Case Study - Summary -

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Case Study- Summary -
Company Description
Business Challenge
CausEffects is a comprehensive, results-based
company developed to help non-profit
organizations realize their fund raising
potential. They raise money by providing clients
with access to an extensive collection of
first-class signed celebrity memorabilia. As of
December 2008, they have raised more than
350,000 for our non-profit clients.

• The existing paper-based inventory management
  system was proving to be time-consuming.
  CausEffects wanted to move to a web-based
  solution.
• Clients have to work directly with a CausEffects
  auction specialist on the phone and through
  e-mail to schedule an auction and select auction
  items from the available inventory. CausEffects
  wanted to provide their clients with a web-based
  solution that enables them to schedule an
  auction, browse current inventory, and choose
  what items to include in the auction online.
• CausEffects wanted to expand their business model
  to be able to sell inventory directly to
  customers and then donate a portion of the sales
  price to a non-profit client.

Solution Implemented on Qrimp
Project Details

• Created an Inventory Management System to manage
  in-house inventory and all related meta-data,
  including images.
• Created a Client-Facing Website to enable clients
  of CausEffects to schedule auctions and select
  items from the current inventory.
• Created a Customer-Facing Website to enable
  individual users (not representing a non-profit
  organization) to purchase items directly and
  donate money to a non-profit organization.

• 150 total hours to design, develop, test and
  rollout all three applications
• Inventory Management System 1 developer for 1
  week
• Client-Facing and Customer-Facing Websites 2
  developers for 2 weeks

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Case Study- Solution Details -
Solution Details

• Inventory Management System
• Features Include
• Add and manage data for inventory items online,
  including uploading multiple images
• Add and manage data for past and future auction
  events, including packing lists and integration
  with Google Maps for an auctions location
• Add and manage all client data, such as contact
  information
• Client-Facing Website for Auction Management
• Features include
• Integrated with the underlying database for the
  Inventory Management System
• Update the Inventory Management System to provide
  a dashboard to see all upcoming auctions and a
  custom workflow to close out past auctions
• Enabled clients to log-in, schedule a future
  auction, view past auctions, and add items to a
  future auction from the current inventory
• Customer-Facing Website for Individual Sales
• Features Include
• Integrated with the underlying database for the
  Inventory Management System
• Use a dashboard to see and process all orders for
  specific items from customers, including packing
  lists.
• Enabled customers to log-in, buy items in the
  inventory directly from CausEffects, and donate a
  percentage of the purchase price to a non-profit
  organization that is registered with CausEffects.

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Case Study- Benefits -
Benefits

• CausEffects employees can spend more time on more
  valuable tasks
• CausEffects clients receive faster and higher
  quality service 24/7 for scheduling auctions and
  selecting items for the auction
• Expand CausEffects business model to include new
  revenue streams
• CausEffects inventory is now managed completely
  online.
• Historical data is being tracked, along with new
  meta-data (that was never tracked before). In the
  future, CausEffects could use Qrimp to build
  custom reports on the historical data to help
  manage the business.
• Scalable
• The CausEffects site is hosted in the cloud. As
  user activity increases, the application will
  automatically scale.
• Quick turnaround on maintenance requests with
  zero downtime
• For example, after the site was completed and in
  production, a maintenance request was immediately
  submitted to add an active flag for all
  inventory items. The details of the request are
  as follows
• Add a column to the inventory table in the
  database for the active flag.
• Add a widget to the Add and Modify pages for
  inventory items to allow the user to set the
  active flag.
• On the inventory page accessed by customers, do
  not show items from the inventory that are not
  active.
• Add a portlet to the dashboard that lists all
  items in the inventory that are currently
  inactive, allowing the user to select an item and
  update the active status.
• Typically for an application that is already in
  production, a change like this would take
  multiple days to design, build, and test. And as
  for rolling the change out to production well
  that depends on the deployment schedule, which
  could be weeks away.
• But on Qrimp
• A single developer designed and implemented the
  changes directly in the production application
• A single tester regression tested in parallel,
  literally as the changes were being made on each
  page.
• The application experienced zero downtime.
• All major phases of the software development
  lifecycle (design, build, test, and rollout) were
  completed for the maintenance request in 2 hours.

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Case Study- Screenshots -
Inventory Management System
Client/Customer-Facing Website