcare, retail, consumer electronics,
and construction. Based in St. Paul,
Minnesota, 3M has customers in more
than 200 countries and reported sales of
US$38 billion in 2013.
The company has a long track record of
innovative technology solutions. For
example, 3M helps its customers optimize
parking operations by automating fee
collection and other processes. To improve
For more information about other
support for this rapidly expanding
Microsoft customer successes, please visit:
segment, 3M needed to automate its own
www.microsoft.com/casestudies
company had recently purchased the
assets of parking, tolling, and automatic
license plate reader businesses, and
required better insight into these
acquisitions. Chad Reed, Global Business
Manager for 3M Parking Systems, says,
“With thousands of installations across the
world, we couldn’t keep track of our
software and hardware deployments,
which made it difficult to understand our
market penetration.”
3M wanted a tracking application that
sales staff could use to get real-time
information about the type and location of
3M products in parking lots and garages. So
that it could be used on-site with potential
customers, the solution would have to
provide access to data anytime, anywhere,
and from an array of mobile devices. Jason
Fox, Mobile Application Architect at 3M,
upped the ante by volunteering to deliver
the new app in one weekend.
For Fox and his team, these requirements
meant turning to the cloud instead of an
on-premises datacenter. “My first thought
was to go directly to the cloud because we
needed to provide access not only to our
salespeople, but to resellers who didn’t have
access to our internal network,” says Fox.
“The cloud just seemed like a logical
choice.”
Solution
The 3M development team decided that the
Microsoft Azure platform was the best
option. “I knew I wanted to go to the cloud,
because in addition to better scale and
accessibility, I wanted the flexibility to use
data in many different ways,” says Fox. “I’d
worked with a lot of different cloud back
ends, and because I’d said I could get the
project done in two days, I knew which
platform I’d have the most success with—
and it was obviously Microsoft Azure.”
The developer chose Microsoft Azure
Mobile Services for a secure, scalable
platform that would easily integrate and
store data from 3M equipment and other
sources. “We have the in-house talent to
build a back end from scratch ourselves, but
there was no way I would be able to create
a mobile app with all the back-end services
in a reasonable amount of time without
Azure Mobile Services.”
Fox used Xamarin, a development platform
with a C# shared code base, to write native
apps for iOS and Android devices. Xamarin
includes Xamarin Studio, an integrated
development environment that integrates
with the Microsoft Visual Studio 2013
development system for streamlined
This case study is for informational purposes only.
MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Document published September 2014
creation of Android, iOS, and Windows
software including mobile apps.
Creating apps that would run natively on
mobile devices instead of a website had
several advantages. Salespeople, who
frequently lost connectivity while traveling,
would be able to work offline. And after
gathering new information, they would be
able to synchronize seamlessly with the
cloud. Fox estimates that approximately 80
percent of the code was shared between
iOS and Android platforms, which was one
reason it was possible to complete the
project within two days. Easy data
integration with Azure Mobile Services was
another reason the project was completed
so quickly. Currently, the company collects
data from approximately 1,300 different
3M devices and business systems, and can
easily scale as needed.
Approximately 40 salespeople use the
asset-tracking tool to display real-time
information about 3M installations around
the United States. Whenever a salesperson
enters new data, the information is
immediately available to others in the field
through Notification Hubs, a push
notification engine in Azure Mobile
Services. The solution also takes advantage
of the mapping and GPS technology built
into each mobile device to automatically
provide highly visual, location-specific
information. 3M division is also creating an
app for Windows Phones using Xamarin to
port code, and is looking at opportunities
to create similar tracking apps for other
business groups.
Benefits
By using Azure Mobile Services in an
integrated development environment with
Xamarin and Visual Studio, 3M significantly
accelerated development time to create an
application that improves insight and
support for business growth.
Accelerates Development
In two days, 3M created a tracking solution
that connects multiple types of mobile
devices, potentially thousands of machines
and data sources, and a cloud platform.
The 3M team credits its success to a
streamlined development environment.
“Integration with Xamarin Studio and
Visual Studio, along with built-in
functionality, made Azure Mobile Services
the best choice for a mobile-services back
end,” say Fox. “Having the right tools and
capabilities to put a stable, robust, and
functional solution together in two days is
a great story.”
“The platform provides us with an
opportunity to quickly scale a full solution
and provide updates within a very short
response time,” says Jason Rivera,
Manager of Product Development at 3M.
"The benefits of the Azure Mobile Services
platform place the power in the hands of
our development team.”
Increases Insight and Efficiency
With real-time access to data on mobile
devices, 3M sales teams can work more
efficiently. “The number-one benefit to the
sales teams is ease of use,” says Fox. “With
apps powered by Azure Mobile Services,
they can immediately see where we have
equipment installed without having to call
a home office.”
Improves Support for Business Growth
Aligning with the 3M reputation for
technological innovation, the solution can
easily be extended to support growth
across the company. “3M has a history of
leading change throughout its businesses,
but that doesn’t mean that innovation
doesn’t happen internally,” says Reed.
“While this solution based on Azure
Mobile Services is intended for use within
3M, we’ve introduced it to our distribution
network to much acclaim. They quickly saw
the power this type of tool could possess
and immediately began to ask for similar
tools.”