discoversupport case studies
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Contact our professional team... |
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We support approximately 60 systems for around 35 clients, many of which we did not originally write. The following are
a representative sample.
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Financial Services |
Health check of business critical system leading to taking over support and maintenance for Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance
(London Management) Ltd.
MSILM are one of the world’s leading insurers with UK turnover of £350 million last year. They have been using MSM for all
European software development projects including support for the last 5 years, with the exception of two systems, one being
their underwriting system which was too big for us to tender for, and the other a key piece of middleware. The middleware
application was written by another company who had since declined to support it. Under their own and FSA
regulations MSILM must produce their monthly management accounts promptly, and SaBRe was integral to the process of moving
data from their old underwriting system to their accounts system. There is a 3 day window at each month end in which to do
so so the system was business critical. MSM were contracted to take on the system and ‘fix it’ and support it monthly over
the medium term until superseded. SaBRe was written in Delphi & SQL Server.
Also Database Administration (DBA) Support of all SQL Servers including routine DBA, backup, disaster recovery exercises, optimisation, patches, upgrades, documentation and contribution to new development projects (hence design, development and support). We provide remote DBA services for all of their ~210 databases and six servers, including bespoke systems in SQL Server 7 & 2000, Sharepoint db on SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server 2005 data warehouse, BI & OLAP databases. |
Health check of legacy Delphi & Paradox mobile phone & white goods underwriting system leading to taking over support,
maintenance and enhancements for CPP Group Ltd (York)
CPP Group are a highly acquisitive company who have grown from
a credit card protection company to a large retail insurer. In 2003 they acquired a mobile phone & white goods insurer and
made all its staff redundant. It was then discovered that CPP’s own underwriting system needed changes to support the mobile
phone business and thus MSM were contracted to provide interim support of the legacy systems acquired as part of the deal. We
learnt the system through our usual health check and familiarisation process and supported and maintained it for nearly two
years until it could be switched off. Approximate support contract value £120,000 per annum. |
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Not for Profit & Charities |
Health check of web-based Delphi ticketing system leading to taking over support, maintenance and enhancements for the Eden Project (Cornwall)
The Eden Project is one of the largest visitor attractions in the UK. As an educational charitable trust the income the visitors generate is valuable not just as business income but to fund maintenance and ongoing research and development. Hence, a significant investment has been made in ticketing systems over the years. The third party developer of the ticketing system has admitted it doesn’t have the infrastructure or processes to support such a business critical function, and so we carried out a health check and took over support. The system is written in a combination of PHP, Flash and Delphi using a PostgreSQL database. Approximate contract value £10,000 per annum. |
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Other Sectors |
Health check of business critical Delphi & Paradox manufacturing system for Stanley Security Solutions
(Europe) Ltd.
Stanley are a global manufacturer of security equipment, with UK factories in Stockport and Exeter. They had an existing
system written in house by inexperienced Delphi developers and using a very poor database. They were suffering significant
downtime. One of our Technical Consultants was employed to undertake a Health Check of the system and recommend ways to
stabilise the system for at least 12 months prior to full replacement. Due to the bizarre design of the system the costs
of implementing many of our recommendations were prohibitive for the limited life, but we were able to implement minor
changes to achieve big wins. |
Emergency fix of large call centre application in Delphi & Paradox leading to taking over support and maintenance
for West Yorkshire Metropolitan Ambulance Service, subsequently NHS Professionals Special NHS Trust.
WYMAS operated a specialist NHS recruitment agency on behalf of the Department of Health, as well as emergency services.
They had contracted a third party to develop a call centre application to completely manage the business. The call centre
subsequently grew from 6 to 150 seats and the software couldn’t cope, resulting in downtime costing £½million per week. The
third party struggled to fix the problems for three weeks and then withdrew. We were asked to fix and had the system back up
and running with 30 hours, thanks to our familiarity with the technology (Delphi). We then supported the call centre on a
24×7 contract with ½ hour response time for about two years, until it was eventually replaced as part of the wider NHS IT
procurement. Return on their initial investment with us was achieved in 37 minutes! |
Health check of web-based .NET software leading to taking over support, maintenance and enhancements for
PupilRecords Ltd (Shrewsbury)
PupilRecords are themselves a software company who outsource all development, so all their software, being their products,
is business critical. They supply the education market, and the application is written in VB.NET and SQL Server 2000 and
entirely web-based. It uses Crystal Reports for all reporting. They outgrew their previous supplier and so selected us to
provide support and maintenance but also new development. PupilRecords went into receivership in January 2006. |
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London office |
020 7127 4558 |
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Bristol office |
0117 327 0074 |
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Exeter office |
01392 453333 |
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Last updated 08 May 2008
