Enterprise Application Management

One of the largest youth organizations with 2.7 million youth members and 1 million adult volunteers trains youth to be responsible citizens, develops character and builds self-reliance.  This is achieved through participation in a wide range of outdoor activities, educational programs. 

Overview

With a diverse set of programs spanning both domestic and international locations, there continues to be a challenge in providing appropriate tools for the field and for management to continue to grow their membership.

Strategy and Goals

Legacy applications were outdated and difficult to maintain. They were often not able to deliver projects on time nor were they able to it the mark with the user community on their capabilities. Consequently, the total cost of operations (TCO) was excessive and required attention. They were also in the process of defining their vision of new capabilities and redefining their user base. There was a real need to establish an environment to support the new capabilities and user base operationally and technologically.

Approach

RCG initiated a customer-focused offshore model in support of the business objectives and goals.

• Established a maintenance support group for all legacy applications that included an appropriate focus on ITIL processes including but not limited to:
  • Service Level Management
  • Incident Management
  • Problem Management
  • Change Management
• Established a focused Quality Assurance group aimed at leveraging RCG’s best practices in support of the legacy applications and new development.
• Provided specific unique skill set support for internal marketing websites with objectives including brand awareness, membership generation, and continued loyalty by providing content management for volunteers.
• Implemented Peoplesoft HR and Financials and converting/migrating all financial entities.
• Defined, designed, and implemented a business intelligence data warehouse supportive of a retail/school district business model while providing insight to various business disciplines such as fundraising, financials, membership, program advancement, and leadership.
• Established a dedicated mobile development team focused on delivering applications on a mobile platform using technology that is operating system and device agnostic. The mobile applications focus on all aspects of the business including membership and registration, program advancement, etc. It is basically the volunteer and members’ toolbox to assist in registering, monitoring and communicating.

Tools

Legacy systems use tools including .Net as well as SharePoint, SQL, Oracle Forms, and Oracle. Newer applications use Dojo with JavaScript.

The Final Results

The introduction of RCG’s best practices enabled the client to recognize better delivery of their projects and with a higher degree of confidence in the quality. The engagement realized its objectives to:

• Reduce the current costs of application support.
• Establish a repeatable support process representing RCG and industry best practices.
• Improve project delivery both in quality and in duration.
• Establish a springboard to replace legacy applications in favor of a more current technological platform that would be leveraged by multiple organizations and supportive of the client’s long term vision of member and volunteer support.
• Provide a single source of truth for reporting and business analysis. Additionally, the data warehouse enabled quicker access, more consistent and reliable data, and the ability to consolidate multiple sources of truth.

The Conclusion

Leveraging the offshore model, the client was able to obtain suitable resources with required skill sets in various roles and furthered their support and delivery of projects and applications. To further complement, the bottom line was favorably affected due to the lower labor costs.

Creating the foundational model for business operations has also established the platform to support future applications and to introduce new capabilities in a more expedient manner.