Custom Development Success Story

Professional Services and Engineering Firm Replaces Multiple Legacy Job Management Systems and Tools, Improving Integration with Organizational Systems

Focus Corporation

Focus Corporation is a rapidly growing multi-disciplinary consulting firm. Focus provides a range of engineering, geomatics, planning and project management services to clients involved in oil and gas, oil sands, infrastructure, land development and environmental projects.

Challenge

Focus’ Geomatics Division performs land surveys and mapping services for Clients primarily from the Oil and Gas Industry. Each incoming client request is considered a Job that needs to be managed (resourced, coordinated through several operational teams, deliverables sent to client, and invoiced) to a projected completion date. The interval available to meet the client requested date is quite short, so the processes and systems must accommodate many concurrent jobs, communicate well, and maintain quality information and deliverables. As an organization, Focus faced several challenges that included:

  • Acquisitions made in previous years burdened the company with multiple applications to fulfill the same business processes
  • The legacy applications had minimal integration with each other, so analytical reporting was time consuming and inter-office resource sharing was difficult
  • More than one definition of a Job and the associated internal activities required to complete that Job, made automation using preferences and templates difficult
  • Internal IT resources occupied with having to maintain multiple legacy applications that duplicated functionality, while still scheduling resources to other new improvement projects

Solution

Focus and Ideaca embarked on a Geomatics Systems Integration (GSI) Program in 2008. The GSI Program required estimating, planning, gathering requirements, configuration/development and testing, change management, training and documentation, deployment, and stabilization. The core of the program was a custom application development project called the Geomatics Management System (GMS) that replaced the legacy job management systems. To compliment GMS improvements, concurrent projects were also created for:

  • Client relationship management using Dynamics CRM
  • Records management
  • Time entry
  • Mapping
  • Drafting
  • Invoicing
  • Internal website based on SharePoint
  • Client portal

Each of these tools then integrated with GMS to establish a common and efficient flow of information for internal teams responsible for completing a Job.

Benefits

  • Common job management tools for all Geomatics created one place for all current and historical job information
  • Ability to load balance resources. Resources from one region can assist another office if a backlog is approaching to maintain delivery target objectives
  • Increase in productivity with better accessibility, user experience improvements and enhancements, and workflow integration
  • Reduction in the maintenance and support workload on internal IT resources
  • GMS is the foundation for long term objectives to differentiate Focus in a competitive market.