Why company need to have software development capability (I)? ~ for Sales & Marketing

Most of us will have the perception of software development is equivalented to off the shell products such as Human Resource Management System, Accounting System, Customer Relationship Management System and so on.

Software development has become a must have capability for any organization after emergenced of Internet as a market place.

Case study 1
A household electronic appliance company A and Insurance company B want to increase their sales revenue (Reality all companies want to increase sales revenue). Company A and B are hardly to have strategic relationship in traditional market place. Internet empowers possibility. The prerequisite of it, organization needs software development capability.

Company A & B may form a strategic relationship through offering for example buy products from company A and get a free product from company B. At this point of time, an online software application is required to automate business process.

This online application shall come with features
- Enables consumer to register their products S/N online
- Enables consumer to print insurance certificate or obtains certain form of acknowledgement
- To ensure the S/N is a valid product under this promotion
- Generate business reports such as monthly sales revenue under this scheme, total consumers participate in this promotion monthly
- Notify support parties involved for example insurance process administrator.

The greatest benefit is, organization implements a marketing strategy.

At here, you should ask how creative, how innovative your organization is to make use of software development capability instead of asking what software development can do for you.

Why company need to have software development capability (II)? ~ for HR

Many companies always say human capital is their most important resource to compete against competitors. Before we judge the truth of it, lets look at how companies sourcing human capital in general. First of all, advertising is a must, no matter from head hunters, media, website, portal,... after that, human resource department will compile all resumes and start interview. Before we go too far from here, how many organization can answer following questions easily?

- How many resume i have collected since 2 years ago?
- Does the resume catogerise?
- Can i perform basic analysis on all applicants? for example position apply, age group, sex, academic background,...?
- Can i reuse all the collected resume and invite past applicants for other position or similar position in future?

This is not innovative management idea, many companies are practising it. Software development can assist you to strengthen your sourcing process.

- Implement job application at your own website
- Promote your website always so it can target applicants and potential customers at the same time
- Applicant must registers as per your requirements at your website. From here you may collect data for future reuse and analysis purpose. Of course, your ultimate aim is to build a better human capital
- Implement your business process & procedure to handle interview, escalation to notification
- Implement resource analysis


No doubt, it could be additional expenses required. You have the option to stay unchange. Are you ready to compete?

Why company need to have software development capability (III)? ~ for Strategic Planning & Marketing

Strategy planning is part of daily operation within an organization nowadays. Prior any strategy establishes and executes, organization always carries out studies, testing, analysis on sampling data, assumption, conclusion and ....

In fact, software customization plays an important role at this place.

For example,
Company A is going to launch a new product. The strategic planning team has come out several strategies to ensure the successful of the new product. A marketing survey campaign is one of the exercise involve.

Software customization may help your survey more accurate, meaningful, efficiency and ..... The organization may customise an application to support the strategic planning team at this place and the application shall come with following fundamental features:

- A data capture system and data entry sysetm
- The system shall be web enable.
- The organization may A&P this survey via media and some channels to reach the target prospect. No doubt, A&P always incur expenses. It is always a good time to A&P organization name at the same time.
- Provide a reporting system to analyse feedback base on interests, age, sex and other relevant decision making information ....

Make your share service more effective

Ideal Operation


R&D Department
- Build cutting edge business solution
- Hand over to deployment team with neccessary supporting documents
- Relevant specifications should be easy for programmers to understand as well as new comers take over
- Implement coding standard
- Implement a versioning control process from document, codes, test cases to releases
- Standard patterns and practices

Deployment team
- Deploy and configure base on business requirement
- Shouldn't work at code level

Project manager
- Can form a team easily

Common environment (due to manpower turnover)

R&D Department
- Always become part of deployment team
- New comers facing difficult to take over existing code

- Documents are difficult for programmers to start work but middle management always assume programmers not capable

- Different programmers will have different practices and coding preferences
- No control on code level modification

- Significant gap between member's skill sets and thus organization losing flexibility

Deployment team

- Always involve code level modification

- Significant gap between member's skill sets and jobs completion always depend on certain members.

Project manager

- Always lock down his preference team member and organization will encounter resources shortage always

- R&D team may request to work as deployment team while deployment team may modify low level codes without update R&D

You may need to implement ALM to improve your operation

MS SQL Database Architecture Design Outsourcing

Database Architecture design is the process of forming a database that is going to tailor the needs of a user. Your systems and applications are only as good as their underlying database. The handling and manipulation of data is the key to gaining a competitive edge in today's market.

The architecture design process generally entails a number of steps which calls for a database designer. This design refers to the -- tables, columns, relationships, keys and indexes of which a database is formed of. When the database is designed, the data which seems to be relevant are stocked up. Layout of the table, implementation of a primary keys and unique key constraints allows the data to be consistent.

There are many factors to consider when architect your database schema:
- The architecture of the application (Client/Server or N-Tier)
- The number of users expected to use the application
- Proposed and future functionality
- Reporting Facilities
- Integration with existing applications or databases.
- Geographical spread of the user population
- Performance requirements
- The inter-relationships between all the various items of business data

A good database architecture always
- Gives access to the information.
- Provides you with the up-to-date & accurate information.
- Makes the queries simple which results in a fast execution.
- Accommodates your data processing and reporting needs.
- Helps, support and ensure the accuracy & integrity of your information.
- Partition your information into the subject-based tables so as to decrease the strength of an outmoded data.

The database architecture represents one of the fundamental building blocks of any successful application. By combining a highly structured design approach with a thorough understanding of the database engine, you can fully exploit the power of database technology.

How can we assist you? Tell us your business process, activities flow and data you want to collect. You may reach us at sentoh_wan@yahoo.com

MS SQL Outsourcing Scenario 1

A multiple branches company wants to build a distribute database infrastructure to support their day to day operation. Every branch will have same business application to support neccessary business transaction update and information checking. To provide a faster performance, each branch will host its own database server. Every data will update locally and synchronize back to head office every hour. After the data collected from branch offices, head office will combine all of it together to form a master database, the combination process must able to identify which data is latest if any data is redundant.

What can we do here? We assist you to build the infrastructure.

MS SQL Outsourcing Scenario 2

To support business decision making, company always pull data from different data sources and stores into different excel files. The pulling data process always slows down data sources and different business application. At the same time, end users are having tough time to handle excel files full with date.

The company is looking for a solution to perform a centralise pulling of data and stores in dedicated MS SQL server so that they can perform reporting more effective and efficiency. Deploying of MS SQL server assists the company to save budget from expensive licensing database server and at the same time MS SQL provides a full features including reporting service to support operation requirement.

They need to configure the sql server to be able to communicate with different data source and pulling data base on time configured. After the data import into sql server, they need to verify data consistency and using sql reporting service to generate relevant reports. Those reports will publish on web.

What can we do here? We assist you deploys the neccessary solution

MS SQL Outsourcing Scenario 3

Upon more business opportunities aries, the company is looking forward to consolidate its several SQL servers become less and at the same time upgrades the neccessary SQL servers into latest version with lastest hardware together.

The company is worried on all automated tasks and DTS packages will not function properly after the migration done. On top, the company also requires to ensure all the existing business application will connect to the new SQL servers after those servers upgraded.

What we can do here? We assist you deploys the neccessary solution

MS SQL Outsourcing Scenario 4

A CMMI SSO company is going to venture into a global SQL server support business activity. The company encounters several challenges here:

Management aspect - it is needed to implement best practises and standard practises for technical member to carry out their work.

Human resource aspect - manpower turnover is always an issue here, there is a need to have a mechanism that can produce replacement workforce.

Technical aspect - There is a need to provide different tier of support. However, grouping members into same tier and standardise each tier skillset will be difficult. Sending team members out for training may not learn the matching skill for jobs

CMMI acpect - everything must be in well plan and execution must comply accordingly throughout the entire operation year

Financial aspect - More workers, more revenue. More comprehensive support, higher profit margin. A need to have a mechanism can produce skill workers in each tier to support business growth.

It is not surprising for a regional support center requires several hundred of workforces to support their business activity.

What can we do here? We can assist you to define standard practices, best practices that matching your business direction. We can assist you to establish a knowledge base system. We can assist you to establish a mechnism to produce your neccessary workforces for both growthing and replacement. And most important, we execute as per schedule planned