In a move to integrate its call centre system with the Windows desktop environment and so provide a friendlier, improved presentation to its agents and, ultimately, a better service to its customers, FNB`s First Direct has purchased the GUIdance graphic user interface (GUI) application generator from Bateleur Software.
GUIdance, developed by Israeli-based Sabratec, enables the rapid development of a personalised Windows-based GUI front-end interface to existing mainframe and midrange systems. As such, it allows the desktop to be used as a more powerful, easier to manipulate front-end to existing applications - while retaining and preserving the back-end power and investment of the enterprise systems.
According to FNB`s Manny Georgiades, this FNB Call Centre - which serves as a sales and service centre for other FNB divisions - initially developed its call centre system using `green screens` to keep development time and risk to a minimum. However, it was designed in such a way as to accommodate a GUI front-end addition as and when required.
"In order to make the presentation of the Call Centre System more acceptable to the agents, to reduce training time, and exploit the functionality available on the Windows environment, we needed to convert the existing mainframe front-end to a GUI front-end," he explains.
Georgiades adds that in First Direct`s drive to provide users with the tools needed to deliver a faster, more accurate and improved service to customers, it sought a product that would help with the migration from the dull `green screens` into a Windows world.
"At the same time, it would allow us to design and customise the generated programs to suit the exact needs of the First Direct users and, later, to exploit the Windows environment by integrating with packages like MS Office and Internet Explorer, if so preferred," he says.
He notes that GUIdance met the requirements on all fronts. It incorporates a variety of easy-to-use tools for automatic creation and maintenance of Visual Basic client applications for enterprise systems. Visual Basic is Microsoft`s strategic language for the Windows` development platform.
"GUIdance thus operates as a wrapping over the enterprise system, whose applications keep working as if nothing has changed. However, the end-user is presented with a new, improved and feature-filled GUI front end - the ideal tool for our call centre environment," explains Georgiades.
Georgiades says another major benefit is that as GUIdance sits on top, there is no need to make changes to the actual base application system. It also means that the existing `3270` front-end can be phased out and replaced by a GUI front-end based largely on the VB programs generated by GUIdance.
Approached for comment, Bateleur Software director, Sam Selmer-Olsen, stresses that the most recent GUIdance success at First Direct follows similar installations at Eskom and Rand Water, and proves that the enterprise system can - and should - be viewed as a legitimate server in an IT environment.
"The GUIdance solution breathes new life into so-called legacy applications, as it allows one to retain the invaluable applications and protect the investment, instead of having to contemplate the daunting task of discarding them in favour of traditional client server applications," he says.
Selmer-Olsen and his team expect to put the finishing touches to the development work and staff training before the end of the month, after which the first group of 250 users will go live on the product sometime in April 1999.
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