Case Studies

The client is a leading provider of complete BI solutions for mid-market enterprises and is at the forefront of Business Intelligence (BI) technology for cloud and on-premise ERPs. They are leaders in delivering innovative, business driven solutions to the market place that leverage Microsoft’s BI and Performance management technology platforms.

The client was looking for a software development partner, who could help them build cutting edged budgeting software to begin with and eventually help give concrete shape to their idea of offering an end to end BI suite. They had identified that their target market did not have any comprehensive BI tools and wanted to tap into this, but didn’t have the technical skillsets required to build such a product. Hence they were looking for someone with superlative technical expertise in Microsoft technologies and an ability to build a robust product suite based on the business requirements provided, while ensuring zero cost overruns. They wanted to ensure that that total development cost of the product suite was kept to a minimum and hence were looking for an offshore development partner.

Rheal was chosen as their strategic partner almost 8 years ago and the development started with an initial version of a Budgeting tool built as an excel addin. 8 years and multiple releases of various products later, Rheal still continues to be their primary development partner and has built the following pieces of their BI suite.

• Budgeting Tool: The first application Rheal built was a Budgeting and Forecasting tool. The first release was built as a VBA based Excel addin, but it was then changed to a .net based Excel addin to help mitigate performance issues and provide a better user experience. The tool’s USP was its quick and intuitive excel based UI, which made building multi-year budgets and rolling forecasts either from ground up or from existing budget templates, a quick and effortless task. Our unique suggestions regarding the optimum approach to read/write data from excel to SQL databases formed the core of the application’s performance benchmarks.
• Data Warehouse: Subsequent to the release of the Budgeting tool, the Client went on to build a SQL Server based data warehouse application which forms the core of the product suite. The data warehouse was targeted at the mid-market enterprises and offered features like pre-defined modules and dimensions for data from General Ledger, Payables, Receivables, Projects, Fixed assets etc. in addition to user defined modules for any data source and dimensions. It also featured out of the box integration to a number of external data sources like Microsoft Dynamics AX, GP, NAV, CRM, Accumatica, Intaact, Sage etc. Our expertise in working with different data sources helped the Client build this data warehouse at a negligible cost when compared to what it would have taken to build it in-house.
• Web Application: The Client’s first foray into web application development came with an application which aimed to provide a fundamental shift in the way enterprises analyze, discuss and make decisions about their business. It aimed to jointly drive efficiency and performance in all areas of business by providing a way to interact with anyone in the organization at any time and in any location. Rheal’s expertise in building high performance web applications ensured that the application provided one of most efficient and responsive user experiences.

The Client was able to realize its vision of having an end to end BI Suite to enhance their product offering with the help of Rheal’s services. The product suite was readily accepted in the market and the client has planned to release another version with additional features to enhance the reporting capabilities of the application and Rheal is actively involved in its development.