Challenge

Archon is a Dallas based real property portfolio manager experiencing phenomenal growth in their domestic and international markets. As a result of this growth, they outgrew their WAN and client/server applications and required a more flexible, web based solution to allow ubiquitous access to critical information twenty-four hours a day. The "e.Information" needed by portfolio managers was very sensitive and required reliable security measures to ensure that the portfolio data was seen only by those authorized to do so.

PROJECT DESCRIPTION

Overview

A web-based knowledge management and reporting system was developed to provide portfolio managers with real-time access to their clients' property and investment information. The web reporting system was designed, developed and implemented utilizing Actuate and SilverStream which provided a solid and scalable foundation with future expansion capabilities.

Solution

Following several planning meetings with representatives from Archon, BrightStar recommended and received concurrence to utilize the SilverStream and Actuate base applications to support the company's existing staff of 500 employees allowing worldwide access to eBusiness and e.Reporting on all assets managed by Archon. The architecture developed by BightStar and subsequently approved by Archon allows complex and financial statement reporting via the Actuate product suite. These reports, with requirements that were clearly understood by BrightStar prior to implementation, were provided to Archon web users using a SilverStream business object constructed from Actuate's URL directives.

Results

By utilizing the SilverStream and Actuate software, a scalable solution was implemented for Archon that allowed for rapid growth and expansion with minimal additional software and hardware cost. BrightStar provided both system and software training and support for Archon to transition the future report development and system support in-house. Today, Archon is able to successfully support its entire system in-house.

Benefits

- Solved the customer's complex financial statement reporting issues which had hindered the dissemination of information to portfolio managers in a timely manner.
- Flexible, easy to use web-based solution to allow access to critical information, previously not available without labor-intensive data manipulation.
- Provides portfolio management data to several hundred real property portfolio managers worldwide on an on-demand and scheduled basis, allowing the portfolio managers to run custom reports that they previously had no easy access to.
- Provides a new information portal that allows the portfolio managers to collaborate and share information between themselves, a previously very difficult and time-consuming manual process.

Lessons Learned

With the population of end-users (portfolio managers) widely dispersed around the world, all requiring input to the system requirements, it was important to take advantage of Archon's organizational structure to clearly establish appropriate communication channels at the very beginning of the project to avoid any miscommunication of system requirements.