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Case Study: Card Management SystemActivity Summary A market-leading consumer product credit firm on the Bulgarian market was looking to expand its services with a card-based revolving credit product. Delera provided a project manager on a consulting basis, assembled a team of developers and built a working system from the ground up in 6 months. Problem In 2003 a leading Bulgarian financial firm decided it was time to add a new kind of service. The company's core business was providing consumer credit for leased home appliance purchases. With double-digit turnover increases, management was looking at providing a brand new product: revolving credit in stores across the country, using customer cards similar to mainstream credit cards. The initial rollout of the product would let customers purchase goods and services using plastic cards. Card numbers were verified by an operator in the company's call center. Operators would key in data, ensure that credit limits and conditions were met and would authorize the purchase to the store manager. The company had already standardized on Microsoft technologies, so it only made sense to specify that a system be built with .NET and SQL Server as the data store. Several ready commercial packages were evaluated, but they either did not fit specific client needs, or were prohibitively expensive for a firm of this size. A custom solution would have to be built by a small and competent team, partly residing on-site at client premises. A web-based solution would take years to complete and would be too costly. A solution based on rapid prototyping technologies such as Microsoft Access would not provide the needed scalability. Solution Delera Systems lead consultant was appointed project manager on the project on a consulting basis. He conducted extensive interviews with client management and operators to establish a set of high-level business requirements. Our outsourced PM then proceeded to create a Basic Solution Specification for the system. After the specification was approved, a team was formed: two experienced Microsoft technology developers and some off-site supporting personnel. The system was built with a Windows front-end using C# and .NET WinForms technology. The presentation tier application provided unprecedented flexibility while also keeping development effort low. The back end of the system consisted of a middle tier - C# objects hosted with Internet Information Server, and a SQL Server data store. All communication between operator workstations and server code took place with .NET Remoting running over Internet standard HTTP protocol. This brought a benefit normally only associated with web applications: operators could be anywhere and would only need a Windows PC and a regular Internet or VPN connection to access the backend. In the course of about 6 months, the software started from ground zero and proceeded to "ready to roll out" stage and was accepted by the client. The system was ready on time and on budget and only needed a management greenlight to be put into production. By that time, market factors required that the card product be somewhat delayed. In early June 2004, a majority stake in the company was bought by AIG Capital Partners, part of the AIG group and world market leader in finance. Service Offerings The following Delera Systems service offerings were applied to this project:
Technologies
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