A recent smartclient project delivered 5-fold productivity gains by exploiting smartclient capabilities to streamline the Order Entry process
Background
A US-based wholesaler looked to smartclient functionality to improve its customer service levels by integrating their existing RPG based Order Entry application with smartclient functionality, thereby automating the back office validation of customer entered orders.
Challenge
This long time iSeries customer had originally developed a green screen RPG Order Entry application to enable customer service representatives to quickly process telephone orders. The 5250-based application, used by the internal order entry team, continues to provide a robust, customized and productive method for telephone-based order processing and fulfillment. The application however, was never designed to support the simpler process of allowing customers to enter orders via the web.
When customers requested a web-based Order Entry facility some years ago, a simple web application was provided to enable them to enter orders at their convenience. However, the flat files produced were not processed in real-time against the existing RPG business logic. The resulting orders were then entered by the Order Entry team to ensure full validation against the 5250 RPG application.
The existing application code could not easily be reused with the web application without invasively restructuring the existing RPG modules. The risks, costs and timeframes associated with the invasive changes required to separate the business logic from the presentation layer, were prohibitive.
Solution
A smart way to reuse the existing application was required and looksoftware’s technology was selected. looksoftware's product suite defined the smartclient UI and provided the integration support. Within a few weeks the Order Entry team was able to process customer supplied orders 3 times faster than normal telephone-based order entry.
Benefits
The key to the productivity gain was the programmatic access to the existing application, allowing the customer-supplied entries to be fed through the existing application code. Business user intervention was required only to review summary warnings or correct an error. The smartclient UI accessed the existing, unchanged order entry programs and business rules.
A subsequent business review process identified further possibilities for automation and the smartclient was enhanced resulting in additional productivity gain.
This practical example of using smartclient for application modernization and reuse required no changes to the existing applications and the project paid for itself within 3 months.
A subsequent business review process identified further possibilities for automation and the smartclient was enhanced resulting in additional productivity gain. This practical example of using smartclient for application modernization and reuse required no changes to the existing applications and the project paid for itself within 3 months.
The original 5250-based Order Entry system continues to be used for telephone order entry supporting a rate of approximately 80 orders per day. Before the smartclient project, the customer-supplied orders were processed the same way at about the same rate. Today, the smartclient UI is used for customer supplied orders and each operator processes around 400 orders per day – a 5-fold productivity gain!
Smartclient Benefits
- Improved user productivity from a responsive, rich user interface which utilizes local resources
- Improved effectiveness through built-in integration support such as web services consumption
- Increased availability supporting offline access.
Smartclient Features
- Sophisticated UI controls
- Rich user experience
- Web services support
- Desktop integration capabilities
- Distributed application interaction
- Easy to deploy and update
- Can function online and offline
- Utilizes local resources
- Web services support.