Customer Success - Computer Image

NetAdvantage® Helps Keep Customer Data Complete and Current while Cutting Costs by $115,000.00 per annum.

Grounds & Gardens, an Australian based company providing horticulture maintenance, construction and management services to commercial sites throughout the entire continent of Australia, was in dire need of a process to better track data pertaining to its clients. To meet this need, the company enlisted Computer Image Pty Ltd (Computer Image) to help. Through the use of the Infragistics® NetAdvantage toolset, Visual Studio .NET Enterprise and Visual Basic .NET, Computer Image was able to construct a centrally located database that provides Grounds & Gardens with organized and current customer data, and has resulted in time and money savings.

Situation

With no accurate measuring tool to ensure that all work orders were recorded and correctly invoiced, Grounds & Gardens looked to Computer Image to help create a national data entry system that was both accurate and easy to use. The current database employed Microsoft Excel files that contained work orders for each of the nearly 6000 sites Grounds & Gardens was responsible for maintaining. Grounds & Gardens needed a way to rapidly update information from all company locations. They also had to be sure that the information in the database was current and immediately available to all company users. Additionally, they needed to easily manage and summarize the data from all work orders taken. It was essential to complete all these tasks while maintaining a look and feel that Grounds and Gardens non-technical end users would be comfortable working with.

The majority of Grounds & Gardens end users were non-technical so the original data tracking system used was based on Microsoft Excel. Since the information needed to be accessed by multiple states throughout Australia simultaneously, Excel files were duplicated using Distributed File System technology (DFS). DFS allowed the files to be united on different computers using the same name space.

"The DFS would sometimes take several minutes to replicate the data between the branch office and head office," says Daniel Thompson, Grounds & Gardens National Contracts Administrator. "The accounting processes were often delayed – which lead to invoicing delays as well," he adds.

Having a time gap delay also led to a communication gap between branches and it became difficult for Ground & Gardens to keep track of the most recently saved versions of database documents. With the multiple non-technical users accessing the documents simultaneously additional communication was needed to keep track of changes in documentation.

Since the users were non-technical, many files were accessed, edited and then incorrectly saved, this resulted in a loss of formatting. To compound this issue, the Accounting Department had no way to access the file to fix any formatting errors. Also, since each branch office had access to the files, many of the documents were customized to fit the various branch office needs – resulting in a lack of consistency in database documents. Reconciling all of the inaccuracies between files was a time consuming and costly endeavor that was too cost prohibitive for Grounds & Gardens to take on.

Solution

Computer Image realized that Grounds & Gardens needed an application that was rich enough to handle various data from multiple locations, yet simple enough for the current non-technical Microsoft Windows user to comfortably use. Computer Image also understood that they’d need to create a tool that would require minimal training so employees would openly accept the toolset change.

After reviewing the current Excel documents that made up the Grounds & Gardens system, Computer Image representatives interviewed key system users to find the most appropriate solution. It was decided to create an application that would mimic some of Excel’s inbuilt searching and grouping capabilities.

Computer Image chose to build the application in the .NET environment which meant that a consistent user interface was required. Computer Image then embarked on an extensive evaluation stage and reviewed various .NET versions of commonly used COM elements. Evaluations included downloading and using various vendor trial applications. Computer Image reviewed the offerings, looking for a toolset that could provide all of the expected user interface elements including common editors, grids, toolbars and a menu system. Infragistics NetAdvantage toolset was included in Computer Image's round of evaluations and proved to be the overwhelming toolset of choice for their specific needs.

Along with the number of features provided within the toolset, the NetAdvantage toolset had been written from the ground up to support the .NET framework and looked and felt just like the framework, immediately making the developers comfortable using it. Many COM based vendors had simple inplace replacements of their existing COM elements with compatible .NET elements. This meant that the full object orientation of the new Visual Basic .NET language could not be utilized. Many toolsets also contained elements with different behaviors and programming models that would lead to a steep learning curve after implementation.

The NetAdvantage toolset not only met all of the requirements Computer Image had set to create the new Grounds and Gardens Work Order Register (WOR) application, but also offered a wide range of elements that could be used, alleviating the need for any other vendor elements.

Added to this, all of the elements with in the toolset implemented common objects across the entire group. This allowed the appearance of any individual element, from within the entire toolset, to be accessed by using the appearance object, resulting in a need to learn only 1 programming model that could be applied across ALL of the elements used within the application.

With the CI development team's familiarity with the technology, a Windows Forms based application was the most logical choice. The coding language used was VB.NET due the team's extensive knowledge of VB Programming techniques and the common toolset of the .NET framework.

The application was deployed through Windows Terminal Server which allowed updates to be disseminated centrally and easily. Since users were already familiar with the Excel interface entering information into the new data system was seamless and required minimal training.

"The users were instantly familiar with the WOR's interface and capabilities. The common Excel-like functionality made the transition from the old (Excel-based) system to the new system simple. The contract managers entering the data have embraced the WOR, and the instantly updated and viewable data has let our management team keep on top of then requests coming though our business," explains Thompson.

For example, the new system provided the ability to keep clean and accurate data, while also allowing several key features that were impossible to implement with the original Excel system. Representatives from Grounds & Gardens were now able to include additional columns of data, implement automatic changes to work order status based on related data entry, allocate multiple subcontractors to a single work order, and access an on-screen view of the gross profit for a single work order.

Computer Image Director, Andrew Way explains, "By designing a centralized store for the entire national work order data and providing a familiar user interface, the existing Excel users could be migrated to the tool with minimal training." He adds, "Providing a rich user interface, validation capabilities and improved work-flow when data was submitted allowed the business to implement additional business rules and improve the quality and accuracy of the data, without requiring any additional steps for end users."

Benefits

Organization of Timely and Accurate Data
After implementation Grounds & Gardens possessed a tool to ensure that all work orders were being recorded processed and invoiced correctly. The WOR is easy to use and allowed all data to be stored at one central location, ensuring that all updated information is live and instant.

Consistent Class Usage
A consistent class usage throughout the Infragistics NetAdvantage toolset resulted in less of a learning curve and reduced Research and Development time by nearly 50%. Developers were able to learn 2 methods of working and apply those methods to all of the tools within the toolset.

Ease of Use
By creating an interface that is similar to Microsoft Excel, non technical users are able to easily adapt to the application and functionally use it with minimal training. The Infragistics elements behaved exactly as expected which resulted in virtually no need to produce additional code to correct abhorrent behaviors.

Scalability
The current system supports 15 users, but with the coding techniques used, the system can be scaled to support hundreds of users.

Time and Cost Savings
In creating the WOR with the Infragistics NetAdvantage toolset, Computer Image was able to save nearly 30% in development costs and cut research and development time by 50% to quickly deliver a high quality and effective product to their client Grounds & Gardens.

"In the particular case of the WinGrid, I would say that it took 25 to 40% less time to develop with the Infragistics toolset," explains Way. "I can confidently say that no other toolset offers the consistency, value and performance. This experience adds to the ever increasing list of situations where NetAdvantage has quickened the development process while performing superbly under a variety of conditions."

Computer Image saved time and money while still creating a quality product that has left Grounds & Gardens extremely satisfied.

"Our Accounting Department is now better able to keep track of invoices, and incoming cash flow has improved by six days. The new system has also reduced the threat of jobs not being invoiced. With all of its combined benefits our new data system has saved Grounds & Gardens an estimated $115,000.00 p.a." says Steve Sanders, National Finance Manager.

For more information about Infragistics NetAdvantage go to:
http://www.infragistics.com/dotnet/netadvantage.aspx

NetAdvantage is a complete presentation layer toolset ideal for building commercial class interfaces for Microsoft® Windows®-based applications, XML Web Services, and Web Solutions.

For more information on Infragistics Presentation Layer Framework go to:
http://www.infragistics.com/learn/presentation-layer-framework.aspx

For information regarding the increasing importance of presentation layer development within the application development lifecycle go to:
http://www.infragistics.com/learn/gartner.aspx

About Infragistics

Infragistics is the market leader in providing a broad range of presentation layer development tools and services for building applications utilizing Microsoft .NET, and COM environments. Over the past 15 years, Infragistics has received over 220 product awards and industry vendor of the year awards from market-leading publications and resellers. Infragistics' diverse product line for Windows Forms, ASP.NET, Tablet PC, and COM environments are used worldwide. For more information orto arrange an introduction or technical demonstration of Infragistics development tools, please visit www.infragistics.com or call us at +1 (800) 231-8588.

For more information about the services provided by Computer Image go to:
http://www.ci.on.net

For more information about the services provided by Grounds & Gardens go to:
http://www.groundsandgardens.com.au