The system of collecting and processing of requests and integration with the existing IT solutions

Situation

Important component of business of the company is processing of supply requisitions of the products and services OTIS arriving from numerous clients of the company through network of its regional divisions. Receiving a request, the staff of branches of the company makes out the request of the set form and sends it for processing and registration to the central office of the company. On the basis of the contract and addressing information of the client who is contained in the request, the central office assigns to the contract the unique number intended for further use by drawing up and maintaining the contract and tells it to the employee of branch who placed the request. Before recent time all these transactions were executed manually. However in process of increase in number of requests (today the central office of OTIS company receives and processes from 50 to 100 applications daily), this process became more and more labor-consuming and required essential costs of time. Besides, with increase in amount of works the probability of distortion of data or loss of the request increased.

Understanding need of reaching more modern level of work with clients, the company management of OTIS made the decision on automation of process of a registration and processing of a flow of requests.

Solution

Use of the existing means and technologies of OTIS company – the server of e-mail Microsoft Exchange and the Oracle database which were taken as a basis by specialists of IT at system development was the main requirement to implementation of a system from the customer. Such solution allowed to integrate processing system of requests with the existing information system of OTIS company and to use the developments which are already available in the company and information infrastructure that considerably reduced terms and implementation cost of a system.

Development process of a system began with inspection during which the analysis of information infrastructure of OTIS and the process of collecting of requests which developed in the company and also identification and the analysis of primary requirements to a system was carried out. Based on this stage basic requirements to a system were formulated and approved and its basic functions are defined:

• formation of the request for signing of the contract
• its transfer to the central office of the company
• fixation of the request in the database
• assignment of the identification number of the contract
• obtaining identification number of the contract by the author of the request

At a design stage the architecture and methods of technical implementation of the project was defined. Architecturally a system consists of client and server parts. A client part provides formation of the request, transfer of its server part, obtaining the identification number of the contract.

Two operation modes of the client interface are provided in a system: the mail operation mode and an operation mode via the Web interface, and both modes provide accomplishment of identical functions.

• The web interface is used by the staff of representative offices having allocated channel for communication with the central office and is implemented based on the standard Web browser
• The mail mode is intended for work of the users who are mainly connected on switched channels and implemented as the application on Visual Basic which uses a mail profile for work with Microsoft Exchange Server

Server part provides acceptance of the request, check of correctness of information in the request, preserving of this information in the Oracle database, receiving a unique contract number and its sending to the author of the request. Functioning of a server part is provided with the server agent developed by IT for implementation of interaction of the mail server with the database and the following servers:

• the database server of Oracle used as storage of requests and customer information
• Microsoft Exchange Server mail server
• the Internet server based on IIS using ASP and ISAPI filters

Components of a system interact as follows. In case of a po§tovy operation mode for execution of the request the client fills out it, using the mail interface. The request is transferred to the mail server by e-mail. The server agent reads out the request from the mail server, processes and places it in the database, activating process of number generation of the contract for the received application. Further the agent reads out a contract number and via the mail server sends it to the author of a request to the postal address specified in the request.

In case of execution of the request via the Web interface the client will become authorized on the IIS Web server and fills out the request for the contract. After sending the request these forms on the server are processed by the ASP scenario and through built in the scenario SQL query are located in the database. Interaction of ASP with the DB server is performed through ISAPI component set on the server. The contract number in this case is read out from the database and displayed on the Web page. Besides, the contract number also goes to the author of a request to the postal address specified in the request.

For simplification of input in the request of the personalized information a system supports maintaining both local, and distributed directories of representatives of the company.

For functioning of a system the telecommunication infrastructure existing in the company is used: the regional headquarters and some sections of the central office have allocated channel in the central office of the company, other representations use switched channels. Effective interaction of representatives of OTIS and IT at all stages of project implementation allowed to perform development and deployment of processing system of requests in only two months and to provide its maximum compliance to user requirements – the staff of OTIS company who is engaged in preparation of contracts with clients.

Result

As a result of system implementation of processing of requests the following transactions were automated:

• formation of the unified request
• sending the request by means of the interface supporting e-mail to the address of the server agent
• sending the request by means of the Web interface
• autonumber generation of the contract of representation with the customer based on the received application and his transfer back to section
• locking of the request from a mail system in the database

It allowed to reduce considerably time spent by employees for registration and processing of requests and also to reduce the accompanying costs on the organization of document flow and the general administration of process of customer service. After input of a system in operation performance and quality of work of personnel of the central office of the company and all its regional divisions significantly increased.

Samoylenko Sergey Ivanovich, the Area chief financial officer, noted: "As a result of implementation of a centralized system of processing of requests in OTIS company expenses on a registration and processing of requests were significantly cut down, labor productivity of personnel of the central office of the company and regional divisions increased".