Our Enterprise Application Services address wide range of enterprise wide IT challenges and help customers maximize return on their IT investments, enhance business productivity, and reduce total cost of ownership by delivering high performance using its end to end IT capabilities, world class alliances and offshore advantage.
Backed by expertise from thousands of successful implementations worldwide, we work directly with customers to overcome today’s challenges, combining the right technologies and skill sets. We approach enterprise application development by putting the user experience front and center. Our enterprise software portfolio covers are typically business-oriented tools including online shopping and payment processing, interactive product catalogue, automated billing systems, CRM, ERP, business intelligence, project management, collaboration, human resource management, manufacturing, enterprise application integration, and enterprise forms automation. We also make sure that our enterprise application development solutions merge various clients’ existing modules
Our client is a large retailer with more than 500 stores and franchises in India.
Requirement
Client was using legacy franchise management system to manage its franchise operations. Client was using multiple applications to manage the whole franchise operations. These applications were all developed in the languages like Visual Basic, Visual FoxPro and Access, and some of the data was also stored in Excel workbooks. The client was concerned with this set up because:
  • Multiple applications (each with its own interface) had to be accessed to manage the operations, yet the franchises themselves had no means to access these applications.
  • Microsoft had withdrawn support for some of the languages while some of the applications were reaching their ‘end-of-life’ (and could no longer be enhanced to support new requirements).
  • Creating and generating reports were difficult and often next to impossible.
  • There were no standards for data to be exchanged between the applications. This created a heavy dependency on paper for data sharing and communication which resulted in a number of potential mistakes both in creating reports as well as in entering data into the systems.
  • The applications developed over the years had no proper security to ensure that only authenticated and authorized personnel had access to the proper data.
Challenge
A new system was needed to provide a unified platform for the complete management of the franchise operations on a day-to-day basis. The application would have to weave together the existing functionality on a common database and at the same time support new requirements. The application was also expected to provide a single window for user access and support integrated reporting capabilities.
The Solution
The application spanned the complete operations management of the franchises and had far reaching effects on the organization’s success. We approached the application development project in two distinct phases, where the requirements were captured and analyzed first and then the actual development of the application was completed next.
Phase I: Requirement Gathering and Analysis
Our Business analysts developed an understanding of the existing applications and captured the new requirements that the application was required to support. The analysts studied the complete franchise management operation and the existing applications. Based on this, the new requirements were then reviewed, accepted and signed off by the stakeholders. During this phase, we also focused on creating a road map for the overall application development and deployment. In addition, the timelines and the approximate cost were estimated and communicated to the business stakeholders.
Next, the data model for the application was developed and the data migration requirements were studied as the organization did not want to lose the historical information generated and collected over the years. The first phase was completed by creating a business vision for the application and a roadmap for the future.
Phase II: Iterative Development
The application was developed using an ASP.NET MVC 4 based Web front end with business and database tiers developed as C# .NET 4.5 components, accessing a SQL Server at the back end, together with reporting services for the reporting requirements.
After assessing various solutions such as Web-services, .NET remoting, and COM+ based communication framework, the team decided to use Windows Communication Framework (WCF) -- part of the .NET 4.5 framework. This was identified as the best way to move forward since one of the prime requirements was to make the application future-proof, both from a technology and business requirements perspective.
Due to the size of the application, development was spread over multiple iterations. The first iteration involved creating the high level architecture for the new application and ensuring its compatibility through a proof-of -concept pilot. Since WCF was relatively new, the proof-of-concept used WCF to validate its usability in the end application.
The application consisted of a number of functionalities and it was decided to create a framework that would support the development and enhancement of future modules. The new framework involved such components as security (including authentication and authorization) logging, reporting, the mailing component and the communication framework for supporting distributed deployment of the user (front-end) and business tiers.
Once the proof-of-concept was developed, deployed and demonstrated, the architecture and the communication framework were validated. The components identified for all iterations were based on what value they provided to the business and on the business impact the new application would have. The data migration also had to be executed in parallel to ensure that the data requirements of all iterations were met by the time the components were developed and released to the business users.
Technologies
  • ASP.NET MVC 4 based Web front end
  • C# .NET 4.5 components for business and database tiers
  • SQL Server at the back end
  • Windows Communication Framework (WCF) for communication
Benefits
  • A common interface for multiple applications – the Web-based application that was developed could be accessed through a single interface both from the franchises and internally.
  • Easier information sharing – as the database was a common platform for all data, data sharing was made easier and more transparent to users while eliminating the heavy dependency on paper
  • Enhanced security – the security model from ASP.NET (along with the authorization component and the single window access for the application) will ensure that users access only authorized data.
  • Maintainable and Extensible – since C# is an Object Oriented language, Object Oriented methodologies can be fully implemented in the application for maintainability and extensibility. This would help create logical tiers and separation of concerns.
  • Reporting made effortless – SQL Server with SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) provides an easy way to generate reports and host them in a scalable and extensible manner that could be both stand alone as well as integrated with the franchise management application.