Project: Global Delivery Model to Re-platform Application
Client: Retail Displays Manufacturer
Our client manufactures and maintains point-of-purchase product displays such as floor stands and wall systems, shelving, and other store fixtures for major retail chains and consumer products manufacturers worldwide. Their IT department develops and maintains over twenty diverse internal applications. Many applications are used for ordering fixtures, while others are used to store and manage business data that the ERP system cannot handle. In addition, other console applications take data in a certain format from one application and insert it into another, while other web applications are used to provide unified order data regardless of the source system.
Challenge: Significant Backlog of Application Troubleshooting Tickets Slows Progress of High Priority Application Improvement Projects
Due to the significant growth and success of the company there was a significant backlog of problem tickets relating to all these applications, mostly minor fixes and some dating back several years, and the rate of incoming tickets was outpacing the number of those being addressed and completed. In addition, there were several application improvement projects underway that were a high priority. The applications require continuous development to remain aligned with the organization's current, and frequently changing, business rules. The internal IT team didn't have sufficient resources to meet the demands of the growing ticket backlog and the work on the application projects; they needed help in order to catch up and deliver much needed process improvements.
Solution: Dunn Solutions Cost Effectively Augments Internal IT Team
The company selected Dunn Solutions to supply a team of .Net, C# and Oracle database developers, utilizing a combination of onshore and offshore resources, to cost effectively augment their internal IT team for several months. The work was divided between Dunn's offshore and on-shore team members. Dunn Solutions' off-shore team tackled the problem ticket backlog and handled moving applications from an old web server to a new web server, which included some application rewriting. In addition, they converted websites to full web applications and cleaned up and standardized build and deployment processes. The company's internal team and Dunn's onshore team worked on the various application improvement projects that delivered important process improvements to end users.
Result: Dunn Solutions' Support Helps RTC Improve Processes and Enables Internal IT Team to Work More Efficiently on Future Projects
Dunn Solutions' ODC team provided an economic and expedient solution to a burdensome problem ticket backlog and the demand of meeting high priority project requirements. The completed projects have helped the company achieve improved process efficiency, and best practices were implemented to promote code reuse and make similar future projects less time consuming and less taxing on the internal team's resources.
