Case Study - Mining Company Sales Order System

Our customer, an established mining firm, wanted to replace a legacy sales process with an automated, database-backed sales order system. They had considered several off-the-shelf packages but had found that of those packages met their requirements and so would have required expensive customisation and configuration. As an alternative, we were approached to design a bespoke system designed to their specification.

They wanted a Windows forms-based application which would support multiple users and connect into a SQL Server database system. It had to be easy to use as many staff had limited computer experience and it had to be customer-centric, which meant that sales records had to linked to customer records and sales order histories easily queried.

We started by looking at the customer's current paper-based sales workflow. This largely manual process had served the customer well but failed to scale, and as business expanded, it was starting to be seen as a bottleneck. We looked at typical sales scenarios to work out how best to convert this into an interactive process. We then produced three alternative prototypes to demonstrate different approaches to automating the sales workflow. These were iteratively refined based on user feedback, and eventually a single prototype was selected.

On this occasion, we were asked to develop the actual system and design the database. Because we had been involved in the analysis of the old system and design of the final prototype, we were already up-to-speed with the project and able to deliver the system in a considerably shorter time-frame than would normally be the case.

By being involved at all stages of the project, we were able to create a bespoke system which met all business and user requirements and came in on-time and on-budget. In fact, the entire project was completed for considerably less than a previous quote for the supply and configuration of a third-party system.

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