Case Studies

Q3 contributes to PLM solution manufacturing company improve time to market for it’s clients

• Client delivers software solutions with emphasis on Data Profiling, Data Cleansing, Data Quality and Customer Data Integration. A Chicago-based privately held Company in its 8th year of business.
• Client provides industry-leading technologies that allow organizations to collect profile and cleanse their corporate data. These are essential processes for corporations that are involved with major projects such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), business intelligence systems and data warehousing.
• Client is Microsoft partner in providing data profiling and data cleansing systems which are seamlessly integrated with Microsoft SQL Server Integration Services in context of taking data management to the next level.

The manufacturing industry is a highly competitive industry, requiring quick introduction of new products with an increase in functionality. This calls for systems which enable companies to shorten the timeframe for creating and releasing new products to the market. As the client had a legacy based system, it hampered the company's ability to compete aggressively. Some of the challenges faced by the client included:

• Inability to effectively manage introduction of new products
• Enabling a single consolidated view of product development lifecycle data required for different projects of different divisions
• Inability to decide quickly and accurately due to lack of visualization capability by companies

• Q3 set up a dedicated team consisting of a team lead and software developers with internal program managers to monitor and guide the client-vendor partnership. The team decided using Microsoft® Visual Studio® .NET 2005 as the consolidated tool set, created a core set of components that supply the support for the whole architecture. Also, they developed an application that facilitates automated management of database connection and performance issues. This was achieved through WSE 3.0 compliant web service component that would provide distributed transaction control and multi threading handling of requests.
• To streamline its product development lifecycle, the client decided to go in for clients PLM solution. The team from Q3 did a detailed analysis of the client's requirements. This included performing a gap analysis of the existing processes and identifying the opportunities for improvement and optimization.
• Subsequently, process mapping was done to standardize and modify the process for implementing program management functions related to the semiconductor business. The team from Q3 also streamlined and standardized the program management process to ensure uniformity across the product value chain. Finally, a Visualization solution was implemented on top of the PLM solution for displaying Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) in a graphical form. This gave the client the ability to track a product related to parameters such as cost, quality, schedule, and ROI and turnaround time.
• Automated testing tools like Test Advantage were used by experienced QA professionals to ensure bug free, application milestones delivery within deadlines.

• Shorter time to market for the client products by exploiting the benefits of a fully functional Offshore Development Center (ODC) in India, particularly the development process being continuous due to different time zones.
• Extension of client’s development teams globally by taking advantage of Q3’s highly flexible Software Development Life Cycle (SDLC) methodology.
• Improved KPI visualization helped in forecasting project progress and preventing delays.
• Business model and culture at Q3 entails ownership of the product development process. It is not only the team members who are dedicated to a client; it is the whole company management which works in complete tandem and efficiency to ensure that the relationship is seamless and successful.
• Migration to newer technology was achieved in a very cost effective solution on account of being able to cut down resource costs from average $90,000 to approximately $30,000 per resource.