ATS Case Studies

We are proud to share several case studies for the Alcea Tracking Solutions (ATS, formerly FIT) suite, provided by the respective clients.

GX Technology

Looking for a Cost-Effective Tool that would receive organizational buy-in.

GX Technology’s Image-Driven approach and innovative technologies produce high fidelity land and marine subsurface images while reducing the risk and cost of finding and producing hydrocarbons. With the addition of GMG Products, they have expanded their line and services through the entire seismic process from survey design to advanced imaging solutions. By developing new technologies, new methodologies and new business models, they provide their clients with significantly greater value in their seismic data.

As one of the leaders in PreSDM, GX Technology undertakes the most sophisticated depth imaging projects. This includes targets that are at extreme depths, obscured by salt or gas clouds, or defined by complex structure and stratigraphy. They have the ability to overcome imaging challenges presented by velocity anisotropy, near-surface velocity anomalies, and complex reservoir fracturing. Their latest research emphasis is on converted wave and full-wave processing, the results from which have already been applied to image reservoirs onshore in North America and offshore in the Gulf of Mexico.

GX Technology needed a tool to capture problems found in their in-house seismic imaging tools and with 3rd party software they use. In addition to tracking these problems, they also wanted to share and report this information between different centers and share a possible work around until the problems were resolved. Prior to using Alcea Technologies’ FIT software, several attempts had been made to get an issue tracking system implemented at GX Technology using several different products including Bugzilla open source software. All attempts failed for various reasons.

Not only did the users want something that took a minimal effort to utilize, management wanted minimal time for training and something that could be administrated with minimal interaction with the IT department which was always stretched too thin.

Internal research was conducted by Mike Roberts of GX Technology to determine why previous attempts had failed and to identify what factors would contribute to a successful implementation. It was found that the main reason for previous failures was a lack of buy in by upper management and everyday users. Contributing to this was a small company culture/ideology that it was faster to go down the hall to a developer rather than enter something into a tool/tracker.

It was determined that a critical factor for a successful implementation would be the ease of use and administration of the tool. The IT group did not want to be involved in the day to day maintenance of the tool and the users wanted something that was easy to understand and fill out quickly. Along these same lines, someone needed to be responsible for the process and keeping people engaged.

The two main conclusions Mike came up with during his investigation were that cost was important – they did not want to spend a lot of money on the issue tracking process but wanted something flexible that could grow with them; and they needed to ‘Keep It Simple Stupid’. Not only did the users want something that took a minimal effort to utilize, management wanted minimal time for training and something that could be administrated with minimal interaction with the IT department which was always stretched too thin.

Several individuals that had been involved with the previous failed attempts were identified and they contributed to the development of a requirements matrix.

Through the implementation of the FIT software, GX Technology has found a cost-effective tool that has been embraced by users to not only track problems, but they have extended its use to organize other valuable information.

GX Technology chose FIT Tracking Solutions software with the Database Module. They are making the most out of this flexible and configurable tool by employing it to track problems, capture best practices or hints and tips, conduct peer reviews and track and organize testcases. The FIT software has kept issues from falling through the cracks and has kept the GX Technology team informed and up-to-date on issues related to them.

Peer Reviews are tracked and organized from within the FIT system. These are gatherings of several individuals from around the company to perform a review of any major I/O pass by a user. The user fills out a form in the tracker detailing the project and I/O pass requiring review, who needs to attend and attaches a file of either the parameters in the flow that is being reviewed or a sample pass through of the parameters applied to some test data. During the actual review, comments by the attendees regarding the flow are added to the comments of the issue.

GX Technology also uses FIT to track and organize data testcases. These testcases are used to test imaging software that is developed in-house, and track certain datasets to keep them in a central location for future use. In this testcase tracker the different fields contain different attributes of the data as well as the location where this data is stored. FIT’s powerful search tool allows users to quickly identify potential testcases that satisfy the specific data requirements that they may have.

Various scripts used in processing are also tracked and organized using the FIT system. This allows GX Technology to easily identify, collect and share scripts written between various centers. This way the effort is not duplicated for similar functionality and FIT again provides a quick way of identifying it.

Through the implementation of the FIT software, GX Technology has found a cost-effective tool that has been embraced by users to not only track problems, but they have extended its use to organize other valuable information.

Gilmore Overklick Technologies

Since 1993 Gilmore Global has delivered integrated services for many of the world’s most respected global companies. Today, Gilmore Global offers a flexible, global supply chain solution for growing companies. Gilmore Global’s integrated solutions meet the diverse needs of organizations with a range of content deployment (paper, media, digital) and supply chain support requirements.

Gilmore Global has consistently looked for better ways of analyzing both the types of inquiries that it receives as well as the resulting communications that are necessary to resolve each of its client’s issues. This ongoing analysis provides Gilmore Global with the critical information necessary to develop solutions and tools required to improve overall customer experience. While email has proven to be a flexible and convenient tool for client communications it is cumbersome to manage across teams and it can be difficult to use in effective issue tracking and management.
A prime consideration for Gilmore Global was the reduction of email traffic to its customer support teams while ensuring that all inquiries were logged, tracked and evaluated.

FIT allows Gilmore Global’s clients to make inquiries and report issues through a managed application. This managed approach ensures Gilmore Global’s ISO compliance by providing effective issue tracking and management metrics including issue types and volumes, open communications and closure rates. It also provides for the escalation of flagged issues within the system.

With an “internal” and “external” track, Gilmore can communicate internally about an open issue without the customer seeing those communications. FIT provides Gilmore with a central repository for all communications on the subject.

Fit is also used as a means of communication between Gilmore Global’s customers and its Global Partners. A customer can enter an issue or details for an order to be expedited. FIT then automatically redirects the ticket to the appropriate print partner, with Gilmore on copy. This eliminates any issues concerning different time zones and ensures immediate responses.

Gilmore Global has further expanded its use of FIT to conduct purchasing.

True Digital Content and Media

We are a small development team remote from the corporate headquarters in Bangkok, Thailand. Projects being developed in California are tightly integrated with Bangkok projects and services like QA, Operations, and IT are handled by Bangkok team members. The time zone difference and physical distance makes it easy for the extended team members to lose track of the status of open issues.

Communication on issues is done directly in the tracking system, so everyone always has the full discussion history. No more partial history as people get added and dropped from emails. Having one tool that is customizable so different content can be shared based on group criteria has meant a user only sees what is important to that team. We all know what the priorities are for the release, and issues/features moved out to future releases are being tracked.

 

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York works within the Federal Reserve System and with other public and private sector institutions to foster the safety, soundness and vitality of our economic and financial systems.

The Federal Reserve Bank of New York is one of 12 regional Reserve Banks which, together with the Board of Governors in Washington, D.C., make up the Federal Reserve System. The Fed, as the system is commonly called, is an independent governmental entity created by Congress in 1913 to serve as the central bank of the United States. It is responsible for:

• formulating and executing monetary policy
• supervising and regulating depository institutions
• providing an elastic currency
• assisting the federal government’s financing operations, and
• serving as the banker for the U.S. government

The HR department within the New York Fed, was faced with the problem of effectively managing requests coming from different areas of the bank. Employees, bank wide, used to call a help desk number and the call was either answered or diverted according to type of request. This process was manual and there was no way of tracking the progress of the request. Also there was no history of the requests. No statistics could be created.

It was high time that a help desk type system was created to alleviate the problems described. We needed a system where any employee can submit a ticket and track its progress. Once the ticket is created, it needs to be assigned to a support staff automatically. The support staff needs to be notified by the system on a pending ticket. The workflow of the ticket needs to be defined in the system. As the ticket moves from state to state the originator needs to be notified of its progress. HR was looking for such a solution.

Since, FIT was already at use in New York Fed, as a defect tracking tool, HR was already exposed to it in other projects. HR group reached out to us to implement the desired solution. As we are familiar with FIT solutions, we picked the help desk track. As all users of the bank need to be able to enter tickets, we enabled the anonymous entry and query feature that comes with FIT solutions. We created our own front end for the external users and customized the help desk track as per requirements. It was very easy to create and customize tracks.

The users were very happy with filtering, reporting and audit trail capabilities of the system. The system is currently in production with favorable feedback from the users.

iCOMP

Improving Customer Relations with the Use of Anonymous Issue Entry

Located in Kent, Washington, iComp is a software company that develops a vertical market application to manage the complexities of the Workers’ Compensation arena. More than just a claims processing tool, iComp is designed for third party administrators and self-insured companies. Its graphical user interface helps users work more efficiently.

iComp needed a system to track bugs as well as features and other requests made by their customers. iComp had been using Microsoft Excel spreadsheets to manually track these issues but felt a more sophisticated system was required to manage their process and facilitate new service offerings to their clients.

It was critical that the iComp team be in full control over their data and they preferred the purchase of a software licence over a hosted subscription service.

Through web searches, discussions on user groups and referrals, a shortlist was developed and iComp chose to purchase FIT Tracking Solutions’ software to track bugs and issues.

FIT’s web-based architecture allows multiple users and sites to easily collaborate using their standard web browser – users do not need to install client-side software and many users can be logged in at one time from practically anywhere.

To facilitate improved customer relations and increase the quality of their products, iComp uses FIT’s powerful anonymous entry feature. This allows users to enter bugs and feature requests right from a form located in the support section of the iComp web site rather than log in to the system. When users enter an issue, they receive an email that includes a bug ID number, so they may view and track the status of the issue.

Internally, iComp also uses FIT to track licensing information and other documentation.

The City of Reno

The City of Reno is a local city government in northern Nevada, nicknamed the “Biggest Little City in the World”.

http://www.cityofreno.com/

With a population of over 211,000*, Reno is the largest city in Northern Nevada. It is located in the southern part of Washoe County, nestled on the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Mountains in an area called the Truckee Meadows.

Reno is America’s Adventure Place! The Truckee Meadows and surrounding area provide unlimited indoor and outdoor recreational activities. Spectacular Lake Tahoe and the largest concentration of ski areas and ski facilities in the world are all within a fifty-mile radius. Biking, camping, hunting, fishing and mountain climbing are all activities Reno residents and visitors enjoy.

We have been using Microsoft Sharepoint at the City of Reno for our intranet. Several departments used this environment to track issues or tasks assigned to staff. As dependency on these lists grew, we found we were growing beyond the basic Sharepoint functionality.

Our Chief of Staff at the time, Donna Dreska, had been using a Sharepoint task list for Council Assignments. These were ‘To Do’ items that resulted from Council meetings. Sharepoint could notify users that something had changed on a list but could not notify people when a task was assigned to them. Additionally, tracking these tasks and their status was a challenge

This year with the launch of a new intranet portal, we needed something to replace the Sharepoint task list for Council Assignments. Our IT director, Rick Vandenberg, started looking for a new task-tracking tool that we could now use that was both easy to use and expandable.

Rick decided to look for a Help Desk type solution rather than a project management tool since most internal staff resisted the complexities of PM tools. He reviewed several, but found they were costly and/or required a lot of customization. He then located and downloaded FIT HelpDesk. He had the software up and running in 30 minutes.

We needed something easy to use and set up. It needed to be able to notify specific users via email of task status and changes. It needed to keep a running status and history of the task. We wanted it to use the security of Active Directory so users could use network logins to access. FIT met all these requirements and was cost effective. The fact that it’s browser-based and does not require a client install on user’s machines was a real plus.

About 3 weeks after purchasing FIT HelpDesk, City of Reno staff, with help from their staff, have 7 tracks up and running in production with very favorable user feedback.

The City of Reno recommends this tool to anyone looking for a functional, yet cost effective task tracking solution.

The Prince William County Schools System

The Prince William County Schools System (a World-Class School Division) is located in Manassas Virginia and is currently the 2nd largest school system in Virginia. Prince William is a K-12 school system located in Northern Virginia just 40 minutes outside of Washington DC. You can visit us on the web at:

 http://www.pwcs.edu

Prince William County Schools has a current student population of over 76,650*, with over 9,600 employees, 88 schools and is the second largest school system in Virginia.

Provide the capability for constituents (parents, teachers, employees and other members of the community) a way to request information from Prince William County School system and have this request directed to the most appropriate member of the organization to address their request

. Our original method for tracking this information was done using a combination of emails and an Excel spreadsheet to store this information and was used to follow-up on each request. The difficulty comes with there being hundreds of requests made and then this information being disseminated using email and no efficient and collective way to keep track of who, what, when and where. We need to answer these questions:

  • Who has the issue
  • What is the status of each request
  • When will the issue be completed
  • Where did the request/issue take place, school location, other, etc?

The email and excel spreadsheet is process was used for a sometime and it was clear that tracking requests using this method was not working sufficiently to provide information in a timely manner so we began looking for an automated solution.

We considered building a system using in-house staff which would cost significant amounts of time and money and then considering we did not have sufficient resources available to commit to the effort, it was decided to consider products in the marketplace to solve the problem. Many products were in the market, some expensive and those providing many bells and whistles which most were really not needed. Others systems were really help desk or inventory systems that had been converted to track issues but very few with the real focus of tracking requests or issues.

During the process of locating a product we came very close to selecting a product only to find out that it did not have the appropriate level of security and control on issues and the ability to control each issue down to each department level within the organization. We then came across FIT Tracking Solutions and downloaded the FIT IssueTrack software and had the software up and running in a very short period of time.

We required the following in an Issue Tracking System:

  • Easy to use and set up
  • Ability to notify users by email of tasks requiring their assistance
  • Know the status and history of the request at anytime
  • Know which staff members that had modified the issue

The need to have a hierarchical departmental level reporting structure which is multi-level. An example of this is that if I am an employee in the Accounts Payable department that I can see all issues for the Accounts Payable department. If the Accounts Payable Department reports to Finance Services and I am in charge of Finance Services, I can see all issues for both the Finance Services and Accounts Payable departments.

The best feature of the system is its ability for companies purchasing the product to be able to customize the look and feel and add additional fields and their relationships and basically provides a customized front end to our organizations needs. From a process perspective it took a little time to understand how requests moved thru our organization using the old methodology. Once these processes were understood we used this information and added over 300 user names to the system along with hundreds of Departments/Groups, their logical reporting relationships, and to setup appropriate level of security.

The system has been up and running for over 2 years with a 99% uptime with our services being securely hosted. Choosing the hosted solution did not require any additional staff, hardware or the need to administer to the system with already overworked staff members. Currently we have thousands of requests being serviced annually and each an every person involved with the solution is identified for future reference along with any correspondence on these issues.

We recommend FIT IssueTrack, by FIT Tracking Solutions for these reasons:

  • Ease of use and configurability
  • Friendliness of support staff and their eagerness to help and get us up and running
  • FIT Tracking Solutions staff’s ability to work with you when you have needs outside of the standard product and provide a custom solution to fit your needs.