CASE STUDY - ENLIGHTEN Home >>
THE CHALLENGE
Utility Retail Systems (URS) are a supplier of software products to the electricity, gas, water and telecoms sectors. URS wanted to create a commercial software product that would help energy suppliers to manage the process of doorstep sales and telesales. The product needed to solve the problems of mis-selling and unnecessary commission payments whilst allowing fast and accurate processing of a thousand contracts per day.
In addition the product had to be flexible enough to cope with any tariff structure the supplier may come up with and be visually attractive to help the sales process. As there was only a limited window to get the product to market, speed of delivery was essential.
Alton8 was selected to manage and develop the product because of their industry knowledge, technical expertise and product development experience.
THE APPROACH
In order to develop a high quality system in the shortest time scales, Alton8 brought together a focused team of high-calibre analysts and developers.
Our analysts worked on the customer's site for several weeks analysing processes and gathering requirements. A prototype was then produced to confirm the requirements and to assess market response. After feeding the results back into the project, logical and physical designs were produced.
Selected elements of UML and SSADM were used to aid system design. DSDM was selected as the management process because it fitted the needs of a time critical project such as this.
Pairing of analysts and programmers ensured early lifecycle testing and immediate feedback of usability and functional fit.
THE SOLUTION
.NET and SQL Server were chosen as the most appropriate technologies providing the required robustness and security. The system was developed as thin client so as to be available using a web browser and therefore accessible via the internet.
The architecture was three tier and separated the user functions, business rules and business data, allowing easy future upgrades to any of the three tiers with minimal impact on the others. A generic data driven physical model was designed to allow for easy enhancements.
The resulting product was delivered on time and to a fixed price. It met all the specified requirements for functionality, scaleability, access, security and appearance. Functional highlights included:
- Intuitive contract entry screens - Workflow engine
- Rules-based tariff maintenance screens - Tree representation of agencies and agents
- Commission calculation - XML Interfacing
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THE CHALLENGE
Utility Retail Systems (URS) are a supplier of software products to the electricity, gas, water and telecoms sectors. URS wanted to create a commercial software product that would help energy suppliers to manage the process of doorstep sales and telesales. The product needed to solve the problems of mis-selling and unnecessary commission payments whilst allowing fast and accurate processing of a thousand contracts per day.
In addition the product had to be flexible enough to cope with any tariff structure the supplier may come up with and be visually attractive to help the sales process. As there was only a limited window to get the product to market, speed of delivery was essential.
Alton8 was selected to manage and develop the product because of their industry knowledge, technical expertise and product development experience.
THE APPROACH
In order to develop a high quality system in the shortest time scales, Alton8 brought together a focused team of high-calibre analysts and developers.
Our analysts worked on the customer's site for several weeks analysing processes and gathering requirements. A prototype was then produced to confirm the requirements and to assess market response. After feeding the results back into the project, logical and physical designs were produced.
Selected elements of UML and SSADM were used to aid system design. DSDM was selected as the management process because it fitted the needs of a time critical project such as this.
Pairing of analysts and programmers ensured early lifecycle testing and immediate feedback of usability and functional fit.
THE SOLUTION
.NET and SQL Server were chosen as the most appropriate technologies providing the required robustness and security. The system was developed as thin client so as to be available using a web browser and therefore accessible via the internet.
The architecture was three tier and separated the user functions, business rules and business data, allowing easy future upgrades to any of the three tiers with minimal impact on the others. A generic data driven physical model was designed to allow for easy enhancements.
The resulting product was delivered on time and to a fixed price. It met all the specified requirements for functionality, scaleability, access, security and appearance. Functional highlights included:
- Intuitive contract entry screens - Workflow engine
- Rules-based tariff maintenance screens - Tree representation of agencies and agents
- Commission calculation - XML Interfacing
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