SpringCM Document Templatizer

Overview
The project involved development of fax templates using  APEX (Force.com’s development environment), to export patient information from Salesforce into appropriate fields in appropriate fax templates, and export the patient information in fax formats to SpringCM (A leading on-demand enterprise content management solution).

Client
SpringCM is a leading provider of an on-demand enterprise content management solutions.

Business Challenge
A pharmaceutical company opted to move its patient case management function to Salesforce.com. Cases result from a physician’s request to get a patient into a drug program.  The entire request/response process is built around faxes.  The pharamceutical company selected SpringCM for it’s inbound/outbound fax services and the associated document and workflow management systems. Documents on SpringCM were to be linked to objects in Salesforce.com for easy retrieval by the case workers.
For outbound faxes, there were 300 sheets that were to be dynamically created based on logic coded into an administrative tool.

The Solution
SpringCM formed a development team consisting of business analysts to create Templates, and developers to use Apex (Salesforce’s development environment) to develop the code that could be used to merge data into the templates, and subsequently pass the filled in templates into SpringCM’s on-demand application. Developers from Stylus were mandated with coding using Apex and developing objects and templates that were tested and delivered to SpringCM. The Stylus team worked out of the Stylus office in India. Stylus deployed 4 developers and increased team strength to 7 developers, a team leader and a quality assurance professional. The team leader in India coordinated with the project manager belonging to the SpringCM team. In the final stages of the project Stylus deployed one of its senior analyst and developer to SpringCM to work with its team and to coordinate with team in Stylus. The team was progressively scaled down when most of the templates were completed and sent for testing.

Project Challenges
Requirement specifications created by the pharmaceutical company needed significant clarifications. This became increasingly apparent after the first iteration of coding began. A team of business analysts were hired to complete the specifications, as well as to test the developed code against these specifications.

As a result of specifications being clarified iteratively, objects developed by the development team based in the US had to be altered on an ongoing basis. Templates developed by the development team in Stylus were dependant on these objects and ad to be recoded as well. The number of iterations were significantly reduced by creating factory classes which allowed the iteration of code for objects to proceed without the code for templates having to be changed significantly.

Communications between development teams at different locations working in different time zones was facilitated team meetings timed so that representatives of all teams could attend and update one another on progress, issues and solutions.

Services provided

1. Development
2. Testing
3. Team management

Technologies used

1. APEX on Force.com

The Bottom Line
For the Pharma company, the advantage is that of going to on-demand SaaS based solutions, thereby eliminating the challenges of maintaining on-premise hardware and software.

For SpringCM, the advantage was one of leveraging the skill of personell from across the globe at competitive prices.

Future project phases for the implementation of new features are planned following successful implementation of the current phase.