Computer Troubleshooter (CT) is the world’s largest and most profitable IT services franchise. Like other franchise organizations, Computer Troubleshooter had a need to manage their specific activity for their business and it needed to be coordinated in a way in which was most productive to them. So that all their franchisees were maximizing their efforts and being consistent with the franchise organization guidelines, CT needed a tool, to help each franchise be organized and work more efficiently, but that was specific to their proprietary business processes.
Chip Reaves, the Director of Computer Troubleshooters, struggled for over one year to find an off the shelf software solution that could be used and managed by each and every franchise both domestically and internationally. Combined, Chip needed a tool that would facilitate the needs of 450 franchises worldwide. After his exhaustive search, Chip finally decided that a custom piece of CRM software would be needed to meet the exact needs of the Computer Troubleshooter’s franchise organization. DesignMySoftware was one of the companies who put a bid on this project and happily won the project.
As soon as CT decided to move forward with DMS, the technical teams from both sides got together and came up with the documentation for the new application. Since the software needed to be available to all CT franchisees worldwide and preferably while on site at a customer's location, we chose to develop a web based software. With a choice between, .NET (Windows hosting), PHP, Java with (Linux hosting), the decision was made to go with .NET because of speed of development and a reduced budget. So that we could project as closely as possible where CT wanted to be with their software when it was finished, careful consideration went into the analysis and the documentation phase, which took about 2 months to compile. Meanwhile, CT got feedback from their franchisees regarding features to be built into the new software, and at the same time, DMS researched the latest technology best suited to the project and wrote the technical documentation on which the entire project was to be based.
In August 2005, after 2 months of analysis and writing technical documentation the design and architectural phase began. 3 weeks later the architectural design and the database design for the new CT-CRM software was developed by the project manager assigned to the CT CRM project. Based on the requirements document the “user interface” design team developed from scratch an entire personalized CT interface. A few days after that, we had a couple of layout versions which were presented to CT to choose from. As soon as CT decided on which layout version to go with and DMS made some minor requested adjustments, it was time to develop the entire interface, and reshape it into HTML. In about 3 weeks, the interface for the entire software was in place and was presented to CT. After about another week of small adjustments, adds, modifications and tweaks, we got CT’s agreement to move forward and add functionality over the interface. At this point we had the design for the software done, the design for the database, and the user interface (UI)
DMS assigned a DBD (database developer) to the CT CRM project to translate the design into a database, and at the same time a team of 2 programmers started to “put some meat on the bones” and to transform the architectural design in functional user interface that has already been built.
2 months later we have the first CT-CRM alpha version – the entire software was done, the database was in place, all the functionality had been built, and we had the first presentation with Computer Troubleshooters. During this presentation we walked through the entire work flow of the software, took notes of what needed to be changed and in what way. At this point the testing team from DMS joined the development team, and made sure that the software was being developed in accordance with the technical documentation. The role of the testing team was to test all the functionality of the software from all perspectives (look and feel, user friendly, functionality, usability, etc.) and report everything they found back to the development team right away under the surveillance of the Project Manager. All the issues (bugs, tweaks, glitches, etc) reported by the testing team were uploaded into our issue reporting (bug tracking) system, and the PM was responsible for prioritizing and assigning each issue to the right person (developer, designer or DBA). CT had full access to our bug tracking software and were kept apprised of ongoing activity and productivity throughout the project.
On November 2005, the beta version for the software had been delivered. At that point, the software was 99% done, and about 90% bug free. The software was deployed on our testing server in Atlanta – Georgia, and CT assigned 5 (very active franchisees) as beta testers to work on the software along with the DMS development team, to test back and forth using our issue reporting (bug tracking) system. January 30th 2006, after a couple of additions and bug fixing the software was deployed to the production server in ATL and CT had it’s first official presentation in front of their franchisees.
After CT-CRM v1.1 was deployed, put into production and a maintenance contract between CT and DMS was agreed upon, the support and the maintenance for CRM is provided by DesignMySoftware, and at the same time we agreed to do ongoing development, and continuously add new features into the system, according with each franchisee requests.
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