SOS

Helptrain

Customer

SOS is a privately held Canadian company which provides a variety of out-bound and in-bound support & consulting services to both large corporations and consumers through a single point of contact using its SOS™ tool.

Mission

Using live, Internet video conferencing, SOS™ instantly connects users of technology, 1-on-1, to SOS™ coaches whose learning methodology ensures people save time by using more of the right tools in the right ways, faster. SOS significantly increases productivity and yields increased revenues, reduced expenses and a far greater ROI in people & technology.

Challenge

SOS had built their original system on top of a variety of third party software components. The solution did not allow for the flexibility, scalability or customer tracking capabilities that the company required to fuel their future growth. In addition, they had received several requests to sell or license their software solution in its entirety to customers who preferred to run the service themselves. The original system was not able to be packaged for sale in this manner.

SOS required a complete redesign of the architecture and functioning of their system.

Approach

Agora worked closely with SOS to understand and document both the current system and, more importantly, their business process. A disciplined planning process resulted in detailed functional specification document. In order to expedite delivery time, detailed technical specifications, coding and testing were done using Agora’s Staged Delivery Methodology. This resulted in five interim releases of the solution throughout the nine month development cycle.

For the development phase, Agora followed its standard best practices that include extensive use of its code generation toolsets and strict adherence to its coding guidelines and conventions.

A formal QA process was undertaken, including use of Agora’s proprietary Issue Tracking and Exception Tracking software.

Solution

Agora architected, designed and developed a complete customer management and online training application built entirely in Microsoft .NET. The application is built to scale for 1,000 trainers and 50,000 customers in time zones and languages from around the world. The application is a WinForm, ASP.NET, and SQL Server solution that communicates via secured web services and .NET Remoting. The site is built using a 6 server load-balanced, clustered Windows 2003 environment.

Impact

The new SOS solution was rolled out and in service on time, allowing SOS to continue to sell and deploy the solution to a wider range of customers including HP, eBay, Rogers Communications and Bell Canada. The application was awarded the Built for Windows XP and the Built for Windows 2003 Server designation in its first round of testing by Veritest allowing SOS the ability to package the application and sell it to these and other Fortune 100 companies.

Future Plans

Agora continues to support SOS by providing ongoing updates and enhancements to the system.