Overview:
Our customer required an application that must be capable of running at
various client insurance companies with minimal setup. The database must
reside at our customer's location. Additionally, their clients must be able
to download and install the application with no intervention from our
customer. The application must be able to access data across the web in a
transparent manner and to act as though it is hosted locally, at each
individual insurance company's location.
Situation:
Our
customer has been providing an application to their clients in the insurance
industry by installing the software as a separate application at each client
location. This process has caused incompatibilities with conflicting
applications at the client sites and has rendered the application difficult
to work with. It has been costly to troubleshoot the difficulties, as
various applications at the client sites interfere with each other
differently, and advance knowledge of possible conflicts is not available.
Our customer also needs to track data from each of their clients in order to
develop aggregate figures for the industry. Previously, this has been
difficult due to the individual installations of the application at each
site. A new application was desired to easily allow for the setup of the
application as well as the transference of data between our customer and
their clients.
Solution:
A Java application was
developed that looks and works from the client's standpoint as if it is a
locally hosted two-tier application, providing rich graphical elements. The
data resides in extensible database servers at our customer's site, and
there is no installation required by the client. There are no deployment or
configuration problems for client setup. The application works by
translating data to the client from the application database. Our customer
is now better able to track data from each of their clients in order to
develop aggregate figures for the industry
Return on Investment:
- The easy, intuitive, graphically attractive
application meets all stated requirements. It is easy for clients to
setup themselves, with no intervention from our customer. Its ease of
use has made it popular across clients and has maximized profits.
- Our client can easily collect and collate statistics
from the database which can be offered to clients as an added value.
- Our developers have designed and implemented the
system so that it appears as if it is a traditional 2-tier system, even
though the data is hosted behind a middle tier business rule layer.
Therefore, when enhancing the system, back-end developers can add onto
the database at the same time that the front-end developers are further
developing the user interface.
- High performance and scalability for back-end data
processing allows for seamless expandability. Additional insurance
companies and their data can be added with no modifications having to be
made to the system, thus further reducing costs.
The "Extra Mile":
When we arrived at our
customer's site, the current models in place were causing lost development
speed and contentious scalability. DSW proposed and gained approval to
create a custom component to be built into the application to ease
integration between back-end and front-end developers. Though this was
beyond our original scope constraints, overall development time and cost
were decreased dramatically.
*Due to The DSW Group's confidentiality
policy, the names of our client are withheld.
