National Sales Management Corporation (NSMC) is a national and international organization that has focused on increasing new customer sales for their clients. NSMC specializes in developing sales prospecting programs and marketing plans that are customized to fit the size, industry, and market share of their client companies.

In January 2003, NSMC approached Outsourced Information Systems with a challenge. The request was to create customized software that would complement the NSMC sales prospecting program. They had a clear idea of what features the software product should contain. This product would assist salespeople with the challenges associated with accountability, record keeping, and measuring success. NSMC understood that their clients had limited computer skills, therefore the software needed to be as simple as possible to operate.

Outsourced Information Systems was able to drastically reduce NSMC's software development expenses by using a software creation tool OIS developed, called ComponentGen. Using ComponentGen, Outsourced Information Systems, created the software named Sales Relationship Management in less than 30 development hours. This was a dramatic savings compared to other software NSMC had developed manually and amounted to a large potential return on their investment.

Through the use of ComponentGen, Outsourced Information Systems was able to deliver the software product, Sales Relationship Management (SRM), within a month. The software included documentation, instructional manuals, and testing completion.

ComponentGen resolved the dilemmas associated with taking on the risk of creating shrink wrapped products. Before a company can launch a mass-produced product, they must take preliminary steps that are time consuming and costly. First, they must research and determine market demand. Then extensive analysis is performed to determine the desired features of the product. And only then can they begin to develop the software, a potentially time-consuming and expensive process by itself. This conventional model of the software development process requires months to years of effort before it can begin to produce any financial return.

With ComponentGen, Outsourced Information Systems was able to significantly reduce the development time and cost for NSMC.

• OIS was able to quickly put together a database design for the product, which consisted of 11 tables.
• OIS met with NSMC to determine which business rules were required.
• Once OIS analyzed the standard code schema, it was decided this application wouldn't require special code generation, so OIS opted to use its standard set for the generation of code.
• OIS fed the database schema into ComponentGen. Then ComponentGen posed a series of questions regarding the schema. Once all the questions were answered, ComponentGen completed 80% of the middle tier.
• ComponentGen then implemented the business rules in the middle tier utilizing Microsoft's Visual Studio Add-Ins to ensure proper implementation and integration into the middle tier.
• ComponentGen generated all the code documentation into Word and HTML files. This includes generating XML files that interface directly with the Visual Studio.Net dynamic help system. Also included in the HTML files are intelligent hyper-links created by the system. These intelligent links assist in the creation of the help system by automatically linking references to objects, properties, or methods with their definitions.
• The final step was to create a front end by placing controls on the form, inputting standard calls to a reusable object that moves data back and forth between the front end and middle tier objects, and creating the basic menu items and flow control.

A benefit of ComponentGen over other code generation tools is that many of the business rules are embedded directly into the questions asked and therefore code is automatically generated when one answers these questions. Answering the questions guarantees a completely functioning middle tier within a few minutes. The questions asked include comments to make sure one's code is properly documented. Once documented, Component Gen has the ability to completely modify, update, and delete all items in the database while keeping track of referential integrity and checking basic business rules.

All this amounts to a successful software development project, completed in half the time compared to the conventional development process. Because of ComponentGen, NSMC successfully launched their sales prospecting program and software application, SRM 6.0, faster and more profitably.

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