Karl is one of the principals of a large appraisal company. The company has been in business for some time. As part of their continual push for high quality they have kept detailed paper records on the sales of many types of properties. In the past they have had a DOS based database to index these records and later an Access database for this same purpose. The legacy systems were not working efficiently. Karl wanted a modern system to ensure that data was accessible to his appraisers.
The existing property record forms for the various property types were reviewed. Then a program was written that would incorporate and consolidate all of the data for each property type into one database. Automated sorts and a dedicated search functions were implemented. Various security measures were put into place. One of the criteria of the project was that a fully completed sales record could be copied and pasted into their standard format reports done on a word processor. Another criteria was that up to three photographs per record were to be made available for inclusion into reports. Finally the program was networked for all of their staff to use.
The project was completed plus the existing records from the legacy system were migrated into the program, saving the typing of over 15,000 existing transactions. Appraisers have gone from reviewing a paper print out of an index and walking to the library to actively searching for data from their desks. The program is saving time and increasing the quality of the work being performed.
This program was deployed in September 2002. I had one service call in August of 2003 where the system was left in a zero found set state at the server level - A five minute fix.