Leasing module

Since I started working with EXECOM, the first thing that struck me was the natural and healthy way of teaming up with Chess. Even though we're different companies and cultures, Chess-staff considers EXECOM as 'colleagues abroad'. - Eric van der Staaij, Project Manager, Chess ibusiness

Arising business situation has impelled one of the leading full-service vehicle leasing companies in Europe to upgrade the existing software application of its new acquired branch. The project was assigned to Chess who trustfully outsourced important development work to EXECOM. Project scope was to implement features of branch legacy system to the Customer Company and on the other side, satisfy requirements of employees. Simply, the task was to merge two systems into one while project requirements were very rigid – merely visible, yet significant functionality changes. The improved application had to support advanced, as well as old legacy functionalities, enabling end users easy transition to a new environment, preserving their working habits settled in the existing legacy system.

Project details
  • Project: Car leasing application
  • Industry: Business Software and Services
  • Business area: Finance / Leasing
  • Year/Duration: 2007 / 2008 / 14 weeks
  • Resources: Team of two programmers, one tester and Project Manager
Technology
  • Eclipse
  • Maven
  • Tomcat
  • iBATIS
  • Oracle9
  • Tapestry
  • Spring
  • BEA Jrockit JDK 1.4.2_08

Chess is thé specialist in the field of innovative systems and critical solutions. In a market with a high demand for cost reduction and better manageability, Chess provides complete solutions within its software development centre and product design & development centre, including its own components if necessary. Chess is based in Haarlem in the Netherlands, with a supporting office in Best, which supports the clients among the top 100 companies in the Netherlands.

Solving a complex task like this one included a great effort of development team. Developers found that the most appropriate way to fulfil the requirements was to deploy a three tier system based on the existing model. The team came up with the solution that included legacy application functionalities and exploit existing back-office processes, keeping the original interface intact. All business logic and modules remained the same.

The second task was directly related to enhancement of data layer and the replication of collected data to local DB from the back office. Having a modular system, developers managed to establish different business logics for each unit and smooth inter-communication. This assured fast search and match of data with no bottle-neck processes. Successful outcome – the gaps between two systems were efficiently filled + downloadable and quickly accessible search results.

In an enormously time-pressured situation overall task was completed: all changes imposed only design modifications thus leaving the architecture intact. As well, users got the access to detailed reports.

Great challenge for cooperating companies resulted with acquired knowledge and valuable opportunity to work with very successful corporation.

In this very case, benefits were numerous:
  • New system shortened time to market and lowered total costs
  • Very strong partnership between companies involved which continues to grow new projects
  • Introduction of the latest technologies
  • Knowledge transfer between team members of participants
  • EXECOM had improved its ability to respond to opportunities and deployed a reliable system
  • Overall, users gained on fast and very useful remote service