Operational Environment in Need of Help
Situation: New system was a few months away
from going live and no mechanism was in place to run
the 100+ jobs required each night. Client had
selected a job scheduling product; but the underlying
infrastructure to support the product did not exist.
Action Taken: Multi-platform (Solaris,
NT) job scheduler environment was built out from
the ground up including all Solaris and NT
scripting necessary for job handling, error
processing and file transfers.
Lasting Effect: Complete job scheduling
environment delivered in time for system
integration testing and deployment. Client
staff previously unfamiliar with job scheduling
and scripting techniques trained and now
self-sufficient.
Improved Customer Service
Situation: Customer administration
system was in desperate need of performance
tuning. On-line performance problems were
affecting customer service. A comprehensive interview
process was conducted with both management and
end-user participation. Findings showed that
performance of application was a problem; but
unfamiliarity of a complex system to new users
presented an additional challenge meeting customer service goals.
Action Taken: Business logic within
existing application was analyzed and re-written to
improved on-line performance. Additions were
made to the GUI to provide a more concise view
of a customer's account.
Lasting Effect: On-line data retrieval
rates reduced from 3-20 seconds to split-second
response. 80% of data needed to respond to
customer calls now consolidated to a single screen
with hooks into legacy application for transaction
processing. Customer service talk-time
attributable to data retrieval and looking for
commonly requested information virtually eliminated.
Application Re-engineering / Server Re-cycling
Situation: Transaction processing system
not capable of meeting critical windows during times
of heavy transaction loads.
Action Taken: The application was analyzed
and a solution was put in place, modifying the
configuration of the existing application and
leveraging hardware at the client site that is idle
in the evening hours.
Lasting Effect: System is now
capable of processing three to four times the amount
of transactions without any
additional hardware expenditures.
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