This company is a consulting firm specializing in developing web applications for non profit associations. They develop solutions for clients revolving around a partner company’s netFORUM applications. Part of many of their projects involves migrating the client’s existing CRM data to netFORUM systems. This often involves tens of thousands of records.
With no two clients’ database schemas the same, developers at this firm would have to write custom SQL scripts for each client CRM database backup they received. For their customers that gave them data in spreadsheets, the process was even worse due to the intermediate step of importing the spreadsheet into a staging database first. This was not a repeatable process and was generally time consuming due to a disconnect between SQL scripts and the business users who knew the data best.
They needed a repeatable transfer process that was self documenting. They needed something that could match or exceed the speed in which they would write the custom SQL scripts and at the same time, would serve to document the mapping so the client could see that they were getting what they paid for.
Being a consulting shop, they could have developed their own robust transformation engine, but quickly decided against it as they were not in the data integration business and their resources would be better utilized by working on client projects rather than invent something that was probably out there in the market already. They ultimately settled on Astera’s product line.
Using Astera Software’s data transformation products, they was able to create custom transformations quickly and transparently. With Centerprise’s drag-n-drop visual mapping, it was a cinch to completely map customer data in minutes. And with the mapping being a visual representation, it was easy to present to their clients and thus served to document the process as well.
Due to ease of use and extensive logging abilities of Centerprise, this consulting firm estimates that they were able to speed up the process of mapping customer data by 20%. So in only a few projects, Centerprise was able to pay for itself.