Case Study: Property management system project

Abstract

A UK based Software Company asked us to create a web site for data collection and presentation purpose, in parallel a windows application for administers purpose.

Situation

This is a software company based in UK. This company produces software system which provides functionality in the field of Asset Management, Facilities Management and Estates Management. With integration to handheld devices for data collection and links to CAD, GIS and Finance systems, the company provides a good match for Property Management requirements.

This project was part of the ongoing implementation of the client's software system on its customers' side. Currently the data on the customers' side was gathered from a variety of sources and stored in spreadsheets. This process was time consuming and potentially prone to errors. The main focus of the project was to automate this process, extracting, where appropriate, the relevant data directly from the software. A bespoke website would be used to aid in the data collection and reporting process.

Once the data was collected, it will be used to calculate points for each record, and reports will be created to present the results. A windows application would be needed to manage the process and modify the data. And final reports needed to be exported to an Excel spreadsheet to make the reports available to a larger audience.

In general, we needed to create a web site for data collection and presentation purpose, as well as a windows application for administer purpose.

Solution

As per the requirements, we separated the system into three parts: Web Site, Web Services and Windows Form based application. And in order to be consistent with the client's software, we adopted C# as the development language, SQL Server 2000 as the Data layer, and MS Visual Studio .NET 2008 as the development environment.

Since the data collection process used to be handled via MS Excel and the client wanted to inherit the customers' convention, we had to provide similar functionalities of MS Excel on the web site. But the client didn't want to use any of the third party control, thus we had to create our own control to present the similar look and feel of MS Excel on web site, this was the most difficult part of the technical solution, but we managed to solve this problem before we really started coding, thus the risk was eliminated at an earlier stage.

Another problem we encountered was the unclear requirement of this project. Due to the tight timeline, the client only gave us rough requirement, and many features were not described in detail. To solve this problem, we made a prototype before implementation, and adjusted our design based on the client's feedback to our prototype. Another step was to deliver the product as soon as possible. Once we implemented a part of the product, we sent a version to the client for confirmation. Totally we separated the whole project into four parts and delivered them one by one.

The Partnership

When approaching Nova, the client found our hourly rates are a little higher compared to other several vendors. But when he saw our proposal for the whole project (including solution description, resources compound, estimated work amount and estimated timeline), the client was very interested. In order to further ensure the success of the project, he decided to give Nova a smaller pilot project. When the pilot project was delivered, the client was very satisfied with the quality and our performance. Hence he considered us as a long term partner. Since then, we have worked on four projects with this client.

Benefits to the Client

• The customer now has a product which totally meets their requirements and helps them automate the data collection process. This reduces a lot of manual work.
• With the deep-set trust between the two sides, the client can now focus their energy on the customers and don't have to worry about the software development and team management.

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