Approver Maintenance Application (AMA)

Industry

Procurement, purchasing and tire production.

Customer

Our customer is a major world tire production company.

Project Overview

The Approver Maintenance Application (AMA) is designed to streamline updates to the approval process for purchasing requisitions.

AMA allows users to submit changes to the approver configurations for all indirect spending purchasing applications. These purchasing applications enforce purchasing policies, and AMA manages the approver data that the applications use to enforce those policies.

AMA has been launched to provide an easy process to maintain data in our customer's purchasing systems, namely Lotus Notes Approval Tool, SAP, CSIS, and Ariba Buyer. If an associate uses one of these systems, this self–service tool will make it easier to keep the approver data current, eliminating delays in the processing of a requisition. An example of a common change is the update required when an organizational change results in someone new taking over the approval function for a team.

AMA saves time by eliminating the need to submit separate requests to update multiple purchasing systems. As a result, this avoids delays caused by incorrect approver data because only one system receives the latest organizational updates.

Project Execution

The AMA application is being implemented for our customer's North American Purchasing Departments. IBA is working as a part of the development team.

IBA implemented the project in close cooperation with the customer (business analysts). The IBA responsibilities include requirement analysis; application design; database design, application development; unit, functional and system testing; quality assurance; and support.

The project implementation includes the following stages:

1. Analysis of the data model
2. Analysis of business logic
3. Implementation of a database structure (Oracle)
4. Uploading actual data
5. Developing a back–end tier (based on DAO pattern)
6. Developing a business tier
7. Developing a front–end tier (based on Apache Struts Framework)
8. Deploying a beta version to test and consolidate Application Servers
9. QA, bug fixing and implementation of minor updates on the basis of customer feedbacks
10. Deploying to production the Application Server (go live)
11. Enhancement of the application.

The first ten stages were finished on time with excellent references from the customer. The eleventh stage is currently underway.

Technologies:

• Java, J2EE, JavaScript, VBScript, XSL, XSLT, XML, XSD, DHTML, JSP, CSS
• Dynamic Web Module v.2.4
• EAR v.1.4
• Apache Struts Framework v.1.1
• JRE 1.5 (WebSphere v.6.1. JRE)

Tools:

• IBM Rational Application Developer v.7.0
• IBM WebSphere Application Server v.6.1
• Oracle Database 10g Enterprise Edition
• Tridion CM
• CVS
• BugZero

Project Results

The application was deployed to production in line with the schedule. IBA received excellent references from the customer. Here is what one of the clients said:

“Great job everyone!  We are finally live!!! We would like to thank IBA for all you developed, your help and expertise. All IBA workers have been very eager to assist, extremely knowledgeable and very flexible, meeting our requests as they change. This has been such a positive experience for us and we truly value the relationship we have built with IBA thus far.”