Cape Town, 13 Jul 2016
Based in the UK, red24 is a leading risk management company that delivers a range of products and services to businesses, organisations and individuals around the world. They assist clients in minimising risks to their personnel, operations and profitability, and have a global network of multi-disciplinary vetted consultants. Their services include: travel safety; kidnap resolution and mitigation; food crisis management; cyber security assistance; corporate investigations; and due diligence.
TravelTracker, a red24 online tracking and location system that helps organisations mitigate the risks employees face when travelling abroad, was becoming increasingly unstable and difficult to maintain. The original architecture could no longer support the various functional and non-functional additions to the system, nor allow for any future enhancements to be made. As this is a core, business-critical system for the organisation, the instability was becoming a significant risk for red24.
"We needed external assistance to rebuild the system from scratch, incorporating lessons learned and core improvements, whilst maintaining the existing system," says Jeremy Eastman, Special Projects Manager for red24. "We chose Alacrity for this project as we required a Cape Town based company with a good reputation that could project manage and develop the system on-site at our offices, working closely with our in-house IT team".
The Solution:
Alacrity Technologies provided red24 with a proposal for the redevelopment of their existing system and its underlying technology. A technology stack was selected based on its appropriateness for the red24 business, taking into account long-term support requirements (MS.Net, Angular JS). It was critical that the update allowed for current and future business growth needs.
Using Alacrity's AWOW methodology (an in-house iterative and incremental development methodology based on proven agile principles) the following steps were taken:
1. A high-level investigation was performed on the existing TravelTracker system and business requirements, to determine the scope of the project and the challenges faced by the business. This allowed Alacrity to provide some insight into the extent of the work, and enabled the two organisations to determine the best way to proceed with the refresh.
2. Subsequently, a more thorough analysis was carried out in order to define all detailed functional system requirements, and provide red24 with comprehensive estimates of effort and cost.
3. New technology and architecture recommendations were made, based on Alacrity's comprehensive analysis, and agreed with red24 prior to development commencing.
4. The development and testing of the system occurred on an iterative basis - throughout the project, continuous progress discussions and consistent involvement in the ongoing testing of the solution, by both Alacrity and the client, ensured full transparency on all aspects of the project and guaranteed that red24 received a product fully relevant to their needs.
The end result was that a more robust, maintainable and functionally relevant TravelTracker system was developed and implemented for red24.
"The redesigned system from Alacrity allows for greater visibility and front-end control, which enables our non-technical personnel to work with the system configuration, thereby resulting in a faster turnaround time on new client implementations and ongoing client support," concludes Eastman. It also allows for future business enhancements and changes to be seamlessly implemented. Aspects such as integration with third party products and mobile deployment, that were previously impossible or difficult to manage, could now easily be handled and executed within the new system framework.
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