Emerging technologies in Information and Communication Industries are changing the way people work, communicate manage. The most dramatic impacts from these technologies are speed, cost efficiency and productivity.
Solutions Middle East (SME) is poised to take advantage of these new technologies to present solutions to organizations in the Middle East. Solutions Middle East, formed in 1997, has already established itself as one of the leading niche software and services companies in the region. Its mission is to provide innovative Information & Communication Technology (ICT) based solutions to the corporate market in the Middle East. It is backed by a professional and dedicated team of IT, Telecom, Software and Management personnel.
Solutions Middle East has a portfolio of over 1500 clients in the UAE & the region. Solutions Middle East operates out of its head office located in Dubai, the business hub of the Middle East. It also has presence in all the GCC countries through a network of partners in Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain and Kuwait. Solutions Middle East focuses purely on emerging ICT based software solutions that includes:-
. Fax Server
. Remote Access & Security
. Mobility
. Enterprise Content Management
. Print Management
. CRM & Computer Telephony
Vision
To be acknowledged as the leading and most favored regional provider of Information and Communication Technology Solutions to facilitate organizations improve their Management and Productivity through proficient communications and processes. Solutions Middle East continuously strives to realize its vision by making care for the customer their prevailing priority and concern in everything they do.- Exceeding customer prospect in terms of quality of products and services.- Building a skilled team of principled and capable people. - Developing a portfolio of cutting edge, emerging technology products - Building close and efficient partnerships and planned alliances. - Translating leadership in customer care to leadership in value and wealth generation for all stake holders including employees, alliance partners, shareholders in particular and the community in general.
Values
The company believes in - Being fair, ethical and transparent to all stakeholders. - Placing its customers irrespective of their size, before their stakeholders and themselves. - The need for adopting excellence in all processes, which alone can ensure contentment for all. - Challenging the best out of themselves before asking others. - An open work ethnicity which supports dissent and celebrates performance - continuous improvement in everything they do. - sustaining learning at all levels by encouraging experimentation. - That they cannot prosper without contributing to the well being of the community in which they live and operate.
Achievements
Growth
In a short span of time Solutions Middle East has grown in almost every facet of the business including - Revenue 70% increase compared to last year.
- Customer base (nearly 1500)
- People (50)
- Exposure (8 countries)
- Partners (over 10)
- Product Groups (8)
- Products (over 40)
Profitability
Despite the high rate of growth, Solutions Middle East has maintained its success levels thanks to increasing revenue streams and firm control on costs.
Stability
Solutions Middle East revenue streams have a high module of inveterate income that lends to financial stability. They also have a very low employee turnover rate that gives them equipped continuity and stability.
Visibility
For a company of their age and size they are highly evident in their target market. This has been achieved with focused, cost effective marketing operations and brand building activities.
Market Leadership
Solutions Middle East is today recognized as either No.1 or No.2 in each area of their proficiency in the U.A.E market.
Strengths
Solutions Middle East's growth and success is based on their strengths and competencies which are highlighted below:
Focus / Direction
Right from the outset, they have set their clear goals and guidelines that help them stay focused. They not only know what they ought to do but also know what they should not get into. Such focus has helped them optimize exploitation of their indefinite resources and given all stakeholders a strong sense of rationale, direction and distinctiveness.
Principles/Values/Ethics
While they pursue their vision with verve, passion and devotion, they are extremely vigilant that their actions are guided by eternal values and ethics. While this might have slowed them down momentarily and caused difficulties, they have always emerged stronger and more resilient.
Customer Care
Solutions Middle East feels fortunate to serve each and every one of their area customers irrespective of their size or clout. They do not believe in neglecting the small customer in order to pamper the big ones. Their customers come from almost every part of the economy including energy, utility, finance, distribution, transportation and government. They serve small one-man-offices to large enterprises with thousands of employees.
People Care
Solutions Middle East takes immense pride in their people and takes great care in training, nurturing and retaining them. They are extremely careful and thorough in their selection processes to guarantee they only get the right people to come on board. They also promote maximum possible partaking in planning and decision-making.
Market Orientation
Solutions Middle East develops their plans and sets its objectives based on market research and feedback. They defy the inducement to get into areas or alliances that look attractive on the surface only.
They support their team members to continuously extract feedback from the marketplace and communicate it to the management.
Partnerships
Solutions Middle East values its partnerships with principals, channel partners and alliance partners. They always want to form win-win relationships.
Infrastructure/Resources
Solutions Middle East realizes that their team needs the best possible infrastructure to be proficient and dynamic. Hence be efficient and productive. Hence they have invested heavily in various coordination resources e.g.
- A high bandwidth secure leased line to the net
- Network of 40 PCs and servers
- A state of the art CRM system
- A support management/customer care system
- unified Messaging System
- A modern lab for testing and R & D
Apart from the above, they continually make attempts to be aware of their weaknesses and continuously attempt to rectify them. They believe this is their utmost strength.
Customers
Solutions Middle East is proud and fortunate to serve nearly 1000 customers who come from various sectors of the financial system, including the following:
- Automotive
- Banking and Finance
- Distribution Consulting
- Energy Education Government
- Hospitality
- Manufacturing
- Shipping
- Transportation
- Utility
- Government
They have served customers in countries outside UAE, mainly the following GCC countries,
Kuwait
Bahrain
Oman
Qatar
Saudi Arabia
Solutions
Computer Telephony
Communication has come a long way from the days of obscure scribbles on pink slips of paper. Today Solutions Middle East benefits from technology in the form of Email, Voicemail and Unified Messaging to correspond faster and more accurately than ever before. Many large corporations are meeting this communications challenge - and gaining a competitive edge -by taking benefit of the latest advances in messaging technology. Benefits Professional image to the organization condense load on the human operator. Never miss a call or message (business opportunity). Improves employee's productivity. Improve customer experience leave the office without loosing touch. Sustain the investment.
Customer Relationship Management
CRM is a customer centric business approach to understand and foresee customer needs.
CRM is an approach to facilitate flawless integration of every area of business that touches the organizations clientele.
At its most basic, CRM involves customers, organizations and relationships and the arrangement creates the need for management. CRM is best explained, as organizations approaches to employ in a "Customer-centric" business strategy to proactively manage customer relations in a consistent manner across the enterprise.
A well-implemented CRM allows organizations to assemble a robust foundation to provide a 360 degree view of a customer- be it customers address entry or the entire sales or support history with that customer.
Messaging & Communication
Messaging in business technology refers to the proficient management of corporate communication of all types in receiving, sending, archival and reclamation of messages. Corporate Electronic Messaging was long been identical with emails. However with other aspects of business communication including Fax, Telex, Voice and Mobile Communications continuing to grow and play a vital role, the need of the hour is to control the benefits of an electronic system that help companies overcome the traditional problems linked with a manual system transmission costs & productivity losses, loss or delay of information, lack of data cohesiveness and data storage.
Captaris
Captaris RightFax is the proven market leader in fax server, document delivery and fax software. It delivers the most reliable and robust fax software solutions to integrate and automate the flow of a full range of fax, paper and electronic documents and data, enabling enterprises to achieve significant cost reductions. By using a RightFax fax server, companies can strongly and efficiently deliver business information from virtually any application via fax, email, and print devices over the Internet.
CHAPTER 2: SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS
A software development process is a configuration imposed on the development of a software product. Similar terms include software life cycle and software process. There are several models for such processes, each describing approaches to a variety of tasks or activities that take place during the process. Some people consider a lifecycle model a more general term and a software development process a more specific term. For example, there are many specific software development processes that 'fit' the spiral lifecycle model.
2.1 Overview
The large and increasing body of software development organizations implements development methodologies. Many of them are in the defense industry.
The international standard for describing the process of selecting, implementing and monitoring the life cycle for software is ISO 12207.
A decades-long aim has been to uncover repeatable, conventional processes that advance efficiency and value. Some try to organize or formalize the outwardly disruptive task of writing software. Others relate project management techniques to writing software. Without project management, software projects can easily be delivered late or over budget. With large numbers of software projects not meeting their expectations in terms of functionality, cost, or delivery schedule, effective project management appears to be lacking.
Organizations may create a Software Engineering Process Group (SEPG), which is the focal point for process improvement. Composed of line practitioners who have varied skills, the group is at the center of the collaborative effort of everyone in the organization who is involved with software engineering process improvement.
2.2 Software development activities
2.2.1 Planning
The important task in creating a software product is extracting the requirements or analysis. Customers typically have an abstract idea of what they want as an end result, but not what software should do. Incomplete, ambiguous, or even contradictory requirements are recognized by skilled and experienced software engineers at this point. Frequently demonstrating live code may help reduce the risk that the requirements are incorrect.
Once the general requirements are gathered from the client, an analysis of the scope of the development should be determined and clearly stated. This is often called a scope document.
Certain functionality may be out of scope of the project as a function of cost or as a result of unclear requirements at the start of development. If the development is done externally, this document can be considered a legal document so that if there are ever disputes, any ambiguity of what was promised to the client can be clarified.
2.2.2 Implementation, testing and documenting
Implementation is the part of the process where software engineers actually program the code for the project.
Software testing is an integral and important part of the software development process. This part of the process ensures that defects are recognized as early as possible.
Documenting the internal design of software for the purpose of future maintenance and enhancement is done throughout development. This may also include the authoring of an API, be it external or internal.
2.2.3 Deployment and maintenance
Deployment starts after the code is appropriately tested, is approved for release and sold or otherwise distributed into a production environment.
Software Training and Support is important and a lot of developers fail to realize that. It would not matter how much time and planning a development team puts into creating software if nobody in an organization ends up using it. People are often resistant to change and avoid venturing into an unfamiliar area, so as a part of the deployment phase, it is very important to have training classes for new clients of your software.
Maintaining and enhancing software to cope with newly discovered problems or new requirements can take far more time than the initial development of the software. It may be necessary to add code that does not fit the original design to correct an unforeseen problem or it may be that a customer is requesting more functionality and code can be added to accommodate their requests. If the labor cost of the maintenance phase exceeds 25% of the prior-phases' labor cost, then it is likely that the overall quality of at least one prior phase is poor. In that case, management should consider the option of rebuilding the system (or portions) before maintenance cost is out of control.
Bug Tracking System tools are often deployed at this stage of the process to allow development teams to interface with customer/field teams testing the software to identify any real or perceived issues. These software tools, both open source and commercially licensed, provide a customizable process to acquire, review, acknowledge, and respond to reported issues.
2.3 Software Development Models
Several models exist to streamline the development process. Each one has its pros and cons, and it's up to the development team to adopt the most appropriate one for the project. Sometimes a combination of the models may be more suitable.
2.3.1 Waterfall Model
The waterfall model shows a process, where developers are to follow these phases in order:
Requirements specification (Requirements Analysis)
Design
Implementation (or Coding)
Integration
Testing (or Validation)
Deployment (or Installation)
Maintenance
Figure 2.1: The Waterfall Model
In a strict Waterfall model, after each phase is finished, it proceeds to the next one. Reviews may occur before transitioning to the next phase which allows for the possibility of changes (which may involve a formal change control process). Reviews may also be employed to ensure that the phase is indeed complete; the phase completion criteria are often referred to as a "gate" that the project must pass through to move to the next phase. Waterfall discourages revisiting and revising any prior phase once it's complete. This "inflexibility" in a pure Waterfall model has been a source of criticism by other more "flexible" models.
2.3.2 Spiral Model
The key characteristic of a Spiral model is risk management at regular stages in the development cycle. In 1988, Barry Boehm published a formal software system development "spiral model", it falls models and rapid prototyping models combine the emphasis has been neglected by other models of risk analysis, particularly suited to large-scale complex systems. Spiral model spiral down to a number of iteration, the four quadrant diagram representative of the following activities:
(1) Formulate plans to: identify software targets, selected to implement the program, clarify the project development restrictions;
(2) Risk analysis: an analytical assessment of selected programs, to consider how to identify and eliminate risk;
(3) The implementation of the project: the implementation of software development and verification;
(4) Customer evaluation: evaluation of development work, the proposal of amendments, plans to formulate the next step.
Figure 2.2: The Spiral Model
However, the spiral model has some restrictive conditions, as follows:
(1) Spiral model emphasize risk analysis, but require customers to accept and believe that much of this analysis, and make the relevant response is not easy, therefore, this model is often adapted to large-scale internal software development.
(2) If the implementation of risk analysis will greatly affect the profits of the project, then risk analysis is meaningless, therefore, spiral model is only suitable for large-scale software projects.
(3) Good software developers should look for possible risks, an accurate analysis of risk, otherwise it will lead to greater risk.
First stage is to determine the stage of the goal of accomplishing these objectives, options and constraints, and then from the perspective of risk analysis program, development strategy, and strive to remove all potential risks, and sometimes necessary to achieve through the construction of the prototype. If some risk cannot be ruled out, the program to end immediately, or else start the development of the next steps. Finally, evaluation results of the stage, and the design of the next phase.
2.3.3 Iterative and Incremental Development
Iterative development prescribes the construction of initially small but ever larger portions of a software project to help all those involved to uncover important issues early before problems or faulty assumptions can lead to disaster. Iterative processes are preferred by commercial developers because it allows a potential of reaching the design goals of a customer who does not know how to define what they want.
Figure 2.3: Iterative Development Process
2.3.4 Agile Development
Agile software development uses iterative development as a basis but advocates a lighter and more people-centric viewpoint than traditional approaches. Agile processes use feedback, rather than planning, as their primary control mechanism. The feedback is driven by regular tests and releases of the evolving software.
There are many variations of agile processes.
XP (Extreme Programming)
In XP, the phases are carried out in extremely small (or "continuous") steps compared to the older, "batch" processes. The (intentionally incomplete) first pass through the steps might take a day or a week, rather than the months or years of each complete step in the Waterfall model. First, one writes automated tests, to provide concrete goals for development. Next is coding (by a pair of programmers), which is complete when all the tests pass, and the programmers can't think of any more tests that are needed. Design and architecture emerge out of refactoring, and come after coding. Design is done by the same people who do the coding. (Only the last feature - merging design and code - is common to all the other agile processes.) The incomplete but functional system is deployed or demonstrated for (some subset of) the users (at least one of which is on the development team). At this point, the practitioners start again on writing tests for the next most important part of the system.
2.4 Process Improvement Methods
Capability Maturity Model Integration
The Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) is one of the leading models and based on best practice. Independent assessments grade organizations on how well they follow their defined processes, not on the quality of those processes or the software produced. CMMI has replaced CMM.
ISO 9000
ISO 9000 describes standards for a formally organized process to manufacture a product and the methods of managing and monitoring
progress. Although the standard was originally created for the manufacturing sector, ISO 9000 standards have been applied to software development as well. Like CMMI, certification with ISO 9000 does not guarantee the quality of the end result, only that formalized business processes have been followed.
ISO 15504
ISO 15504, also known as Software Process Improvement Capability
Determination (SPICE), is a "framework for the assessment of software processes". This standard is aimed at setting out a clear model for process comparison. SPICE is used much like CMMI. It models processes to manage, control, guide and monitor software development. This model is then used to measure what a development organization or project team actually does during software development. This information is analyzed to identify weaknesses and drive improvement. It also identifies strengths that can be continued or integrated into common practice for that organization or team.
CHAPTER 3: EMF FAX CONNECTOR
EMF Fax Connector application's primary objective is to poll Radiology results from a folder, scan the documents and send them to the specified FAX NUMBER (S).
EMF Fax Connector is windows based application developed for American Hospital to ease the workflow of Sending Fax, Maintaining Database and Resending the Radiology Result in the form of word documents provided by the Meditech Systems.
3.1 Layout of the application
The system includes three parts the user would work on, as follows:
Main Window (EMF Processing Module). (Refer to figure 3.2)
Parameters. (Refer to figure 3.3)
Resend/Reprocess. (Refer to figure 3.5, 3.7)
Main Window
Main Page includes two parts the users can work on:
Status Viewing Pane
Start Process, Parameters, Resend Buttons
Status Viewing Pane shows the details of the files that are being processed and sent to either successful folder or unsuccessful folder. Using this pane user can verify if the fax is being sent or not. If a fax is not sent then user can also check the reason for the same.
Start Process button allows the users to start the process of scanning the Radiology results in the form of word documents and send them to the fax number(s) specified within the documents manually
Parameters button opens a new window through which users can save the RightFax server authentication details and more.
Resend button opens a new window through which users can view the details of all the faxes sent or not failed using search parameters and resend / reprocess the records.
Figure 3.1: Workflow for Start Process Button
Status Viewing Pane
Start Process, Parameters, Resend Buttons
Figure 3.2: Main Window
Figure 3.1 shows the workflow for start process button. When the user hits Start Process button the first step the application performs is to poll the folder paths from Parameter Database then it goes to the source folder and checks for the folder with "today's date" as the description. If the folder is found then all the radiology results (in the form of word documents) are scanned for the keyword "FAX:" If a fax is number(s) is found in a particular file then the file is sent to all these fax number(s) via RightFax application. The next step is to check the status returned by RightFax. If the status is true then the file is moved to successful folder and details are saved into the patient database, if the status is false then the file is moved to unsuccessful folder and details are saved into the patient database.
Parameters
The Parameters button opens a new window (refer to figure 3.3), which will allow the user to enter the username, password and right fax server name allowing the application to login in right fax application. It also allows the user to choose the:
Source Path - The network path of the folder where the documents are stored.
Successful folder - The path of the folder where the successfully sent documents will be moved if the send status returned from RightFax is TRUE.
Unsuccessful folder - The path of the folder where the failed documents will be moved if the status returned from RightFax is FALSE.
Figure 3.3: Parameters Window
Users need to click on "Update" in order to save this information in to the Parameter Database.
Figure 3.4: Workflow for Parameters Window
Resend/Reprocess
The Resend button opens a new window Send Fax. This window allows the user to resend the successfully sent documents and reprocess the failed documents. It allows the users to select from various search parameters.
Figure 3.5: Resend/Reprocess Window without any records
After the search parameters have been selected the user must click on "Generate Data Grid". This will generate a table with fields as fax number, Client name, MR number, Episode Number, Attending Doctor name.
Figure 3.6: Workflow for Resend / Reprocess Window
Figure 3.7: Resend/Reprocess Window with records (using search options)
The user can select the documents to be resent or reprocessed and must click on "Send Fax" in order to send the fax through Right Fax Application.
Conclusion
I have worked in the organization for 3 months and I can confidently say that the experience and knowledge I have gained from working here has been tremendous. Supportive colleagues, healthy work atmosphere and friendly attitudes are just few of the attributes of the organization.
In this time period, I have learnt about the basic workflow of Solutions Middle East i.e. chain of events right from the time a package is picked up till it is delivered. I gained knowledge about solutions like alchemy, Easi SMS, Maximizer (CRM) Etc, which our company deals in. As a part of my project I have developed an application through which I learned programming in Visual Basic.net and database management also.
I am privileged to be associated with an organization like Solutions Middle East. The company has given me true real-world experience on global work environments. I will always cherish the moments that I spent in this organization.
