 Business Challenge
The client was a Fortune 100 company. Like many companies of that league, they had most of their business processes supported by SAP R/3 family systems. One of the most important business functions of any complex organization is financial management using dedicated budgets. The client’s managers were not satisfied with what SAP R/3 offered for that task, so they sometimes even had to use Excel spreadsheets to track expenses and remaining funds. Eventually, they requested budget management software, which would be easier to use, with richer functionality and better performance.
 Solution
Intranet application to set, manage, and track budgets was implemented using the .NET development platform. The application imported purchase orders and invoices from SAP R/3 using special web services. The budgets were set at the beginning of a financial year through departments and projects hierarchy. Budget creation was significantly simplified by a budget creation wizard, which helped the user to plan based on previous year's budgets. Then the budget management software allowed instant tracking of budget consumption, making adjustments whenever necessary, with rich reporting capabilities. A complex security hierarchy was supported to reflect the organizational structure. That way a project manager had access to only her project financial information, while a department head was able to review all data on all levels, from the department overall picture and drilling down to any particular invoice. Another important function was automatic e-mail notifications, triggered when certain events occurred. For example, a particular budget bucket was near to be entirely spent, or an invoice could not be correctly identified to belong to any project. Monthly status reports were automatically e-mailed to the users as well. The database was optimized at the end of the project for better performance and reliability. Data export capabilities were added as requested by some users.
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Software and Services: C#, .NET Framework, MS SQL Server 2000, MS IIS 5.0, Crystal Reports
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 Benefits
The first version of the budget management software was deployed in just 2.5 months from the day the technical proposal for the project was done. The client enjoyed significant costs saving comparing to any other solution. Even without offshore programming cost benefit, the .NET development prices are way lower than SAP R/3 development. The existing client’s Microsoft infrastructure and experience was leveraged leading to low cost of ownership and maintenance — no additional software or servers had to be bought, and there were Windows network and MS SQL database administrators already in staff. A classical multi-layer architecture allows easy and inexpensive system extension. After the system was deployed, the client requested a number of new reports, which were implemented with efforts of fewer than 30 hours each report.
The system enabled a more efficient and accurate budget management process. Because Windows security system was used, administrators could easily manage access to the system. The users enjoyed the new system, which had nice corporate style and AJAX based interface instead of terminal-like screens they used to see every day.
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