The days of the long drawn iterative software development process are a thing of the past, thanks to the significant shift towards packaged solutions. Interestingly enough, this trend is now dovetailing custom development of solutions built on top of leading industry platforms and packaged solutions to help serve the unique needs of fast growing organisations. The software application development practice today is about delivering agility at customer speed. TEXPO’s Software Development Division understands this as it builds force by leveraging cutting edge platforms from Microsoft to develop a go-to-market strategy for its in-house solutions built under its Al Sharyan brand.
“There is a visible shift towards application customisation,” says Zeeshan Qureshi, Vice President of TEXPO’s Application Division, and adds “the focus, thanks to the packaged software trend is no longer about building from scratch, but it’s now about customising to fit.” That’s exactly where TEXPO fits in. As Gold Partners of Microsoft, the company now has a team specialising in SharePoint and .Net-based solutions development and has drafted a strong go-to-market strategy for a number of solutions it has built in-house.
“We are focused on a number of areas using our SharePoint expertise like enabling migration for customers and integrating SharePoint with other line of business applications,” Qureshi says.
Going from inside to outside
TEXPO has grown its small team of developers into an entire Application Development department which operates from Pakistan and is supported by a well spread out on-site resource pool based across Dubai and other regions. “We have a strong mix of SharePoint consultants, developers, engineers and .Net developers supporting our practice,” he adds.
The practice itself began with its first implementation of SharePoint 2007 for TEXPO’s customer - The Edge and was followed by the implementation of SharePoint 2010 for collaboration at the Regulation and Supervisory Bureau in Abu Dhabi, where TEXPO was involved to enable business process automation, workflow implementation and digitisation of data.
Since then the company has been building its software application capabilities to include solutions for supply chain management, HR solutions, collaboration and portal solution all based on Microsoft technologies.
The big story however is the strategy to productise solutions that TEXPO has built in-house. “We are our own customer and a tough one at that. TEXPO has now embarked on a path to bolster our product development and implement solutions in-house and then productise it,” Qureshi says.
Building strength
The company’s focus is now set on its umbrella brand – Al Sharyan, which is the internal portal that is built on SharePoint 2010. “It’s used both as an internal portal as well as the web-front end for our business and hosts all the departmental sites including HR, technology and administration. The idea is to showcase our capabilities by building Al Sharyan into a robust platform with customised solution,” he shares.
One of the first products to be built as part of this initiative is the new Proposal Management System (PMS) that automates the lifecycle of proposal preparation by facilitating the sales team to have access to the PMS portal anywhere in the world and automate the proposal creation and management process by adding the necessary customer and project information.
“Earlier, proposals were prepared by individuals and that posed a number of challenges including outdated content, errors, difficulties in collation of data and the lack of standardization. All that has been taken care of with this solution,” Qureshi says.
“We have now built in templates to facilitate the process and a Table of Contents (ToC) is available. Users are enabled to re-order ToCs and manage the resources required to add inputs for the proposals across departments. So people across the company are simultaneously working on proposals and building the expertise we share with customers,” he explains. The team is currently rolling out proposals using this solution.
Planning expansion
For TEXPO, this is just the beginning as the company drafts a massive expansion plan for its SharePoint practice. “Globally, we are seeing a number of larger enterprises migrating to SharePoint and this is an important indication of the market potential for us,” Qureshi says.
SharePoint gives enough room for TEXPO to trace an upward path and one of the areas the company expects to invest in growing its BI practice. “One of our flagship projects is the one we have with the Adidas outsourcing project where TEXPO’s onsite resources were used to manage the schema of the data warehouse and generate customized reports. Now we have plans to group these resources and expand our Business Intelligence solution delivery,” he explains.
This initiative will look at integrating Microsoft PerformancePoint Server with Microsoft SharePoint and enhancing the CRM and BI reporting capabilities.
Taking process automation to the next level
With it comes to business solutions, one cannot ignore the importance of process automation. Quite expectedly, this has been identified as a major area of focus for TEXPO and the company expects to take this to the next level by focusing on automation process compliance to standards and certifications. Automating the QMS (Quality Management System) will also facilitate the easy auditing of process compliance. “This is a very key area and one that will deliver significant benefits to the organisation. This project will also see the integration of Microsoft Team Foundation Server and Microsoft Project Server 2010 with Microsoft SharePoint 2010,” he says.
Simultaneously, the QA and testing teams are working towards being compliant with global standards including ISO 27001, and CMMI-Level 3 certification. “We are already certified for ISO 9001 and our push is to attain the CMMI-Level 3 certification in 2012. TEXPO is on its way to investing in more resources as well and grow the team by adding another five to six testing engineers,” Qureshi says.
For Qureshi and his team at TEXPO, the success of the software division is a sign of a promising future. “Customers today are looking for strong ROI on applications and especially when it comes to critical applications or those that affect the sustainability of the organisation. With today’s technologies and expertise, customers no longer need to live with the problems of the old iterative software development process. Today, software development is about delivering business agility quickly and effectively. TEXPO can do just that,” Qureshi says.
TEXPO’s top tips for effective software development
- Don’t re-invent the wheel. Invest in packaged solutions and look to customise it to fit your unique requirements
- Ensure that your solution provider has the right expertise and the scale to support your business and development process
- Applications need to be built understanding the business requirements for agility and flexibility. Engage the solution teams with business managers right at the beginning of the project
- Compliance with standards based processes is critical to effective delivery of software applications
TEXPO Research Team
08th November 2011
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