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Case Studies
Customized Intranet Solution Provides Project Scheduling and Task Management Capabilities for Leading Retailer
Project At a Glance |
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RDA developed a customized intranet solution that provides project scheduling and task management capabilities to store operations for a leading retailer. The solution dramatically reduces operational costs and improves the company's process efficiency. |
About Our Client
RDA's client is a specialty retailer with 300 stores nationwide.
Background
As part of their overall goal of extending automation into their stores, RDA's client was looking to increase the functionality and value of their existing intranet task management capabilities. Specifically, they sought to implement task delegation capabilities to people, groups or stores.
In addition, they wanted the ability to provide schedule estimates for assigned tasks and store actual completion data. This would enable them to build metrics and provide dashboards to management for monitoring task completions by region, district, and store.
Tasks include activities such as inventories, seasonal merchandising refreshes, and sales. For example, during a seasonal promotion the management team defines the promotion, designs the displays and signs associated with the promotion, and defines the ordered tasks that the store employees need to perform. Stores receive packages of materials, and they use the project management system to go through the steps of setting up their store for the promotion.
Solution Detail
RDA developed an intranet solution that provides project scheduling and task management capabilities to retail store operations.
The solution:
- Provides management teams with the ability to gather and report on task progress.
- Allows leadership to properly manage the flow of task requests to stores.
- Gathers task completion feedback from stores, which allows leadership to improve future task estimates.
- Provides stores with a better system to track and complete tasks.
- Allows corporate and field leadership to proactively respond to any issues that are impeding store task completion.
Benefits
The solution dramatically improved communication between operational headquarters and store personnel. This enhanced communication allows leaders to know if a project has logistical issues when store personnel attempt to complete the project. As the system gathers data on project completion, leaders are equipped with the necessary data to report on and analyze this information, which improves future project cost estimating and scheduling. This decreases the cost of implementing projects, improving efficiency at the store level.
Technically Speaking
The application was built using ASP.NET and SQL Server 2005. It is hosted in Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007, which hosts the client's intranet.
The ASP.NET web application was constructed using a layered architecture:
Of particular note, LINQ to SQL was used to implement the Business/Data Access Layer, and the application integrated MOSS 2007 functionality when appropriate.
