ProMark Modernizes Workforce Management Solution with Progress OpenEdge

ProMark, formerly Mark Information, is a leading Nordic vendor of an innovative Workforce Management platform that provides intelligent resource scheduling to help companies boost productivity and savings while adhering to local regulations. For over 40 years, ProMark has offered its 300,000 users advanced functionality for time and attendance reporting, absence and task management and scheduling.

As a long-time Progress^® OpenEdge^® customer, ProMark has remained a provider for some of the largest and most well-known brands in the world by modernizing its solution as technologies evolve.

Having used the OpenEdge platform since version 7.3, ProMark is no stranger to upgrades and modernization. “In our migration to 12.1 we primarily focused on performance gains and giving a boost to our user experience. Moving to 12.2 continues that performance journey, while adding in that stability aspect with long-term support,” said Morten Janum, CIO and Vice President of ProMark. “That is especially critical for stabilizing our larger, more complex implementations in the markets we serve.”

ProMark also sought to accelerate its migration by offering a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) app and leveraging new OpenEdge capabilities for DevOps, continuous monitoring and integration services for customers wanting load-balancing support, fail-safe scenarios and less downtime. Version 12.2 presented the company with the opportunity to modernize the user experience with the backend.

Because today’s customers expect advanced UI/UX experiences, the team chose Progress^® Kendo UI^®. “The Angular type of product suite helped us bring forward some of the more data-heavy use cases we have,” said Janum. “Kendo UI components, with their richness, helped us speed up.” OpenEdge Long-Term Support (LTS) releases remain active and supported for several years and feature backward compatibility of application source code. This means that while some adjustments may be needed, existing code will work on new versions and can therefore benefit from future improvements and innovation. With new releases, customers get access to the latest technology options without needing to fully rewrite the application. 

The robust backward compatibility of OpenEdge was refreshing for Janum. “The IT industry is moving so fast, fewer and fewer companies can afford to do a full rewrite of their tech stacks every time something brand new arrives.” He added, “We take a lot of our investments and bring them forward. That was the key driver. Restructuring and rewriting everything for a very large, complex application (would prevent us from) competing in our space. We like the Progress OpenEdge platform, especially in the later versions.”

The company’s migration from Classic Application Server to Progress Application Server (PAS) for OpenEdge was critical as well. “It was a key part of doing true modernization and getting into a scalable application server setup,” Janum said. “It positioned us to compete in the SaaS space and prepared us to manage the future. It was a no-brainer.” Janum said they ”got a performance boost right out of the box” and customers commented that the performance was ”like night and day.”

Security was also an important factor. As the company moved forward, it wanted its application server layer to have all the modern benefits available in the 12.2 toolbox, like enhanced security, monitoring capabilities and resiliency.

As Janum said, “Having Progress backing it with security certifications around that type of architecture is something we can piggyback with when we have customers with higher security requirements.”