A fleet customer portal for a global battery manufacturer

The client makes advanced battery technologies for virtually every type of vehicle. Its fleet customers run trucks, trailers and vans, and each of those vehicles depends on a battery that has to be installed correctly and monitored over its life. The collaboration began in 2025, when a client who had worked with Coherent before recommended the team to the manufacturer as it searched for a reliable software provider.

At a glance

Industry: Battery manufacturing for the automotive and commercial vehicle markets.

Challenge: Fleet customers needed a clear view of battery health, idling and fuel use, and technicians were recording battery installations through manual, paper-based steps.

Outcome: The portal grew from a first dashboard into a fleet management platform. Eleven releases delivered that growth with zero major architectural rework. The installation app replaced manual records with guided, scanned, and validated ones.

Coherent’s role: Serving as the product engineering partner, we provided business analysis, UX and UI design, architecture, development, DevOps, and quality assurance for both products.

The challenge

The manufacturer wanted to give its fleet customers direct access to the data its batteries produce. That meant a secure and scalable portal, built on a foundation that could take new features independently, so that fleet managers could see insights about their own fleets.

The second problem was in the field. Technicians installed batteries and related equipment on trucks and trailers by hand, using paper forms, so installation records were inconsistent and hard to trace.

Our approach

We started working on two products. The early effort went into the MVP to establish the core architecture of the customer portal, a web application for fleet managers. Our team delivered all scheduled work on time for the release, and the MVP successfully went live.

In parallel, our team carried out the analysis for the installation app, a mobile application for technicians who install batteries and related equipment on trucks and trailers. The goal of this phase was to agree on the scope for the app’s own MVP. It resulted in an approved clickable prototype of the main flow, a solution design, an approved baseline scope document, a test plan and test strategy, an estimation, and a timeline. The app’s MVP reached the App Store and Google Play.

The solution

The customer portal grew over eleven releases, with each stage providing value to fleet managers.

MVP. A landing page with fleet-level widgets for idling hours, fuel savings and CO2 reduction, and an idling dashboard. The data comes from the manufacturer’s data platform, and sign-in is secured through single sign-on.

Fleet health. Battery status per vehicle, filtered by vehicle type and status. Detail pages cover driver response, fuel savings and CO2 reduction, and data can be exported for offline work.

Administration. Tools to manage users, clients and locations, customer configuration, a vehicle history card, and control over which data each user can see.

Alerts and reporting. Immediate actions, notifications and reporting.

The architecture was set in the MVP and will support future battery management capabilities. The same foundation will support future battery management capabilities.

The installation app gives technicians a guided workflow on a phone, and each line below shows what installers can do with it.

Guided installation. A step-by-step flow with scanning, photo confirmation and offline synchronization, available on the App Store and Google Play.

Battery tracking. Records for truck and trailer batteries and installed equipment, plus a battery swap flow that keeps the battery’s history intact.

Web version. Installation management from a browser, with region-specific battery configurations for North America and EMEA, and German localization.

The impact

Our client realized digital value across both products, with these results:

• Increased visibility into fleet battery health and faster identification of battery issues

• Enhanced fleet monitoring and reporting

• Better administrator control over portal configuration

• Improved customer self-service and reduced manual operational effort

• Eliminated manual and paper-based installation processes, improving consistency and data quality

• Increased installation accuracy through automated validation, QR and barcode scanning, and structured data capture

• Improved traceability of batteries, installed equipment, and vehicle assets throughout their lifecycle

• Expanded operational visibility through centralized reporting, installation tracking, and enterprise data management

The portal now scales to enterprise fleets. From the first release, the work carried a clear business impact, and this approach to closing the gap between technology investment and business outcomes is what we call Digital Value Creation.

What’s next

Both products continue to evolve. The customer portal roadmap includes additional analytics, parasitic draw, jumpstart tracking, and custom export. Its architecture is ready for future battery management capabilities.

The current priorities for the installation app include improving data quality through additional information about assets, tighter integration with the manufacturer’s backend systems, and new workflows for flexible battery configurations and equipment swaps. These workflows will support field services and supply chain capabilities.