Client Profile
As a leader in the metal finishing industry since 1947, its clients include a “Who’s Who” list of the aviation industry.
Business Needs and Challenges
For more than ten years, the company has been managing its daily production and services based on a DOS platform. In 2007, it recognized that its rate of growth had outpaced the ability of this legacy system. It was time to upgrade their legacy system to meet the ever-expanding business demands, with several immediate migration challenges facing our client:
- The plain DOS-based legacy system lacked any documentation to elaborate the complex business process. No source code for the compiled system was available.
- To keep the migration cost low, the new system had to be 100% functionally compatible with the legacy system, including all hot-key operations. This was so the 50 daily users could shift to the new system without lengthy training. But the upgrade had to provide an easy to use, intuitive interface for all new users.
- All existing data had to be migrated into the new system without slowing down the production line. The legacy system ran on DataPerfect, while the new system runs on Microsoft SQL, with at least a 30 year technology gap.
Business Solution With Dual User Interface
Because of its unique domain knowledge for this project, a task group consisting of Silk Software workflow engineers and subject matter experts was formed to study and document the daily usage of the system. Typical use cases were recreated by closely following the system’s processing, while new simplified workflows were created for new users of the system.
A unique dual-face system was developed. While a new generation of users is able to use the intuitive web interface without lengthy training, a simulated character based interface is also maintained so that all existing users can also use the system without any retraining.
A special testing suite was developed to ensure full compatibility between the legacy system and the new web application, and performance testing was conducted using LoadRunner.
Over a period of twenty-two months, the six-person team successfully migrated and deployed the solution without causing any business interruptions.
Silk Software is now working with the customer to integrate the internal workflows of the new system with their customer web portal functionality.
