Case Studies

Mobile Solution Improves Efficiency, Staff Productivity, and Data Quality

Project at a Glance
RDA developed a customized solution that synchronizes business-critical data gathered from the field with a central repository. The resulting system simplifies the database consolidation process, increases data availability, improves data quality, and enhances the productivity of the field staff.

About Our Client

RDA's client is a provider of information services to the commercial real estate industry. The company's integrated suite of services offers customers online access to a database of commercial real estate information.

Background

A critical element of our client's business process, and the basis for the provision of services to its clients, is the ability to gather and validate comprehensive information on commercial real estate properties on a timely basis. In order to achieve this objective, the company currently employs a team of approximately 100 field research staff whose job it is to survey and gather information on commercial properties in their individual territories. This information includes photographs and tenant information as well as geocode measurements.

Field researchers capture this information in an application called Rover. Rover is a Microsoft Access-based application which runs on their laptops. Each evening, data from the Access database is uploaded to a central location. A manual process then follows that involves consolidating the individual databases and transferring the data into our client's main commercial property database.

Prior to this project, the process for passing information to and from field staff computers was manually intensive and time-consuming. In addition, detailed validation of the data needed to take place, through a combination of manual and automated means.

Solution Detail

RDA developed a synchronization mechanism between Rover and the company's central data repository. The synchronization process loads commercial property data into the company's enterprise database from their mobile Rover application. RDA also provided a mechanism for the field research management staff to review the data from the field as it comes in.

The final solution allows the field research staff to upload the data collected during the day by synchronizing their laptop each night. The synchronization process uploads and validates all changed data, which is ultimately stored in the enterprise database.

RDA completed the design and developed the solution in a series of parallel work streams to reduce the time needed to develop the solution while at the same time minimizing risk. The Rover application, RDA components and enterprise database and Web services work together to import and export data between the Rover application and the enterprise database.

Building upon the success of the Rover Synchronization project, RDA was engaged to make the modifications necessary to enable Rover to function successfully in our client's UK operation, based in London.

Benefits

Introducing automation to the synchronization of data between Rover and the central database brought about a number of business benefits that help our client improve the timeliness and accuracy of the information they provide to their clients. These include:

• Improving the scalability for the process of consolidating the databases, which is manually intensive
• Increasing the frequency at which information on changes to commercial real estate properties can be provided to clients (Prior to this project, updates could only be provided once a nightly batch loading process was completed.)
• Improving the quality of the data by enabling a quality control function to efficiently identify and resolve discrepancies between the central database and Rover-based information
• Supporting productivity improvements of field staff by eliminating the possibility of duplicating building surveys

Challenges

Our client needed to deploy this system within two months of contacting RDA. RDA quickly developed the proposal and approach that was approved by the client. Working in conjunction with their business and IT resources, RDA deployed a team that developed the initial release and was ready to deploy version 1.0 of the synchronization components on time.

Technically Speaking

RDA integrated the synchronization solution with varying technologies on either side of the synchronization components. The goal of the project was to synchronize many mobile computers that employed a Microsoft Access database with one schema to the client's enterprise SQL Server database with an entirely different schema. RDA analyzed both schemas and built the export components on the mobile computers. These components communicate to the host synchronization components through custom Web services. This approach allows the mobile computers to connect and update data stored in the enterprise database. The data from the many mobile computers is checked for accuracy and duplicates before being transformed and stored in the enterprise database.

In addition to Microsoft SQL Server and Microsoft Access, the project employed the following technologies for the complete solution:

• Rover Application
• VB.NET 2003
• MapXtreme Mapping Software
• Microsoft Access
• Rover Synchronization Components
• C#.NET
• Web Services
• WSE 3.0
• Back-End Database
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• QC Application
• C#.NET 2003
• MapXtreme Mapping Software
• ASP.NET
• Data Loader
• C#.NET