The Introduction:
The client is a leading manufacturer of exterior building products in North America, operates in more than 100 locations nationwide — all anchored by a vast IT ecosystem. Supported by strong commitment to operational excellence, they have successfully provided exceptionally high-quality services to their customers for many years.
Technology quickly became a focal point to drive meaningful change as they experienced major bottlenecks with their multiple module system built on legacy applications. Also, bogged by the need to level up their services and attract user attention, they decided to modernize their current legacy system.
Challenges
Although effective and capable in their time, many legacy systems face the uphill challenge of evolving, managing data, integrating with other systems, or keeping pace with the demands of end-users and modern technology. While migrating, we devised an effective plan to deal with complex functionality and architecture of the current legacy system. Along the process our team faced the following challenges:
- Legacy systems are written with elaborate FORTRAN & C++ code and processing use of simple legacy database structures.
- Use of different applications to perform various business tasks, therefore more time-consuming and compromised user experience.
- High customer attrition rate due to multi-system quoting and non-standardized business processes.
- No synchronized data due to the use of on-premises local systems for database management.
- Dependency on a third-party tool to perform one of the key businesses processes.
- Systems have become overly complex and inflexible. Implementing new features was, hence challenging.
The Solution
Stridely Solutions carefully analyzed the existing operations and brainstormed thoroughly to choose an advanced automation platform for helping the client achieve desired operational efficiencies. We took a consultative approach towards legacy system modernization & development strategy, assessment of service offerings, and its diagnostics to building a comprehensive plan and roadmap for a transformation journey.
- Merging the functions and operations of different applications into a single angular web-based application that caters to all the needs of the customer.
- Centralized Database – A multi-model database management system as Master DB to simplify and reduce management workloads.
- Azure DevOps – Development and release in smaller parts using DevOps-based architecture to reduce business risks.
- Dynamics 365 – Integration with the cutting-edge Dynamics CRM to deliver the best customer service experience.
- Azure Storage – For securely storing all the important data.
- Alert and Email Integration – The best marketing solution, integrated with the customer portal to effectively communicate with customers.
- Azure AD B2C – For a smooth customer journey, user sign-in and strong authentication to protect customer data.
- Introduced a multi-level user management feature to manage data privacy and simplify user rights, roles, and responsibilities.
Results
With this project, we delivered a new:
- The SMART Water Quality System provided several benefits to the company. The system was a SaaS-based platform that provided real-time monitoring and alerts of water quality.
- The system’s proactive service and rapid response from the local service team helped reduce labour costs. The system’s integration with the ERP system (SAP) allowed for auto SVO creation.
- The system’s historical data analysis provided predictive and preventive analytics, and a customer-wise dashboard provided detailed insights into the system’s performance.
- Overall, the SMART Water Quality System developed by Stridely Solutions helped the company overcome their water quality challenges, providing them with a reliable and efficient system that ensured they served quality water to their customers.
Key Statistics
- Merging four different .exe desktop applications into one web-based application reduced operational and maintenance costs and efforts and created a unified experience throughout all the brands.
- Migration from on-premises to cloud database helped the client reduce data duplication and achieve uniform data across all functions.
- Eliminated dependency on third-party tools by building exclusive solutions that satisfy all the business needs of the client.
- The multi-level user management feature helped the client:
- Track and audit user activities
- Reduce unwanted data interactions by users and
- Saved efforts on validation and rectification of the data information.
- Making the customer portal more user-friendly and engaging helped the client:
- Increase customer satisfaction and transparency.
- reduce customer attrition rate, and
- build trust.