Case Studies
AFS Technologies: Create a SaaS Business Intelligence Product
SITUATION. For ten years, AFS Technologies' (formerly IRM) Discovery System has been the top business intelligence tool for food and beverage industry professionals, helping food and beverage companies optimize profit and find new opportunities. To keep the top position for the next decade, AFS Technologies recognized that they needed to update their products to a Software as a Service model, to handle the ever-increasing amounts of data being collected, and to allow users to access it securely anywhere in the world.
AFS' main challenge was finding a partner who spoke their language—development companies had the necessary expertise, but didn’t comprehend that the product had to reflect the unique intricacies of the food and beverage industry. In order to trust their core product to a partner, IRM had to be sure that partner could deeply understand their business—someone with a proven track record of ramping up quickly in new domains.
SOLUTION. AFS Technologies approached multiple potential partners, but when they met with Macadamian, they knew they’d found the one they needed. Our mature organization with mature processes impressed them, but what made their decision was our culture of transparency. IRM knew that we would keep them advised of every stage of the project, from architecture to delivery. Our team also took the time to understand their business, their products, their processes, and their customers so that we could create the software their users needed.
BENEFITS. Macadamian pushed Microsoft’s .NET framework to the limit, customizing a solution that combines the latest features of .NET 2.0 with IIS 6.0, and the reporting and analysis services of Microsoft SQL 2005. Taking the time to understand the food and beverage service industry actually sped up the project, saving costly redesigns and revisions, and ensured that the software architecture reflected the nature of AFS' business. In addition, web-enabling Discovery Services means that food and beverage salespeople can access the information they need without waiting, and from anywhere in the world—meaning more sales opportunities.
TECHNOLOGIES. C#, ASP, .NET, Javascript, Borland Developer Studio, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Analysis services 2005, Reporting services 2005, Infragistics NetAdvantage for ASP.NET, HTML, XML, SOAP, AJAX
