Profile

Creativity Plus is the internal creative services firm for a Fortune 500 Pharmaceutical Company we can't disclose the name of...one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. The firm performs all the design and creative services needs from graphic design, video production, audio production, print project management, photography, writing services and many other services for the company. A client will call Creativity Plus and say, "I need a Web site, user manuals and tent cards for an upcoming board meeting. Oh, and I need a bunch of color posters, too. And the e-mail press release that I can send out." Creativity Plus jumps into action, providing a detailed spec for the project, drawing up an estimate including costs and deliverable dates and gives this to the client. The client signs off and the estimate turns into a project and Creativity Plus needs to be able to track the project, enter time and materials costs, generate bills, coordinate between its many employees, generate scope changes, integrate with their legacy "corporation-wide" accounting package and generate meaningful reports.

Challenge

Creativity Plus already had a cost estimating and project tracking software package in development when Application Architects arrived on the scene, but it was far from complete, error-ridden, overly complex, overly "modal" and strewn with trash (unnecessary layouts, unused fields, abandoned scripts, et cetera). Besides never quite working properly, Creativity Plus wanted to add a bunch of other new features that weren't currently in the system to get it up and running so that it could "go live" as soon as possible. The challenge was not only learning the complex system as quickly as possible but working with the many diverse departments within the network to complete a system that was general enough for everyone to use but powerful enough to fill the specific needs of every creative department as well as the number-crunching accounting people and the managers who needed lots of cool and meaningful status reports.

Solution

Application Architects jumped right in and initially created an analysis of the existing system, allowing us to to figure out what could stay, and what could go. We chopped off all unnecessary system overhead and started fresh. We then implemented a bug reporting and feature request system that allowed us to track what needed to be fixed and added going forward. This eventually became a database itself which we passed back and forth as we continued to enhance the system.

We streamlined the time entry and estimate creation process, added a calendaring and scheduling module, tweaked and added reports and added much more functionality, too numerous to mention here (but see some of the screenshots for more detailed information about the system).

System

This database system is large and is used by scores of users at the same time. It is basically a complex estimate creation and project tracking tool. Using easy-to-understand wizards, users are taken through the estimate creation process, the approval process, the time and materials entry process, the work order creation process and the time reconciliation process (among many other processes) in a step by step manner. Mostly, it's just point and click. The interface is smooth and consistent as are the buttons. The reports have a similar look and feel. When things happen to a particular project, users get notifications in their "in box" letting them know that an estimate's been approved, a timesheet needs approval, and et cetera.

Special Features

This is a "viewer file system" which means that each user has some local databases on their desktop and not up on the server. Data and interface are almost completely separate. This makes for a speedier system since a lot of the overhead of the database (graphics, scripts, etcetera) are on the local machine and don't have to be accessed through the network.

At any time, a project manager can click a button and get a report of all actual costs versus the estimate that are entered to date. This way, a PM can see how they're doing at any given moment and initiate scope changes as soon as they become necessary.

The notification system (seen in one of the screenshots) gives people instant feedback as to what's happened to their projects and what action needs to be taken. No more are there tasks languishing on post-it notes on a user's desk, waiting to be buried or used as a coaster. Notifications come in automatically on their main menu screen and stay there until they are dealt with.

Other special features include a secure login system with rights and privileges set up in each user's record, a dynamic menu system that is based on layouts in the database and stored in a layouts table, dynamic graphics showing the state of an estimate or timesheet (using the red, yellow and green light metaphor from a traffic signal to indicate a record's status), most portals into related databases are filtered by several drop down lists so a user can quickly find which record they are looking for and many other cool features.