Construction Industry Software Development: COINS-Shaker

Client: Construction Industry Solutions (Shaker) Corporation
Industry: Construction Industry Software

Business challenge

Key business drives were the following:

• To upgrade SHAKER's flagship product and to enhance its functionality
• To develop new modules that would address Human Resources Management, Project Management, etc.
• To perform separate modules upgrade and customization according to the requests of individual SHAKER's customers
• To reduce cost of application development
• To maintain high quality of services

After evaluating offshore outsourcers that had previous experience with Progress application development, SHAKER selected SoftServe, as a highly experienced offshore programming company, to work along side its product development team to design and develop new modules of COINS and to maintain, upgrade and customize existing modules. SHAKER chose the offshore development model to reduce product development costs, improve time-to-market delivery and augment its IT skill base.

Value Delivered

SoftServe developed a cost-effective solution with an offshore-onsite delivery model. It delegated the team of project managers and key technical personnel onsite to uptake the highly complex requirements and technology conventions. As a result, SoftServe's team integrated seamlessly with SHAKER's R&D team and followed the company's defined product development process. SHAKER reduced development costs and released a high-quality product according to their plan.

Within the framework of SHAKER and SoftServe cooperation a new product was developed - COINS Ti, the next generation of COINS. COINS Ti, a flagship product now, includes 20 fully integrated applications that provide solutions for construction and financial accounting, managing construction projects, supporting service and sales operations, ordering materials, and managing equipment and employees. The essential features of COINS Ti are as follows:

• Uses wireless Internet communications through palms and cell phones
• Employs a Graphical User Interface (GUI)
• Operates on either Unix or NT
• Provides a choice of databases
• Enhances product's ready extendibility
• Allows a choice of Core Financials
• Delivers business solutions that efficiently use all parts of information infrastructure
• Gives easy access to decision making information

SHAKER continues to cooperate with SoftServe to enhance its software offerings, reduce development costs and quickly bring new products to market.

Technology

COINS Ti is written in Java and Progress and utilizes XML for describing user interface to:

• Be a thin client application
• Keep all business logic and data on server
• Preserve the COINS business logic