Business Process Support Tool

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Summary

The goal of this project was to create a robust sales reporting/forecasting web application that a customer could use across their entire sales force. This tool would replace a previous application which was used in a single region with limited success.

Challenge

The previous tool failed because it could not handle the large amount of record keeping and data manipulation. The customer’s sales team needed to compare the previous year’s sales data against the current year’s sales data, and the forecasted sales for the next year. They wanted to view this data in a variety of summary charts/graphs/images to allow a person to make quick judgments on a given client/retailer.

In short, the tool needed to be intuitive, responsive, reliable, and as automated as possible.

Approach

First, we met with the Business process owner, as well as multiple end-users. By reviewing the previous applications short-comings, we were able to create the design document for the new system. During these meetings we also created a more user-friendly interface for the application.

Next, our development team used the detailed design document as a blueprint to create a web based application which automatically pulls sales data from various sources. It then compiles and filters that data based on user need and retailer sales plans, and displays those plans compared to actual sales on an ongoing basis.

Solution

Three small improvements were made to the original tool, which vastly decreased page-load time and made users more likely to use the tool on a regular basis.

First, automated data feeds were created between the tool and external data sources. This reduced the amount of time and effort it took each month to keep the data up to date.

Second, most of the data would be viewed in a summarized format (charts and graphs). Therefore, it made sense to pre-process the data so that it did not need to be done each time a user logged in to the system.

Third, we improved the user interface by logically breaking down views into smaller sections, and also by only showing a user the data that is most important to them. Pages were now more focused and kept a user on task.

Technology

The decision was made to create the tool as a web based application. This gave us the ability scheduled data updates and periodic system upgrades to the entire user community without having to worry about downloads, installations, or any version compatibility issues.

The customer required a reliable solution using proven technologies which the business could leverage from past tools. As such, we decided on an IIS / ASP based front end with a SQL server based back end, and an automated DTS package providing scheduled data updates. RSA Security provided both authentication and user identification.

Results

Overall, the project was an astounding success. The tool performs beyond the expectations of its users.

In the past, some users failed to adhere to business processes citing the cumbersome tools available to them as a reason for variance. Now most of those users are adhering to business processes because it has become the easiest way to get their jobs done.

What I Learned

Rules of thumb aren’t written in stone. It is generally accepted that minimizing clicks or keystrokes to take an action is the best course of action. However, in our application we found that by doubling the number of mouse clicks, we could increase speed and reliability by a factor of fifty. By balancing traditional wisdom with some judicious rule breaking, we managed to create a tool which meets all the needs of the end users while remaining stable and fast.