- Overview
- By Industry
- Banking
- Business and Professional Markets
- Capital Markets
- Commercial Real Estate
- Federal/Public Sector
- Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals
- Independent Software Vendors
- Insurance
- Lending
- Manufacturing
- Media/Entertainment
- Transportation/Distribution/Logistics
- Utilities/Telco
- By Area of Expertise
- Business Intelligence
- Custom .NET Application Development
- Enterprise Application Integration
- Workflow and Collaboration
Case Studies
Nonprofit Streamlines Data Management with Custom Database Application
Project at a Glance |
|---|
RDA developed and implemented the second version of a business critical custom application providing a consolidated view of BGCA’s business. Benefits of the upgrade include: increased functionality, better performance, improved data integrity, increased ease of maintenance and support, reduced cost for future enhancements, and more efficient use of postage resources. |
About Our Client
Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) is a nonprofit federation of organizations dedicated to their mission of enabling all young people to reach their full potential as productive, caring, responsible citizens.
Background
In November 2006, BGCA released version 1 of Insight, BGCA’s central repository application for capturing critical BGCA business data including but not limited to organization information, performance tracking and compliance, administrative functions, application security, and reporting. Insight was the first attempt BGCA made toward consolidating disparate business data.
Insight tracks data for approximately 1400 organizations that are part of BGCA and 4,300 Club facilities (the physical locations where some 4.5 million young people are served annually). Insight v1 is an improvement over its predecessors, but the current release had room for improvement in the following areas: user interface design, application security, data model, data retention, and interface to external applications.
BGCA tasked RDA with leading and documenting the discovery phase for the second version of Insight, which included a technical redesign and architecture. BGCA then engaged with RDA for the implementation of the redesign.
Solution Detail
RDA led the elaboration, construction and transition phases for the second version of Insight. Elaboration included validation of new and enhanced features with the business team as well as an architectural redesign to meet specific technical requirements. Construction involved implementation of the redesign and new functionality. Transition activities included User Acceptance Test support and knowledge transfer to the BGCA technical team.
The Insight redesign leveraged the latest Microsoft .NET components and techniques to provide a robust, maintainable solution with a rich, browser-based user interface. Key features in Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services (SSRS) and Integration Services (SSIS) enabled the solution to meet demanding data consolidation and reporting requirements.
Benefits
A key goal for the Insight redesign and technical upgrade was to improve maintainability and reduce overall support effort. This was realized in a variety of ways:
- Development Standards: The new system was developed in accordance with BGCA database and Web design and coding standards. Adherence to these standards and technologies will improve maintainability and reduce cost for future enhancements.
- A/D Integration: The new system leverages existing Active Directory user accounts for authentication combined with existing and new A/D groups for authorization to features. The previous version of Insight maintained a separate database for user logins and feature access.
- Reporting: The database redesign improves maintainability as well. The new data model is easier to follow and more efficient. Report Models were also developed to provide ad-hoc reporting capabilities. End users can now create their own reports, thus reducing support costs.
- Data consolidation: SSIS was leveraged to consolidate data from a variety of Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. This consolidation improves the efficiency and reporting capabilities for the business owners of this data. The data consolidation also provided additional data integrity and a common source of data for reporting.
- USPS Address Correction: A new feature for the system is automatic address completion and correction to USPS standards. BGCA sends large quantities of correspondence when necessary. Having confidence in correct addresses greatly decreases the postage costs and improves the service level to their recipients.
Technically Speaking
The Insight redesign leveraged the following technologies and components to craft the solution:
- .NET Framework 3.5 SP1
- Visual Studio 2008
- Ajax
- LINQ
- C#
- SQL Server 2005 Reporting Services
- SQL Server 2005 Integration Services
The browser-based user interface was compatible with IE6 and IE7.
