A medium-sized logistics outsourcing firm needed a new way to track their operations at 80+ customer locations. Each operation at any location was considered a “transaction” that needed to be tracked from beginning to end for billing. Across all customer sites, more than 1,000,000 transactions happen each year. Tracking and paying workers at each site also had to be handled, because not only were the hours worked by each worker, but also the transactions at the location figured into each worker’s pay.
The customer started with a Visual RPG-based application that was impossible to modify and used a very slow flat-file database. We started over and designed a system based on SQL Server and VB.Net to track all transactions, produce reports based on Crystal Reports, and record payroll information each week. Operation speed significantly improved with the faster database, the resulting program was flexible enough to allow each site to have its own set of payroll and transactional revenue calculations (easily created through Visual Basic by the customer), and the customer was able to save money by eliminating their current payroll recording package.
And our cost at completion was half our nearest competitor’s price without subcontracting or using off-shore labor.
After 10 years of developing and using our application, the customer was purchased by a large venture capital group.
The data entry forms are used at each client’s site record transaction, compute the amount to charge the truck being loaded or unloaded, and manage payroll information.