Mobile application development, cloud technologies, web application and bespoke software development

Castorama’s Enterprise Content Management System was initially developed on top of DocsVision ECM platform and launched in 2008. Since that time, the system has been severely modified twice according to the new business process model. Furthermore, additional product features have appeared aimed at sending, receiving and archiving documents, task monitoring, risk management and protecting against unauthorized access. As a result, the system has accumulated a number of unnecessary processes that slowed down its operation. Thereby, it required a solution to increase l performance and to improve Castorama’s Store Support Center employee efficiency.

As part of technical support, Digital Design specialists conducted an audit of the ECMS and developed an action plan to improve the system’s performance. Some changes were related to the settings of the Microsoft SQL Server database maintenance. In this project, more than 100,000 completed system processes were deleted, the database was optimized by tuning table indexes and removing outdated logs.

At the end of the project, about 100 employees were using the system permanently. More than 10,000 documents are processed monthly in the ECMS.

The work on the project resulted in speeding up the database queries and improving employees’ user experience. Users noticed a faster response to their actions in the system.

In 2016, the Swedish developer Bonava had to move the infrastructure and business systems to a new environment because of parting from NCC. The choice was made in favour of a cloud model based on Microsoft product range, because it appears to be easier and faster to develop, and it can provide secure Anywhere Access to business applications and data without a VPN. The cloud model also fits the concurrent access of several hundred people . Bonava completed the restoration of its IT infrastructure and core business in the cloud quickly and successfully.

At the second stage of the virtualization project Bonava initiated to create a corporate portal which would allow employees to access corporate information, manage content, share and edit documents. The Microsoft SharePoint Online solution was chosen as a platform for creating a single information hub.

After that, Bonava faced a challenge of turning the resulting data warehouse into a convenient tool for all company employees to work with.

The portal helps to establish interaction between all departments for all internal business processes, provides access to information about current projects, sales, investments, production, marketing, HR, etc. The main functions for employees include working together safely with content, data and applications, interacting with each other effectively, sharing content, finding the necessary information quickly and even automating business processes.

In May 2017, the Digital Design team began to provide technical support for the portal based on SharePoint Online. At the same time, it keeps improving the portal and making it even more convenient and functional.

As of 2017, we implemented a pilot project of migrating the database and building the Bonet corporate portal on the SharePoint Online platform for the employees in Finland. The new portal interface was designed considering making the user experience (UX) more engaging and effective.

The team developed the “Bonava Projects” business application aimed at automating the process of working with project documentation. The system provides an opportunity to structure information on current, planned, and completed housing construction projects, and to create an information hub for any construction project in order to work together with files of different types. In the meantime, the Bonava Projects application was integrated with the Octagon project management system. The Bonava Projects application is available to all employees, which is more than 1000 users in 8 countries.

As part of technical support, the functionality of the Russian portal was finalized by implementing a contract approval system. It allowed to automate conducting tender processes and registering outgoing messages.

• Service-oriented architecture development to integrate DocsVision, Microsoft SharePoint Portal and Microsoft Office InfoPath.
• Cloud technologies implementation: Unified archiving service deployment as a part of the company’s portal solution.
• Full-text search capability and user access management system.
• Business process control framework and completed requests reporting service
• Recommendations on the use of hardware and software services depending on the estimated number of concurrently active users and the workload intensity.
• Training for key employees (40+).

BPM system implementation increased the efficiency of internal corporate processes by:

• automated decision-making for corporate requests processing;
• reduction of the request process cycle time;
• optimization of an internal communication process flow;
• successful localization of corporate governance standards.

The implemented system has been designed for 350 users of Johnson&Johnson. Currently, Digital Design specialists provide Johnson&Johnson with consulting support on transferring organization’s business processes to the implemented system architecture.