Technical and process analysis in preparation for a global opportunity
Challenge:
A large non-profit organization with over 300 worldwide offices and a full-time staff of over 50,000 had a pressing need to replace an enterprise system, but did not have the resources to staff a project team to build a viable replacement system. The system had different databases at each of their 300 offices and was running into problems with system performance, redundant data entry, data sharing, and system maintenance. Important features were lacking, especially support for non-English speakers. Replacement was critical for this core system – used in the daily efforts of a world-wide organization.
Solution:
STG was selected as the outsourcing partner for this $2 million project. We assembled a team of 15 to deliver a centralized, web-based enterprise system and delivered the first phase within eight months. At the conclusion of Phase I the program manager said, “STG has been a great partner on this project. They delivered a high quality web application on schedule and under budget. It was an easy decision to engage STG for Phase II.”
Data was consolidated to enable more powerful reporting. The new system was designed for internationalization and has already been localized for Spanish, Japanese, and Russian. The new feature set included improvements on every feature of the original, plus a number of high-priority new features. Usability was noticeably improved by a redesign of the user interface.
Result:
The customer told us, “Office staffs appreciated the new application, especially the intuitive features such as a drag-and-drop organization management tool.” System performance was greatly improved and scalability risks were minimized. Many user functions were simplified and redundant data entry tasks eliminated, enabling users to focus more on value-adding activities. Product rollouts are now much easier and technical support overhead at regional offices has never been lower.
The customer’s development manager added, “We have had tremendous success using STG’s development center and staff for several multi-year, multi-million dollar projects. STG has been a great partner as we have pioneered our outsourcing model.” It is projected that the new application will save over 1 million office work hours annually.