One in the afternoon. The shop is busy, five customers are waiting. Right then, mobile data drops. Many apps just keep spinning: you cannot record a sale or check stock. The owner opens the paper notebook again, and later sits down to reconcile two sets of records.
For anyone running a business in Bangladesh, this does not happen once in a while. It happens regularly: the router goes off in a power cut, the signal is weak inside the market, the data pack runs out at month-end. So the first question when choosing software should be: what happens when there is no internet?
What "works offline" actually means
Plenty of apps claim to work offline, and they mean different things. Real offline support means three things:
- Everything keeps working: selling, booking, admitting a patient. Not just viewing old data.
- Data is saved on the phone, and nothing is lost while the connection is down.
- It syncs by itself when the connection returns, with nothing counted twice and nothing left out.
Why it matters
- Customers do not wait. They will not stand there until the connection comes back.
- Writing things in two places means mistakes. Once in the notebook and again in the app later, and something always gets missed.
- Staff lose trust in the software. After it gets stuck twice they go back to the notebook, and the whole investment is wasted.
What to ask before you buy
Before choosing any software, test it during the demo:
- Turn off mobile data and Wi-Fi and make a sale or a booking. Does it work?
- Turn the connection back on. Does the data reach the server, and can you see it from another phone?
- If the phone is lost or broken, can you get your data back?
- What happens when two phones are used at the same time?
If these answers are not clear, be careful.
Backup and security
Offline does not mean the data lives only on the phone. Whenever there is a connection, it should be saved safely on a server, so losing the phone does not mean losing your records. And the app should have a PIN or lock, so nobody else can open it and read your accounts.
How Qudexa approaches it
Qudexa's apps are built with weak networks in mind:
- Haatiq: sales, stock and the due book keep working without internet, and everything is saved to the server once the connection is back.
- Qudexa HMS: hospital work carries on through a weak connection and catches up on its own.
- MediQ: patients without a smartphone can still book a serial by SMS.
- Qadamiq: prayer times are calculated on the phone, no internet needed.
One last tip
Software demos usually run on good office Wi-Fi. Your shop or chamber is not like that. So during the demo, switch the internet off once. That one-minute test can save months of trouble.
