In Tennessee, WINDEV and WEBDEV put to work in ...work in healthcare for adults and children Eidetik...

The companyOpen Arms Care is a nonprofitorganization (Nashville,Tennessee) that providesIntermediate Care FacilityServices for adults and childrenwith developmental disabilities &mental retardation.Since 1990 Eidetik (Uniontown,Kentucky) has specialized in soft-ware development for nonprofitLong Term Care companies.

Project Leader

Marc Beaven is the projectmanager at Eidetik.

Taking a big step forwardIt all started in 2003 when OpenArms Care decided to collaboratewith Eidetik to become part ofthe pilot user group for a modernsoftware to replace Eidetik’s priorDOS generation application. Thisnew software would need to berebuilt into a new platform, onethat could replace and build onthe functionality of the prior one.With only four months to get thecore functionalities up and run-ning, Eidetik took up the challenge.After evaluating several develop-ment tools the best choice wasobvious: WINDEV. “I choseWINDEV because of what waspossible ‘out of the box’. I deter-mined that this product and thePC SOFT principles of royalty-free

distribution and quicker develop-ment time were a perfect fit forour organization as we retooledfor the future.”- says Marc.

DDManager: Dailyand NightlyUsing WINDEV Eidetik developedDDManager, a fully integratedvertical MIS application for resi-dential long term care facilities.This software enables these faci-lities to oversee nearly everyaspect of their day-to-day opera-tions.The client health data featurestrack nearly every imaginableaspect of client care. It alsoincludes features for facilitymaintenance, residential tools,financial tools, time clock andpayroll, etc.The agencies that use

DDManager are predominantlynonprofit organizations that pro-vide care to developmentally-disabled persons who requireassistance with many tasks ofdaily life and/or may haveserious medical impairments.

“Since these organizations opera-te 24 hours a day, 7 days perweek, it is imperative that thesoftware is reliable and acces-sible.”- states Marc Beaven.The application is hosted viaTerminal Services using both

•WINDEV testimonials

In Tennessee, WINDEV and WEBDEV put towork in healthcare for adults and children

Eidetik (Uniontown, Kentucky) chose WINDEV, WEBDEV to redesign a comple-te solution for healthcare management for the Open Arms Care organization(Nashville, Tennessee).

2009

A client at Open Arms enjoyinga day at the baseball field

Citrix and Propalms. Servers areload-balanced with full redun-dancy in a Peak-10 datacenter.

WINDEV, a Christmaspackage“WINDEV is an excellent, feature-rich development environment.As I’ve grown as a developer andfound myself in need of a newfeature, PC SOFT has invariablycontinued to evolve the productand introduce features - boththose that were necessary for aproject as well as those bells andwhistles that just make the deve-loper’s life easier.” says Marc.“The continued evolution of the5GL has saved me innumerabletime in writing custom code forcertain functions. One example isthe relatively new functionTableToText(). With this function,I was able to save hundreds oflines of code for a project thatinvolved large exports to be ope-ned by third-party software.” –adds MarcTo date the DDManager hascontinued to evolve in both scopeand user base due in large part tothe capabilities of the PC SOFTproduct line. “The arrival of eachnew version is like a Christmaspackage full of welcomed andhelpful new features.”.

A feature rich front-end with WEBDEVManagers and other users nee-ded a “lean” user interface dueto network restrictions or otherfactors preventing them fromaccessing the Terminal Server-based software. In order to offer the necessaryweb front-end capabilities, anSSL “Web Portal” was developed.It contained certain frequently-used tasks that had been rewrit-ten in WEBDEV. “I have been constantly impres-sed with the evolution of WEBDEVand the fact that the productcontinues to lead the pack whenit comes to including bleeding-edge technologies such as thelatest Web 2.0 features. The ever-

expanding AJAX options inWEBDEV make possible aweb-user interface that isimmediately familiar andeasily-adopted by even themost seasoned Windowsdesktop application users.”– explains Marc.

WINDEV Mobile:An open door to anew frontier“WINDEV Mobile is somew-hat of a new frontier for us,but we are excited about thecapabilities that this productoffers. Many of our userswork across multiple loca-tions, and for them the por-tability of mobile devices

will bring them new flexibility.We have begun working onmechanisms for the entry of clientvital statistics; this will enablenurses to log the data directlyinto the HFCS database on the go,without needing access to aworkstation.” – says Marc. “My experience thus far has beensimilar to that with WEBDEV inthat the familiar IDE and full inte-gration with other PC SOFT pro-ducts has made the process ofquickly getting up to speed withthe product a breeze.” –concludes Marc.

WINDEV testimonials•2009

Happy nurses at work using Eidetik software !

The companyPropertyBoss Solutions(Greenville, South Carolina) deve-lops software solutions for theproperty management industry.PropertyBoss is the flagship pro-duct of PropertyBoss Solutions.This solution streamlines dailyproperty management opera-tions, from prospect tracking, tolease management to accounting.It has been sold for use at over2,000 sites and licensed to mana-ge over 400,000 units or leases.

Project ManagerKen Knight is the project mana-ger within PropertyBossSolutions.

For a reliable front-end solution, WEBDEVhits the spotlightProperyHost allows hosted usersto maintain their own useraccounts within the system. Thismanipulation will manage thenecessary User accounts, Groupsand Organizational Units withinthe Active Directory DomainPropertyHost provides a Webbased front-end, developed enti-rely in WEBDEV, for both users ofthe software and PropertyBossSolutions Administrators. Thesoftware allows users to modifytheir information such as pass-word, email depending on theuser level. Company administra-tors have the ability to email

users from within the web inter-face using a full WYSIWYG htmleditor. The second half of this product isa wrapper built around anActiveX. Once logged into thePropertyHost Web Portal a usercan click the “Connect” buttonand a file will be downloaded totheir local machine which willlaunch the PropertyHost ClientApplication.

“Simply put, WEBDEVis incredible”“Simply put, WEBDEV is incre-dible. I have spent unbelievableamounts of time in search of theHoly Grail of web developmentand WEBDEV is the closest thing

that I have been able to find. Thecomponents included withWEBDEV allow an average deve-loper to create sites that are trulydifficult to accomplish in otherexisting technologies. And at thevery least these other technolo-gies require loads of hand codingwhere WEBDEV provides a “Point& Click” type approach with mini-mal coding. Functions such asPageToFile and FileToPage alonecan save dozens of lines of code.”– says Ken

Sybase & WINDEV:Power and GUI qualityTo manage data, a Client/ServerSybase database is used.WINDEV is the perfect comple-ment to get the most out of theSybase database with remarkableperformance. Users appreciate the attractiveuser interface. “WINDEV, handsdown, allows you to create themost stunning, visually appealingproducts of any development envi-ronment I’ve seen.”- says Ken.


PropertyBoss (South Carolina) counts onWINDEV, WEBDEV and WINDEV Mobile

PropertyBoss Solutions(Greenville, SouthCarolina) developed a complete web-based front end solution with WEBDEV.

2009

WINDEV serves a cupof Java AppletsOne part of the web site allowsthe end user to upload picturesfrom their local machine to theservers in our data center. Thiswas accomplished by writing aJava Applet in WINDEV thatmanages the upload process andalso optimizes the size of theimages before pushing them tothe server, so we don’t have 5 MBpictures for display on the web.“Programming the Java Applet inWINDEV went great. In less than aday we had it up and running” –adds Ken.

PropertyHost:International andMultilingual withWEBDEVPropertyHost is constantly evol-ving and expanding into newmarkets. It exists in both Englishand Spanish and has been distri-buted in the US, Canada, Mexicoand the Caribbean. “WINDEV andWEBDEV are constantly reassu-ring our ability to respond to allof our clients’ needs easily” –explains Ken.

The Boss gets goingwith pbMobileCurrently being developed inWINDEV Mobile is pbMobilewhich will allow the end user touse a PDA based cell phone tomanage certain data about theirproperties, including taking pic-tures of properties for synchroni-

zation with the mainPropertyBoss database. This

application takes advantage ofthe new “Video” and “Photo”

functions in WINDEV Mobile todrive the cell phone camera. “Forrapid development of Mobilebased apps, nothing has comeclose to WINDEV Mobile for me.And the added benefit of automa-ted synchronization between any-thing written in WINDEV justmakes the product that muchsweeter.” – continues Ken.


The companySafe Day Consulting is a Healthand Safety firm located inMissouri. They are dedicated toensuring health and safety in allkinds of work environments:offices, warehouses, labs, facto-ries, shipping facilities, etc. Theyprovide their services to indus-tries of all types: food, agricultu-re, environmental, medical, etc.Soft Design Consulting, inMissouri, provides custom soft-ware solutions since 2005.Together Safe Day Consulting andSoft Design consulting provide aweb suite that manages healthand safety issues for all areas inthe industry.

Project manager

Glenn Rathke is the projectmanager and one of the ownersof Soft Design Consulting.

Only a few weeks fora decisive proof ofconceptSafe Day Consulting wanted touse their expertise in Health andSafety issues to create and provi-de a software solution. SoftDesign Consulting provided thetechnical expertise to make thisproject a reality. WEBDEV waschosen for the task.WEBDEV took a few days to get ameaningful application writtenand deployed on a web server,about a month to get a meaning-ful handle on coding and 4

months to be extremely producti-ve.“It only took us four weeks tobuild a proof of concept of thesoftware that we showed to SafeDay. When they saw it their eyesgrew wide and their jaws drop-ped. They were very excited tosee everything we could do. Therewas no doubt in our minds:WEBDEV was the way to go”.

From a nightmare toa dream comes truewith WEBDEVThe developed application is cal-led SMS – Safety ManagementSuite. This application helpstrack safety issues. By conduc-ting employee exposure assess-ments using these applications,potentially hazardous chemicaland physical agents are identi-fied before they cause any harm

to the workers. The IncidentTracking Module uses data from“near miss” incidents, first-aidcases and occupation injuries toconduct trend analyses and iden-tify areas of high risk in the facili-

ties.The Action module then recordsfindings from audits, inspectionsand investigations to identify andrecord the appropriate correctiveactions and assign responsibility


WEBDEV contributing to safety in theworkplace

Soft Design Consulting and Safe Day Consulting (Missouri) set out into a jointventure to develop a data management system to help ensure health and safe-ty in the workplace.

2009

for completion.“Development time usingWEBDEV was drastically reducedcompared to other tools. Sometools enable a developer to pro-duce them rapidly but maintai-ning them is a nightmare.Maintenance in WEBDEV is sim-plified.” – said Glenn.“Programming a website with a5th generation language is adeveloper’s dream compared tocomplexity of traditional Webtechnologies”- he added.

WinDev and MySQL: awinning teamMy SQL was chosen as the data-base solution for SMS. “WEBDEVprovided us with a free, fully inte-grated native access to My SQL.Using all the H* functions for dataaccess simplifies programming.The free Query editor allows us tobuild all the queries we needeasily and quickly.” - said Glenn. “Users are amazed at the respon-se times in the application. Theybenefit from great performanceand fast data access”- he added.

SaaS made easy withWEBDEVSMS is distributed as a subscrip-tion service. Our clients choose asubscription for a certain amountof time and then connect to ourservers to use the application.“Users cannot believe how fastresponse times are. Some of themprefer the SMS Web application

to their own desktop applicationssince it is much faster”.The menu is configurable on auser by user basis or even on acompany basis. If a managerdoes not want an employee tohave access to a certain module,they remove it from the user’sprofile. The next time they wouldlog in, the choice has either beenadded or deleted.“WEBDEV makes it extremelyeasy for us to maintain our soft-ware service. Changes and newfeatures can be added easily and

publishing the web application onthe server is a breeze”.


The CompanyCarnegie Cleaners in New YorkCity has been in the dry-cleaningbusiness for over 50 years. It serves many of the 5-starhotels in New York in all theirdry-cleaning needs: staff uni-forms, guest garments, etc.Carnegie Cleaners needed a solu-tion to keep track of all dry clea-ned garments. This solution wasprovided by CleanEZTechnologies. CleanEZTechnologies provides speciali-zed software solutions for drycleaning businesses in the USA:point of sale, billing, garmenttracking/automation, garmentconveyor integration, etc.

Project Manager

Henry Billini is the president ofCleanEZ technologies. CleanEZ technologies distributesa Windows solution calledCleanEZ Touch which handles theback office for dry-cleaning busi-nesses.

The cleaning cycleCleanEZ software covers the enti-re process of a garment cleaning.Uniforms, sheets and guests gar-ments are picked up and scannedat the hotel. They are then trans-ported to the Carnegie Cleanersfacilities. After dry cleaning theyare transported back to eachhotel. Each uniform is placed inthe corresponding locker. Theguest garments are sent to theguest rooms. Each individual garment has aunique tag that is scanned ateach stage of the process. Thisallows managers to know at any-time where a garment is, whereit’s been and where it’s going.This also lets them track downlost garments.

WEBDEV makes per-fect business senseThe WebDev application forCarnegie Cleaners interfaces witha Windows application called

CleanEz Touch. WebDev accessesand reports data being scannedby the Laundry Plant at eachphase of the Garment CleaningCycle: Garment Pickup, GarmentProcessing, Delivery andAcceptance. WebDev retrievesdata online to show Managementwhether a garment may havebeen lost or not returned to thehotels. Each hotel logs in with aunique username. Each hotelemployee name or garment canbe searched for problem status.Historically the windows backoffice application, CleanEZ Touch,was developped in Foxpro. “Afterfacing the difficult situation ofhaving to change our develop-ment tool when it was decidedthat Foxpro would no longer bemaintained, we found that pro-gramming with WEBDEV madeperfect business sense. You usefewer resources and make higherrevenue. Applications are easierand quicker to implement. Thisallows the Systems Analyst toimplement the design.” – saysHenry.“Furthermore having an integra-ted native access to our Foxprodatabase enabled us to get star-ted quickly and above all to givereal solutions to our customersfast. I have personally researchedmany frameworks and program-ming tools for rapid applicationdevelopment. The field checkingand auto generation of code savemany man hours of development.


WEBDEV and WINDEV Mobile cleaningup in New York City

CleanEZ Technologies chose WEBDEV to develop efficient software solutions tomanage all laundry needs in major 5-star hotels in New York City.

2009

I have now been able to cut thedevelopment time impressively.”– Henry adds

The WINDEV, WEBDEVand WINDEV Mobilecompatibility triplebenefitsWebDev allows existing applica-tion data to be accessible withease to the WEB. And the consis-tent analysis design amongWINDEV, WEBDEV and WINDEVMobile saves considerable pro-gramming efforts. It also opens the door to newsales when writing an applicationfor any one of the WINDEV plat-forms, a new application within adifferent platform can emerge.This triples the Company’s reve-nues and triples the benefits tothe clients.

WINDEV Mobile: theSuperior Products forDevelopersOne of the applications, develo-ped with WINDEV Mobile, allowspersonnel to scan all garmentsand have a real time follow-up ofthe whole process. This lets allmanagers know exactly whereevery piece is at all times.“WINDEV Mobile is truly a bles-sing. I have not found an easiertool to integrate existing desktopand WEB applications to a PDA.The consistency of the Languageand multiple data manipulationmethods makes Windev Mobilethe Superior Products forDevelopers.” – says Henry.


The companyVINCI PARK designs, builds, finan-ces and runs the public pay-parkingplaces in lots and city streets. VinciPark is present in 12 countries with1300 parking lots and nearly800,000 parking spots.In addition to managing parkingspots, VINCI Park, creates comple-mentary offerings for pay parkingusers: borrowing an umbrella, ashopping cart on a market day or abike,… as well as other services thatare adapted to the environment andthe customers of each parking lot,such as, car wash, gas station, carrepair kits, chargers for electricvehicles… essential services for themaintenance of a car.

Project leadersTThhiieerrrryy SScchhuulldd (left) is the IT mana-ger at VINCI PARK.

PPaauull--GGaabbrriieell FFeerrrroonn (right) is theassistant IT manager. AARRMMSSTTRROONNGG SSOOLLUUTTIIOONNSS develo-ped the management application.

Supervision of 450parking lots in FranceVINCI PARK uses a sales manage-ment software named “GARI”. Thissoftware manages consumers; itmanages the billing of the subscri-ber and then transfers the revenuesto the corresponding accountingdepartment.This proprietary program is instal-led locally in the parking lot follo-wing a completely decentralizedmodel with databases that are inde-pendent in each site.As a counterpart, another softwarecalled GARI Viewer consolidates thereceived revenue information intoone unique point in the form of atext file at Headquarters.However the maintenance of thissoftware and its lack of flexibilityhave lead the computer departmentto rewrite this strategic decisionmaking module.“The rewriting of our monitoringtool should bring us more flexibilityas well as a more modern UI. Thisshould also give us a chance toincorporate the features of a moremodern statistics and reportingmodule.”

WebDev comes intoVINCI PARK

The software department managerexplains his choice: “For mainte-nance reasons, we have opted foran Intranet application architectureand we have looked for experts inthis area. Another restriction wasthat we wanted to ensure easy pro-ject management. The choice ofWEBDEV was therefore obvious forthe clarity of its code andArmstrong was chosen for develop-ment.Paul-Gabriel Ferron adds “we don’twant to dive into developmentwithout first knowing how muchtime we’ll need. WEBDEV offerssuch great productivity that it canguarantee we’ll have our applica-tion as soon as possible.

The dashboard forVINCI parking lots: it’s

auto…matic Every week, the data entered ateach site is transferred in CSV for-

mat via FTP to a central server andis then migrated to an SQL Serverdatabase. This information reflectsthe activity of the parking lots:

number ofentries/exits, pay-ments by credit card,cash, creation of newclients, etc.The Wiewer (“W” forWeb) presents all thedata in multiple dash-boards. The firstobjective is to allowthe decision makersremote access to this

The company ARMSTRONG

SOLUTIONS relied on the

WEBDEV IDE to develop

the intranet site for reve-

nue monitoring and the

vehicle entries and exists

from the VINCI PARK par-

king lots.

Vinci Park France manages its revenues withWEBDEV (450 parking lots)

S E R V I C E S

well organized data and validate it.This phase lets the Wiewer calcu-late statistics according to the deci-sion makers’ needs.

User rights manage-ment“We’ve implemented rights mana-gement according to the Wiewerusers: general management, admi-nistration and finance manage-ment, accounting, regional mana-ger, … According to each profile,the options that can be accessedare different”, underlines ThierrySchuld.The accounting department is alsoinformed when the data is validatedand ready to be integrated to theirsoftware, “Elodie”.Paul-Gabriel Ferron unveils sometechnical characteristics of the pro-ject: “The Wiewer, consists of over80 pages. WEBDEV really surprisedus with its ability to rapidly pro-duce quality Web interfaces. The5GL functions in WEBDEV have hel-ped in the creation of charts thatare widely appreciated by the admi-nistration”.

Over 50 millionvehicle exits stored:instant access withWEBDEV "There are over 300 possible que-ries with dozens of criteria: hourlyrevenue, renting revenue, trafic bytime/location, by region, for a setof parking lots, over a givenperiod", explains the assistant soft-ware manager.The Wiewer lets us compare theresults with reference months oryears.“Our users are very satisfied withperformance and it can be appre-ciated even more that we exploitthe information of over 50 millionpaying exits. Even there, WEBDEVand its SQL Server native accesshave responded to our expecta-tions”.“Ever since we have the Wiewer,we’ve all won a lot in terms of flexi-bility in statistics and queries and inperformance. We now have a suita-ble tool to help us in our decisionmaking”

This success is a firststep toward the inter-national market Thanks to this successful project,we’re planning to introduce theViewer to other countries whereVINCI Park operates: Germany,Luxembourg in particular.“The Intranet application has all itneeds for international deploy-ment”, admits Thierry Schuld.Obviously, the Wiewer seems to bewell set to make lots of usershappy. The software departmentmanager concludes on his partner-

ship with the WEBDEV developerservice: “We congratulate ourselvesfor having started this collabora-tion. Thanks to their expertise andthe clarity of WEBDEV’s 5GL, it’s areal pleasure to ensure the mainte-nance of the Wiewer. We are nowserenely planning our new pro-jects”.

B A N Q U ECr

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The companyTAG Aviation is the world leader inbusiness air travel. The company has a fleet of 200 air-crafts and relies on a team of 700pilots.

Project Leader

MMooïïssee GGeerrssoonn (on the left) is the ITManager within TAG Aviation. GGSSIInnffoorrmmaattiiqquuee is a distributor ofPC SOFT in Switzerland as well as aservice provider.SSaammiirr BBoouucchheettiibbaatt is the projectmanager in GSInformatique.

Log Sheets tighten thebudgetAmongst the many procedures thatare relevant to a pilots’ job, mana-ging “log sheets” can sometimes beconstraining.These log sheets are official docu-ments that follow an internationalair standard and that are very oftenfilled out manually by pilots afterlanding.They contain several types of infor-

mation such as schedules, whichare crucial for security, flight optimi-zation and planning.Up to now, these log sheets weretransferred to the control center assoon as the pilot could have accessto a fax or some other means ofmanual transfer. This translated intoa variable delay in taking the datainto account.Once received, the entire log sheetswere entered into the central infor-mation system, which created anopportunity for introducing errors.“We conducted a market researchand asked GSInformatique to auto-mate the entry of the technical logsheets. Regarding the developmentarchitecture, it was mainly settledby restrictions in the calendar andin the budget: in other words, it hadto be simple, quick and had towork!” declared Moise Gerson.

WINDEV Mobile missionon the pilots’ PDAsThe objective of TAG Aviation was togive the pilots PDAs to fulfill theirflight-related needs. The goal wasfor them to be able to obtain fromtheir PDA the list of all the flightsfor a given day and for each flightretrieve the planned data, enter thereal data through a digital form, andsend this data to the control center.“Considering the time restrictionand GSInformatique’s expertisewith PC SOFT’s development toolsWINDEV was the logical choice”,confided Moise Gerson.“When I saw the speed at whichWINDEV Mobile lets you create win-dows, I felt at ease about the objec-tives that had been set”, he added.

Loud and Clear in WiFior GPRS

At any given moment, the pilot canconnect to the central system viahis PDA just by typing in his login.Almost immediately, he receives theinformation regarding the schedu-led flights for his airplane.Right after landing, the pilot fillsout the virtual form on the PDA(Flight number, boarding time, take-off, landing, fuel used, number ofpassengers,…). He then sends thisform using either WiFi or GPRSdepending on where he is.“The application is designed todetect all by itself the availability ofa wireless network and to automati-cally switch to GPRS mode in itsabsence. The data is directly inser-ted into a “buffer area” in the infor-mation system, which can bevisually controled by an operator,who is in charge of validating”,detailed Samir Bouchetibat.

GSInformatique has imple-

mented a mobile solution

for communicating bet-

ween the pilots of TAG

Aviation. WINDEV Mobile

and WEBDEV are on the

same frequency.

At TAG Aviation, PDAs take off withWinDev Mobile

A V I A T I O N

WEBDEV, communicationcontrol tower On a technical level, some explana-tions are needed: “the PDAsretrieve and display the informationthat is stored in proprietary databa-ses (airspace back office). More pre-cisely, the queries are sent to anAWP page created with WEBDEV.The page communicates with thedatabase using ODBC and thenlimits and encrypts the resultsbefore sending them to the PDA”,detailed the project manager.Having a constant need for reliabi-lity, we emphasized the simplicity ofthe communication method: the setof transfers is based on an ApacheWeb Server and on the WebDevapplication server.

To the end of theworld, there’ll alwaysbe an Extranet withWEBDEV!It’s obvious that the process thatwas implemented made the proce-dures and decision making processmore dynamic. For example, assoon as an airplane lands, the cen-tral system is immediately informedof its availability and can thereforeanticipate connecting flight delays,and manage reassignments.The fact that the double entry waseliminated also improves reliability.In spite of all its qualities, the pro-blem that was left to be solved wasthe non-permanent availability ofwireless connections. Moise Gersonpresented the technical solution:“We’ve decided to deploy a securedExtranet site so that the pilot canaccess the form from any Internetaccess point”.The project manager atGSInformatique tells us about his

experience:“There’s no other program likeWEBDEV for creating dynamic Webpages. Furthermore, the ability touse the same language to developthe Web site and the mobile appli-cation is unique and cool! To myknowledge, these are by far thebest development platforms on themarket. Since I spend my time crea-ting applications, I might as wellenjoy it, right?”

Is there a WINDEVMobile inside the air-plane? The application was recei-ved with enthusiasm by allthe users (pilots and admi-nistrative personnel).“The gain in productivity isundeniable”, recognizesMoise Gerson.The success in the deploy-ment of this version of theapplication has given us

ideas. It is now in our plans toenrich the application with the crewinformation and with information onthe approach taken for landing.The objective that was set by TAGAviation was to equip the wholefleet, nearly 200 airplanes.

B A N Q U E

The companyHandicap International is an inter-national solidarity association thatspecializes in helping handicappedpeople. As a non-profit association,it intervenes in all contexts alwayson the side of the people with ahandicap, to offer assistance andaid them in becoming more autono-mous. Ever since its creation, theorganization has implementeddevelopment programs in approxi-mately 60 countries and it acts inmany emergency situations. TheHandicap International teams worktowards helping the handicappedperson find his or her autonomy,dignity and place in the community.

Project Leader

HHaassssaann BBiillaall is the IS architect.

The generousChristmas tree bag Since 1993, Handicap Internationalhas associated the “Christmas TreeBag” to the Christmas tree tradi-tion.This bag decorates the bottom ofthe Christmas tree and protects thefloor from the pine needles duringChristmas season. Once the seasonis over it neatly packages the treeto be thrown away.The Christmas Tree Bag is availablein some countries in all food stores,

This international associa-

tion has implemented a

solution that automates

data exchange with its

carrier in order to im-

prove its annual delivery

of over 600,000

Christmas tree bags.

WINDEV inside HANDICAPINTERNATIONAL’s stockings

H U M A N I T A I R I A N

in department stores, flower shopsand nurseries. A good deal, the Christmas Tree Bagis sold at 5 euros from which 1.30euros are given to HandicapInternational for handicap people.

Reducing costs:EDI with WINDEVWhen the “Christmas Tree Bags”started being sold, orders were pro-cessed by a sales management soft-ware. Once the order had beentaken the orders to be sent outwere printed out, then the bundle offreight notes were sent by fax. Thecarrier (DHL) would have to re-enterall the delivery slips in order to pre-pare the order and ship the pro-ducts to the customers. It thenwould invoice HandicapInternational in turn for this service.“For us, a humanitarian association,the operating costs must be at theirlowest. The only solution was toautomate the data entry, using anEDI-based solution”, explainedHassan Billal. He then added “thesoftware on the market did notmeet our needs especially since ourcarrier used a proprietary file for-mat. We had to develop a solutioninternally. We had a tool familiar toour teams but its interaction withoffice automation tools was cum-bersome and the development timewas long. Keeping in mind the costcontrol, we went for the WINDEVIDE, once we looked at its attractiveprice and its undeniable producti-vity. It was without doubt the bestand the fastest tool for developingsuch an application”.

WINDEV comes to therescue of Progress andDHL The objective was to create an inter-face between the legacy CRM appli-cation built with Progress withinHandicap International and thetransporters’ services.The user chooses the deliveryorders that he wishes to send to thecarrier by checking them on-screen.Later when he decides to processthe transfer of these batches, anemail is sent to DHL with the atta-ched file.“The software generates a file inthe EDI format expected by thecarrier. I then simply used the 5GL

functions fWrite andEmailSendMessage. Settingthe parameters for MSExchange was also very easyto implement”, continuesHassan Bilal.

Tracking downdeliveries: over600,00 ChristmasTree BagsThe delivery orders that weresent are stored on a HyperFile database.Once the product has beendelivered, the carrier sends afile with the delivery confir-mation and the software auto-matically imports it to ensurecustomer follow-up.“Just having an additional databaseon top of the CRM makes the proce-dure much easier. Hyper File is veryflexible.” Confided Hassan Bilal.This way, at any given timeHandicap International benefitsfrom delivery tracking, and we canknow in the blink of an eye where apackage is located, if it has beendelivered or in what warehouse it is.“WINDEV answered all of ourexpectations and other develop-ments are now in the pipeline”,concluded Hassan Bilal.

B A N Q U E

Don’t forget tobuy your

Christmas treebag!

Publi Dossier 01 INFORMATIQUE•

Publi Dossier 01 INFORMATIQUE• 35

The CompanyZambon Group is an internationalgroup from the pharmaceutical andchemical industry (2,400 associatesin 16 countries).

SSaannddrriinnee SSaallmmoonn is the IT managerof Zambon France

Project LeaderArenal specializes in the develop-ment of sales management softwaresuch as SoluPharm, which is builtspecifically for sales teams targetingretail pharmacies or hospitals.CChhrriissttiiaann DDoorriissssee is responsible forthe “software” activity.

WINDEV andSoluPharm: cures forZAMBON “We used to have a CRM applica-tion that was developed with an off-the-shelf DBMS that was no longerresponding to our quality and pro-ductivity needs” declared SandrineSalmon, “implementing SoluPharmwas very beneficial”.SoluPharm was developed usingWINDEV. “The best part I saw wasin terms of productivity and thegreat range of features. All thedevelopers with whom I speak

about WINDEV agree with me”,recognizes Christian Dorisse.

A scalable CRM thanksto WINDEVSandrine Salmon talks about herpartnership with Arenal: “Eachrequest for new features is quicklyimplemented. This has let us custo-mize then add the application’smain modules”.This way SoluPharm has evolvedand enriched itself with ordertaking in the pharmacy. It also letsyou take a quick look at a summaryof the client relationship over 15months (activity, appointments,orders, invoices, etc.) and of course,it prevents the drug representativefrom having to re-enter the data.This improves the satisfaction andproductivity of the rep.

The dashboard on aTablet PC Other modules implemented fordrug reps are appointment manage-ment with an optimized multi-crite-ria selection, activity monitoring(dashboard, activity report), usingand processing marketing informa-tion.

“The Hyper File database databaseprovides total satisfaction in termsof reliability and performance”,underlined Sandrine Salmon. “Thefact that it can be deployed freelyinfluenced our decision greatly”,she concluded.

EDI done in WINDEV SoluPharm also integrates the auto-matic transfer of orders to the dis-tributors. “In order to implementthe EDI Interchange in the EDI-PHARM standard, we relied on the5GL functions”, clarified ChristianDorisse.

WEBDEV is prescribedin pharmaciesSoluPharm’s WEB module, develo-ped in WEBDEV, lets the pharmacistenter all orders and have access tohistorical data.“Same language and same richnessof features as WINDEV, for a similargain in productivity”, clarifiedChristian Dorisse quite rightly.

SoluPharm, a CRM appli-

cation intended for phar-

macy sales forces, was

developed by ARENAL and

then customized for the

specific needs of Zambon

France Laboratories

WINDEV & WEBDEV: improving productivitywithin ZAMBON Laboratories

H E A L T H


The companyStarted in January 1993, EuroNewscovers current events worldwide24/7 from a European perspective,simultaneously in seven languages(English, French, German, Italian,Portuguese, Spanish and Russian).

Over 193 million homes getEuroNews in 121 countries by cable,satellite and antenna. EuroNews isthe most watched news channel inEurope.

Project Leader

CCllaauuddee BBrruuyyaass is responsible fordevelopment and information sys-tems.On the tube:WINDEV 24/7 One of the characteristics ofEuroNews is that it’s a post-produc-tion channel, meaning, televisionwith little or no cameras. The edito-rial team (over 200 journalists) ana-lyzes incredible amounts of imagesand presents all opinions withoutany national bias. One of the objec-tives of the computer department is

to provide appropriate tools tomanage, process and synchronizethese millions of images that comefrom around the world. ClaudeBruyas explains the technical choi-ces: "WINDEV was already used forbusiness applications such as temp-worker contracts managementthrough Oracle. At the same time,we also had some very specificneeds when it came to managingthe video and sound sources. Theseare applications without UI, servi-ces that run 24/7. WINDEV’s techni-cal capabilities and its opennessallowed us to finally achieve ourgoals."

WINDEV at the serviceof current events in 7languagesIn EuroNews the same image istransmitted simultaneously in 7 dif-ferent languages.All the voices are recorded in PCMformat on a server “and the pro-gram built on WINDEV gets all theaudio sources and converts them toWAV. We used the 5GL functionsfRead and fWrite to write in the fileheaders and then FTPSend to makethem available on the fly on a ser-ver”, commented Claude Bruyas.The programs are started automati-cally using parameters stored inXML files: “With WINDEV, writing orparsing an XML document is easy”,he said.

180,000 audio files ayear: 1 TB of digitaldata!The procedures executed as servi-

ces work 24/7 and process 180,000audio files per year, which is 1 TB(1,000 GB of digital data a year).“With WINDEV, developing isalways fast and it works right awaywithout losing time meandering insystem knowledge. The reliability ofthe applications is astounding, it’szero maintenance, and in our case,it’s vital!” exclaimed ClaudeBruyas.

“Commercial break in5 seconds: WINDEV,You’re on”Amongst the different processesthat revolve around the productionof video and sound sources inEuroNews, managing the break forcommercials is now automaticthanks to a service built withWINDEV. In fact, when there is acommercial break, commercials inall the countries have to beginsimultaneously.

“The application reads from a ser-ver all the instructions needed tocontrol the video server through anXML file. Using a multithreadingprocess, I synchronize the commer-cial sequences that I have to dis-play in parallel on the differentchannels (France, International,Africa, United States,…). WINDEV isfantastic in generating multithrea-ding”, says Claude Bruyas happily.“Image synchronization has to beextremely precise since there’s animage every 1/25 of a second. Allthe services that were implementedwith WINDEV (a dozen) are part ofthe production flow, they have toabsolutely be 100% functional andreliable. Without WINDEV, Iwouldn’t have been able to be thisproductive and at ease when itcomes to system reliability”, headded.

The TV channel EuroNews

relies on a series of servi-

ces developed using

WINDEV to manage its

video/audio sources 24/7

and to manage the com-

mercial breaks. Precise,

reliable and with great

performance: WINDEV in

the spotlight.

WINDEV: live 24/7 on EuroNews

T E L E V I S I O N

The companyQuicksilver Inc. is a world leader inthe outdoor market. The group des-igns, manufactures and distributesa whole ensemble of clothing, win-ter-sport equipment, golf equip-ment, shoes, accessories and otherproducts for the outdoor universe.

The Quicksilver, Roxy, DC Shoes andHawk brands get their inspirationfrom the surf, skate and snowboardheritage and culture, whereas theshirt brands, Raisins, Radio Fiji,Leilani and Island Soul are associa-ted with the beach and the sea. TheRossignol, Dynastar, Lange, Lookand Kerma brands have a strongplace on the alpin ski market.

The Quicksilver group also hasequipment for snowboarding withthe Rossignol, Dynastar, DCShoes,...These Quicksilver groupproducts are distributed in over 90countries through different net-works, including stores specializedin surfing, skating and snowboar-ding, Quicksilver stores, and the

Boardriders Club, a selection ofindependent stores and big stores.

Project LeaderPPhhiilliippppee GGaaiiggéé is the SystemIntegrator in Quicksilver Europewithin a group of 14 computer spe-cialists. The Quicksilver Europeanheadquarters, located in Saint Jeande Luz, has a staff of 400 out of1400 employees in Europe.

Over 200,000 calls/year Every day, hundreds of calls comeinto Quicksilver Europe’s call center.Clients that request informationabout their order, invoice, shipmentIn Europe Quicksilver is distributedby over 15,000 clients, 120 franchi-ses, and 100 Quicksilver stores. To keep their customers informed, ateam of 40 people is in charge ofcommunicating the required infor-mation. This team uses the salesmanagement application designedwith Oracle Forms and based on alight client architecture.

In spite of its qualities, QuicksilverEurope’s IT department has decidedto improve the sales managementapplication with a sophisticatedCRM application to manage the

client’s inquiries and follow-up.“Contrary to the sales managementapplication that is based on trans-actional mode, its front-end had tobe on a rich client, to benefit fromthe office automation tools”, states

Philippe Gaigé.

WinDev dives intoQuicksilver’s CRM “To face the requirements, it was

necessary to implement an efficientsolution as soon as possible. Inthis context, WINDEV was chosen,because of its undeniable producti-vity and excellent performance indatabase access”, admitted

Quicksilver Europe has en-

riched its Oracle-based

sales management with a

CRM application built with

the WINDEV IDE. At the

height of the call wave,

performance is at its best.

Quicksilver: surfing on WINDEV

F A S H I O N

Philippe Gaigé.The objective is clear: format thesales management application’sdata to provide information andprecise activity follow-up to theclient.

Customer care andOrder TracingThe client dials Quicksilver’s num-ber, and can ask all sorts of ques-tions regarding his account: orderstatus, billing status, amount due,shipping status, etc.“The client is identified by his cal-ling number. We have made aninterface with Corebridge (commu-nications integrated software)”,specified Philippe Gaigé.From the client form, the user cansend an email or send an invoiceusing a document in PDF format.“Everything is done from the CRMapplication using an OLE automa-tion dialogue with our Notes mes-saging server. The PDF is generatedautomatically and, of course, with

WINDEV” underlined PhilippeGagié.Furthermore, the user can visualizethe packing list with the detailedcontents of the boxes sent. Thisallows for foolproof tracking.

550 million records,200 GB! “In terms of the performance mea-sured, the main database has over550 million records and represents200 GB in data. Some tables haveover 70 million records. We useOracle as our information systemand the response times for our dif-ferent queries are astonishinglyfast. The native access and thequery analyzing tool have contribu-ted to the optimization of perfor-mance” recognized Philippe Gaigé.“With WINDEV, displaying queryresults with SQLTable is very easy.But above all, sorting by field, buil-ding filters, searching with themagnifying glass or adding totals,is fantastic for the user and auto-matic in terms of development

since there are n0 lines of code!The users are also happy to be ableto benefit from automatic export toExcel through a simple right click,and execute their simulationsimmediately. Thanks WINDEV for all these featu-res, it’s a pleasure for developersas well as for users”, he continued.

New projects on theway After seeing the success of thisCRM, from a technical point of viewas well as from a usability point ofview, the IT team is far from beingshort of projects based on WINDEV.Philippe Gaigé reveals the outlinesof the applications to come: “Wewant to translate the application toGerman, Spanish and Italian usingthe WDMSG tool. Furthermore, wehave to improve the presentation ofexisting data for our sales mana-gers’ client portfolio in order tomake pro-active managementeasier”.

B A N Q U E


The companyPlaymobil, part of the German com-pany Geobra Branstätter, was esta-blished in 1974.To date over 2 billion charactershave been produced and have takenup residence in children’s bedroomsthe world over.

Project Leader

CCaatthheerriinnee CChhaarrlleessssoonn is the R&Dmanager.

Plastic is fantastic,WinDev is a dreamcome true Playmobil France directly controlsthe logistics for the merchandisesupplied by theGerman headquar-ters.In other countries,the German factoryships directly to thesubsidiaries’ custo-mers.The characteristicsof the French mar-ket (leading subsi-diary of the group)mean that a specially adapted com-puter system was required as acomplement to the ERP.“We decided to internally develop

all the modules we needed for run-ning Playmobil France ", statesCatherine Charlesson. She adds:"WinDev was an easy choice thanksto the fact that it covers the wholedevelopment lifecycle and is fullyopen to market standards (office,database and bar code softwarenotably). In terms of the user inter-face, WinDev is the dream productfor any developer. Our colleagues inother countries are jealous of theergonomy of our applications".

100 MB of strategicdata? Hyper Filecomes into play! Sales management (ERP) is organi-sed around xBase files. "We transparently extract salesinformation in batches in order to

provide PlaymobilFrance with thedata it requires.We really domake the most ofHyper File’spower given thatwe use over100MB of data",continuesCatherineCharlesson.

This data is then shared by thenumerous applications used byPlaymobil France.Let’s take the Playmobil "product

base" as an example: the applica-tion handles logistics informationsuch as destinations, palletization,packaging, etc. Catherine Charlesson details evenfurther. “All the information requi-red by the marketing department isalso covered: packing lists, POSadvertising (aisle end display, shelflayout, etc.), prices, photos (box,product, label, etc.), sales blurbs,media plans, certificates of origin,dates of availability, titles forcheckout stands, collections orthemes.”

WINDEV & WEBDEVafter Christmas Orders at the end of the year arestored in 11 delivery centers allaround France.These centers are managed byseveral logistics service providerswho are in charge of receiving theorders from the factory, stockingthem and then delivering them tothe clients depending on the deli-very date they asked for.In order to respond to this need anew Extranet application was deve-loped in WEBDEV. This applicationperforms a follow-up on the ordersfor the delivery centers, the logis-tics service and the customer ser-vice.This real time follow-up of the mer-chandise and of the stock allows for

the fastest possible alert whenthere’s a problem with reception atthe centers or with delivery to theclients.Another of the necessary applica-tions in Playmobil France: manage-ment of the merchandise returnsafter Christmas.This involves making appointmentsfor pick-up, following up on schedu-les and issuing reminders. "All ourmail is personalised and automati-cally generated via an OLE dialogbetween the application andWord.", declares the R&D Director.In addition to handling returns, theIT department has developed awide range of other applicationsthat have become essential forPlaymobil France, such as ordermanagement, a large number ofindicators for managers, expensemanagement for sales executives,etc.

Child’s play Catherine Charlesson gives her ownopinion on the applications develo-ped by her department: "WinDev islike Playmobil, once you start, youjust can’t stop; it really is child’splay to use. You can easily debugan easy to read source code, notlike when using 4 GL. It is wayahead of the competition! ".

Playmobil’s French subsi-

diary uses the WINDEV &

WEBDEV IDEs to collect

and manage data for its

toy distribution business

in France.

PLAYMOBIL France : every day’sChristmas with WINDEV & WEBDEV!

I N D U S T R Y

•Publi Dossier 01 INFORMATIQUE72

The companySegafredo Zanetti, established in1894, is an Italian multinationalwhich produces and sells coffee inover 40 countries (plantations inBrazil notably). Segafredo is todaythe number one espresso coffee incoffee shops and hotels with over70,000 clients in the four corners ofthe world.

Project leaderJooëëll RRoouuiilllléé, is the IT manager forthe French division.

Hot deadlines: Onesolution: WinDev What solution to adopt in the lightof cost constraints, objectives andcommercial directives? This was theproblem facing the SegafredoZanetti computer department. Withan AS/400, loaded at 80% withcommercial packages, includingGenacod 400 (production,stocks/purchases management,client/supplier flows, etc.), JoelRouillé didn’ t hesitate in choosingWinDev for the development ofsatellite modules around Genacod400 in order to provide strategicdecision making tools for the salesand marketing teams within strictdeadlines."I approached WinDev having beena developer myself some 15 yearsago. It was very simple to get usedto, especially thanks to the nume-rous examples and its 5GL. I wasable to create a project model in notime", declares Joel Rouillé .

WinDev for its user-friendly interface andoutstanding perfor-mance The application presents in a dash-board format aggregated informa-tion (from 32 computers) from theGenacod 400 package. "The Managing Director ofSegafredo Zanetti was used to thedevelopment time set by our formertools and was immediately impres-sed by our responsiveness in provi-ding a model thanks to WinDevRAD. At run time, the native AS/400access performance and the userfriendliness of the application alsoproved successful. He very much

appreciated the range of charts andease of export to Excel. Our presen-tation was so successful that he

encouraged us to pursue develop-ment with WinDev AS/400 for futureprojects", underlines Joel Rouillé.

Portability of AS/400and Hyper File code The application has been enrichedand is used both by the sales admi-nistration department at headquar-ters and by sales managers in thefield. "WinDev offers total code por-tability. Users have the Hyper Filedatabase engine on their laptopsand we send files to sales mana-gers via email using the 5GL Zipfunctions of WinDev", adds JoelRouillé.

No coffee break forWinDevBased on the success of this initialproject, other strategic applicationsare now under development (e.g.manufacturing quality monitoringtools based on the ISO 9001/2000standard). "WinDev meets our internal require-ments and supports our systemsetup. In a decision making envi-

ronment, responsiveness and open-ness (communication via Internet,Excel, AS/ 400, etc.) of developmenttools are essential. WinDev applica-tions enable reliable and secure dis-tribution of information under thesole responsibility of our own com-puter department. These are all rea-sons why we have widened the useof WinDev to the whole develop-ment team", concludes Joel Rouillé.

The Italian multinational

chose WinDev AS/400 to

provide decision

making tools dedicated to

sales managers and

teams.

WINDEV & SEGAFREDO ZANETTIHelp in making express decisions!

C O F F E E


The companyThe WWF (World Wildlife Fund) isthe number one worldwide associa-tion for nature protection.The WWF has over 4.7 million mem-bers all over the world.The organization relies on a net-work spread over 96 countries thatoffer over 12,000 nature protectionprograms. The WWF’s skills inscience are recognized worldwide.

Project leaderEEuurrooWWiinn is an IT solutions editor inthe Direct Marketing area.GGiilllleess GGeennttaaiiss is its director.

An idea + a prototypewith WINDEV =Success! Many associations ask for dona-tions to support their projects andabove all to complete their mission.“In 1998, we identified the need ofassociations for rigorous manage-ment in the donation collectionphase. It had to be done quickly tofill this need. In technical terms wewent for a market standard,WINDEV, known for its productivity.We were able to start working withit immediately and it allowed us tobuild a prototype that we then pre-sented to our potential clients,Direct Marketing specialists. After being won over by the auto-matic features and the UI, our pro-ject successfully started thanks toWINDEV”, says Gilles Gentais.

A CRM to optimizeWWF’s donation collec-tion and tracing MD2 covers the donor relationmanagement (donation manage-ment) as well as subscription mana-gement, purchases (product catalo-gue: teddy bears, toys, books,...)and dues (to become a member ofthe association), direct debit, spon-soring and also volunteer manage-ment (mail, invitations,...) andadministrators. The whole system isconceived in a way that will providethe maximum transparency and tra-ceability (auditors, account commis-saries, public,...).All the history of events is kept,mailings sent, emails and phonecalls made and received, mail recei-ved and the responses made.

Interface with SAGE,CIEL, CCMX and ETE-BACThe solution also has an accountinginterface with SAGE, CIEL, andCCMX and edits the fiscal receipts(contact, offer, amount).“All the features in WINDEV are atthe developer’s service.. You wantto export to Excel? It’s automatic.You need business charts or toexport to a text file to dialogue with

an accounting system on the mar-ket? An assistant helps you.WINDEV has amazing help when itcomes to developing”, recognizesGilles Gentais with enthusiasm.In the case of direct debit, MD2manages the ETEBAC protocol tocommunicate with the bank.

Help in DecisionMaking: Hyper Fileprotects and improvesthe data MD2 covers all functions specific todirect marketing (segmentation,campaign management,...) andoffers a number of statistics chartsand analysis tools: donationperiods, the quickness of respon-ses, pyramid analysis, seniority,date and type of deposit,campaign comparison, RFMscoring,...Over one hundred analysesare available.“The Hyper File database isused by WWF as well as byall the associations thathave adopted MD2. The res-ponse times are alwaysexcellent no mater what thecomplexity of the queriesand the volume of data”,says Gilles Gentais happily.

30 million records:Hyper File omnipre-sentThe success of MD2 has seducedmany associations such as: TheNational League Against Cancer,Sidaction, Terre des Hommes, thisrepresents over 30 million addres-ses managed in the Hyper FileDatabase.“In addition to its power, its freedeployment has contributed unde-niably to MD2’s success”, conclu-ded Gilles Gentais.

The WWF association uses

the MD2 software built by

EuroWin with WINDEV, to

manage its donation col-

lection campaign

WINDEV’s helping hand for WWF

P L A N E T


The Company“Ferrero Rocher”, “Mon Chéri”,“Rafaello, the “Kinder” product line,“Tic Tac”, “Duplo” and “Nutella” areFERRERO’s best known products.Created in 1946, the company spe-cializes in the food industry andtoday it has over 900 employees.

Project Management

TThhee ddeevveellooppmmeenntt tteeaamm on the“sales “ project consists of aresearch/system coordinator, twoproject managers, an analyst and adatabase administrator for the Unixand AS/400 databases

200 sales agents outin the field

The entire FERRERO’s sales force(nearly 300 salespeople) uses the“Sales” program. It’s the salespeo-ple’s tool of the trade, whether athome, at the office doing adminis-trative work (making appointments)or in the stores (supermarkets,convenience stores, warehouses)salespeople come for a visit andthen enter their findings for futurenegotiations.

WINDEV, an every daydelight WINDEV was chosen unanimouslyby the development team.“From a technical point of view,there is no equivalent underWindows for developing strategicapplications this fast”, said one ofthe developers in charge.“Thanks to the rich WINDEV exam-ple guide and the technical assis-

tance,alwaysavailable, wealways have asolution to ourneeds. We’ve defini-

tely gaineda lot in responsetime, ergonomics andreliability”.

iSeries,Sybase andHyper Filetogether The sales manage-ment reference data

goes from the AS/400 database toa Sybase database located on aRS6000. A batch procedure thenidentifies the data corresponding toeach individual salesperson.Then, the field salesperson can, atany time, retrieve, usingADSL, on his mobiledevice the data heneeds and he canthen store it in aHyper File database.“If a new version of the appli-cati0n is available, the salespersonretrieves it and the setup tool inclu-ded in WINDEV takes care of upda-ting the right modules and the rele-vant files if the analysis has chan-ged. To the user, this is completelytransparent”, declares the databaseadministrator.

From appointment, tobusiness deal and acti-vity follow-up The “Sales” application lets thesales team manage its calendar,visualize the client forms andmanage meetings, and the clientvisits and ensuing reports.

From thenational-level actions

negotiated by a manager, the localsalesperson can obtain the actionsto be performed for each client inhis or her territory.

Constantreporting Moreover, thanks tothe “Sales” program,we can see theongoing orders atany time, the client’ssales figures andsummaries (cashregister results, bysector or the total byregion, for instance). Interms of activity follow-up,know the performance of a POS pro-duct display, the summary for astore’s activity and budgets.

For example, for each POSproduct display, we

can tell whetherthe diffe-

rent FE-RRERO

productswell presented,

their position within the shel-ves and their facing.This data can be exported toExcel and users can format itas they wish. “It’s automatic inWINDEV”, confided the analyst.The application will offer diffe-rent features depending on thesalesperson’s role. Managers willhave access to summarized dataof their sales team (they canretrieve all the data entered by thesalesperson).

Multilingual “This application is constantlychanging, especially in order tokeep up with changes in large scaledistribution in the European mar-ket. For instance, it has been trans-lated to Dutch for the Benelux mar-ket. “Overall, thanks to WINDEV we

are always confident that wecan meet these demands

easily” concludes thesystems and researchmanager.

Over 200 salespeople use

the “SALES” program that

was built with WINDEV to

support their field sales

activities.

FERRERO’s sales forces are savouring WINDEV

F O O D

The companyJohn DEERE, founded in 1837, is theworld’s leading manufacturer ofagricultural machines and equip-ment.The Saran plant near Orléansemploys over 800 people andmanufactures Diesel engines of 3, 4and 6 cylinders, such as thePowerTech engines in versions with2 or 4 valves and up to 275 horse-power.

Project LeaderAAllaaiinn BBeessssee (on the left) andSSeennggssaavvaanngg BBoouuvvaarrdd (on the right)

are respectively the programminganalyst and engineer within thecompany.

ISO 9001 Test bedsThe Saran plant (ISO 9001 certified,version 2000 and ISO 14001, ver-sion 2004) is a major European pro-duction and sales unit for dieselengines.Some of the engines built are sentto factories that manufacture John

Deere tractors and combine harves-ters. Others are used to equip awide range of machines outside thegroup: air compressors, generators,fishing boats, construction machi-nes, etc. At Saran, the engineering depart-ment is responsible for approvingparts from suppliers as well as forcustom developments needed tomeet customer specifications.There are 12 endurance test beds, agas analysis booth, a particle analy-ser, a sound room to test enginenoise levels, a cold room to testcold starting, etc.

Multithreading is noweasy thanks toWINDEV The objective of the computerdepartment was to drive the testsoftware by preparing the parame-ters specific to the test ordered, butalso to ease the analysis of the testresults.“We chose WinDev for its exceptio-nal qualities in terms of develop-ment productivity and its openness.The application developed usingWinDev communicates via threadsto transmit all the parameters to thetest beds and then analyzes theresults", explains Alain Besse."When you have experienced thecomplexity of handling threadsusing 4GL, you really do appreciatethe clarity of WinDev’s 5GL instruc-

tions such as ThreadExecute orThreadPiority. Thank God we usedWinDev to develop these applica-tions. It saved us from writing lite-rally miles of code", he adds.

1 million engine testsanalyzed thanks toWinDev! All the data is stored in an Oracledatabase. “WinDev offers remarka-ble access performance”, continuesAlain Besse. “For each test, some500 parameters are sent to the testbed and analyzed. These can relateto the power of the engine,consumption, exhaust fumes, maxi-

At the John Deere factory

in Saran, the engine test

beds are analyzed using

applications developed

with WinDev. Quite a suc-

cess story!

Test beds at John Deere: an engine named WINDEV

E N G I N E E R I N G

mum and minimum torque, idlingRPM, oil pressure, etc. Since inte-grating these applications, the JohnDeere plant in Saran has recordednearly one million engine tests”.The information provided gives aninstant snapshot of the perfor-mance of any engine. Action canthus be taken at any stage of theproduction process in order toachieve the objective of 100 % cus-tomer satisfaction.

Hyper File for skillmanagementIn addition to the test center, other

applications have been built aroundWinDev. One of them handles theoperators’ different skills.These skills are classified in termsof engine part manufacturing,engine assembly, engine tests orengine painting.This way trainers can follow an ope-rator’s current and new skill set. Allthese characteristics are taken intoaccount and stored in a Hyper Filedatabase: “I don’t know any otherdatabase that’s easier to use thanHyper File: the 5GL functions arevery powerful and clear comparedto SQL, installation is very simple

and there’s no admi-nistration: thanks tothe automatic upda-ter in the case of achange in structure,it’s all transparent”,said SengsavangBouvard gladly.

An achieve-

ment that will makethe Americans greenwith envy! "These applications are a key ele-ment in the John Deere strategy.They have been very well receivedby the users in the plant too, fromthe production director to methodtechnicians, the engineering team,the post sales and quality servi-ces", declares Alain Besse.He concludes by noting the interestthat his American colleagues haveshown in the applications: "Our

American colleagues were surpri-sed by our responsiveness to userrequirements as well as by ourattractive interface".

The CompanyMLT and MCT handle the logistics ofall SMART vehicles worldwide fromthe factory gate through the trans-port chain.

Project leader

AAllaaiinn GGaabbrriieell is MLT’s projectmanager.

WinDev: Open andFlexible In addition to the commercial andtechnological challenge that manu-facturing and distributing SMARTvehicles worldwide represents, theteam faced another vital challenge:efficiently manage the back officeoperations (manufacturing, trans-port, storage, maintenance, and soon).AS/400 was chosen for handlingdata. Constantly changing require-ments highlighted the need to optfor a development tool that couldimprove productivity. "We opted forthe PC SOFT solutions. Where elsecould we have found such operatio-nal depth and such ease of use?AS/400 native access meant that we

could maintain the full integrity ofour data on the AS/400 with opti-mal performance", states AlainGabriel.He adds: "Given the incomparabledevelopment flexibility offered byWinDev, users behave more likesystem designers, constantlyasking for new elements or impro-vements. WinDev always enables usto keep up with such demands andthis is essential".

Components for liveupdates In light of this, MLT/ MCT set upnew developments in its client/ser-ver architecture. The project wasbroken down into operationalmodules. "We fully exploit theconcept of WinDev components.Application updates are carried outin real time and do not disrupt thecompany’s operations", enthusesAlain Gabriel.Projects developed to date includelogistics, transport, quality (withautomatic mail generation),work-shop management, sales manage-ment, maintenance, invoicing, deci-sion making (optimization of sto-rage turnover, truck loads andmore), real-time vehicle tracking,parking management (7000 spa-ces).

The project as a whole representsnearly 30 man/months of develop-ment to manage data from over 100files.

Just in time with PDAin GPRS modeWith the same objective of flow effi-ciency, drivers responsible for vehi-cle movements upon leaving thefactory are equipped with PDAs.These have bar code readers andcommunicate all the required infor-mation (identity and position of thevehicle) via GPRS to the computersystem. "A multithreaded WinDevapplication analysesthe data received via aprocedure that uses theSoap protocol. Thisgives us the freedom todeal with other Firewallconfiguration problemsin the ISP.", explainsAlain Gabriel.

This "just in time"method is incrediblyefficient.

In addition to handlingthe movement of Smartvehicles, the mobilepart also handles the

maintenance jobs on vehicles instock (maintenance orders, registe-ring quality data such as the batterytension, pressure, etc.)

Intranet with WebDevAt the request of Daimler Chryslerand Smart, MLT developed anInternet-based logistics manage-ment tool for Smart vehicles (LIS:Logistic Information System)."WebDev is the perfect complementto WinDev: same ease of use, samelogic and above all, the same lan-guage: WLanguage", pursues AlainGabriel.

MLT and MCT have fully

computerized all the

logistics for SMART

vehicles worldwide.

WinDev, WebDev and

AS/400 steered these

projects to success.

WINDEV: it’s SMART!

A U T O M O B I L E

This site enables us to track all ourvehicles in real time, from order todelivery. ("Tracing and tracking").He adds: "WebDev enabled us todeploy the site in record time andwithout having to integrate com-plex technologies. The site sharesdata with the AS/ 400".

Worldwide use This site is used by Smart Centers,Mercedes garages, transport com-panies, Smart and Daimler Chrysler. Given the global nature of the pro-ject, the internal applications andthe Intranet site are multilingual.“WINDEV was well thought throughfor multilingual projects”, notesAlain Gabriel.

Data communica-tion all the wayup to the custo-mer The logistics chain of Smartvehicles is completely auto-matic from production allthe way up to the customer,no matter where in theworld he is.An alert tool was created inWINDEV in order to handleautomatic mail sending (foradditional control a mail issent to the freighter, thetransporters and the teamleaders). The system alsolets you send information or

alert messages to managers regar-ding their activities (the number oftrucks on the site, in loading, atruck taking too long to be loa-ded,…) or a possible malfunction (atemporary stop of the Internet sitefor maintenance or of the transferservers).“It’s hard to highlight oneWLanguage function more thananother one, it surprises me everyday. I have to admit though that theemail functions are a real extra”,said Alain Gabriel joyfully.

WINDEV for itsresponsiveness and itsopennessAnd he continues with a little anec-dote: “After one of our managerswas relocated to Germany, he hadto have his mail redirected to thenew address. Also, some of theassociates wanted to be able tosend an automatic message whenthey were on holiday. Our centraloffice wanted us to use a solutioninvolving MS Exchange to respondto this request (the mail server is onLinux but we don’t master all its

features). The result: I developed asolution within a day’s time and Iwas able to avoid a heavy invest-ment in Exchange”.Alain Gabriel enthusiasticallyconcluded this testimonial on theprojects he is so proud of: "In aconstantly evolving environment,we can only congratulate ourselveson the choice of WebDev andWinDev. These products really domeet our goals and our users’requirements and have enabled usto provide a reliable and efficientcomputer system", concludes AlainGabriel.

B A N Q U E

A 7,000 spaceparking lot to

manage in realtime.

The companyA subsidiary of BRIDGESTONE and abrand name of the FirstStop group,METIFIOT established itself as atrue specialist in pneumatics.METIFIOT has more than 900employees, spread out over 100branches all over France.

Project LeadersCChhrriissttiiaann BBeerrtthheett is an information

system manager for METIFIOT.PPiieerrrree VViinnddrryy is the manager of thePocket PC project.

From WINDEV toWINDEV Mobilewithout any pressureMETIFIOT’s 100 branches are equip-ped with a sales management soft-ware developed using WINDEV. Thissoftware manages prospects andcustomers, creates customer visitsfollow up, organizes the calendar ofsales people and creates proposals.When a sales person visited a cus-tomer, he filled out a form in frontof the customer with all the infor-mation needed for writing a propo-sal or an order.

The emergence of performing PDAsled METIFIOT to consider outfittingits sales force with mobile devices."The main objective was to eliminatethe risk of errors when entering thecaptured information into the backoffice application. The other maingoal was to always have up-to-dateinformation available on a low cost

mobile device", explains ChristianBerthet."We lost several months with othersolutions trying to build this mobileapplication. The release of WINDEVMobile was very welcomed", sharesthe information system director ofMETIFIOT

He adds: "This choice, even if itseems natural since we’ve alreadymastered WINDEV, is first of all, a

technical choice for two main rea-sons. The first one is that WINDEVMobile allowed us to reuse a largepart of the development done inWINDEV on PC. We simply had toresize the windows or controls. Asfor the source code, it stayed thesame, which is a dream come truefor any professional developer".

Comfort and securityof WINDEV Mobile"The second reason has to do withthe ease of development of the PCSOFT’s IDE. Where other solutionswould require you to type dozens oflines of code, WLanguage is conciseand clear. In short, developingapplications can’t be compared interms of schedule and reliability".

Pierre Vindy goes on to clarify: "Inthe case of this application, thewindows of the sales managementprogram were retooled in one day.Then, we called on our know-how toadd mobile specific features".

Better targeting andbetter company imageSalespeople (about 70) can nowenter information in their PDA(ASUS brand) during their salesvisit.

Once back at the branch, the PDA isdocked in order to synchronize itsdata with the server. At the sametime, the item database on the PDAis updated with the new prices andstock availability.

Every night, a batch process, deve-loped using WINDEV, updates theheadquarters’ server. The next mor-ning, information about the newprospects is up-to-date.

This allows for promotional marke-ting campaigns to be better targe-ted. "Prospecting has improved andthe image carried is excellent whensalespeople go on visits", proudlydeclares Christian Berthet.

Proposal on 100,000items: Hyper FileMobile steps on thegas!The PDA application allows, forexample, the creation of instant

The METIFIOT Company, a

subsidiary of BRIDGE-

STONE, has chosen

WINDEV Mobile to provide

its sales force with an ap-

plication for mobile com-

WINDEV Mobile pumps upBRIDGESTONE- METIFIOT sales

D I S T R I B U T I O N

proposals thanks to a very richembedded Hyper File database.This database contains more than100, 000 items (tires, shocks, andso on) and between 300 and 400customers for each salesperson.Now there is no need to go back tothe branch in order to fax a propo-sal to a customer. The proposal isgiven to the customer directlyduring the sales call along withstock availability.“All our salespeople as well as ourcustomers are impressed by theaccess speed to the database.Searches can combine up to adozen different search criteria (dia-meter, height, brand, and so on)",notes Pierre Vindry.

Hitting the road withWINDEV MobileAny new salesperson hired is nowoutfitted with a PDA. "This equip-ment has now become standard inthe company, and nobody can dowithout it", shares ChristianBerthet.Since the use of PDAs is such a suc-cess thanks to WINDEV Mobileapplications, other projects arebeing developed by the informationsystem team. Pierre Vindry wants toemphasize the ease of updatingapplications while still in develop-ment: "From a technical standpoint, each modification of theapplication (data model, features,and so on) is done remotely withouthaving to bring the PDAs back totheir base".

Among the improvements that havebeen planned, we can mention lin-king PDAs to GPS in order to opti-mize the itinerary of the salespeo-ple on the road. "It’s obvious thatthe success of the first applicationhas generated new ideas for impro-ving the service we provide to ourcustomers. We can only applaud thequality and productivity of WINDEVMobile. Without this IDE, without itsalways relevant updates, wecouldn’t undertake such projects inthe timeframe we have", concludesChristian Berthet.In a context where new technolo-gies often generate unsatisfyingreturn on investment for informa-tion system executives because oftheir high complexity, such wordsare obviously reassuring and they

encourage taking a close look at PCSOFT’s IDEs.

The companyBristol-Myers Squibb is a majorplayer in the medical and pharma-ceutical field. Bristol-Myers Squibb fights everyday to prolong and better life by fin-ding therapeutic solutions for ill-nesses that affect major areas ofpublic health such as HIV/AIDS,cancer, cardio-vascular diseases,neurosciences and pain (especiallythrough products in the UPSAbrand).The group employs 42,000 peopleworldwide. In France, Bristol-Myers

Squibb employs 3,200 people. The"Le Cristalia" building in Rueil-Malmaison is the European head-quarters for the group.

Project LeadersSébastien Le Drogo (on the left) is aproject manager for Bristol-MyersSquibb. ALTEVA is a consulting com-pany that designs, develops andimplements software solutions forbuilding maintenance. Christian Blandin (on the right),the company’s co-founder, was incharge of the project.

Mission possible for950 employees thanksto WINDEV andWEBDEVManaging maintenance calls is oneof the major needs of the facilitiesdepartment. This consists of simplyand efficiently managing the main-tenance request process frominception to resolution. Bristol-Myers Squibb wanted tooffer its headquarters a flexiblesolution for managing the requestof its 950 employees and provide asolution in the shortest possibletimeframe. These requests can be technical (airconditioning, printers, lighting,moving offices, and so on), but canalso be requests for services (suchas employee badges, taxis, meals,janitorial services, messengers,copies, gym, and more).ALTEVA, which specializes in thisarea, was selected to answer thiscomplex problem. "We were able to accept this chal-lenge thanks to the consistency andthe interoperability of the WINDEV,WEBDEV and WINDEV MOBILEsuite" declared Christian Blandin.

Back Office, FrontOffice, and Mobility: asingle language!

The proposed automated solution ismade of three large modules: theback office module, consisting ofthe “Mission” maintenance mana-gement software used by the tech-nicians. This is the core of the sys-tem.The second large module, the frontoffice, is named “CristaliaServices”. Participants use this por-tal to enter and follow theirrequests."This was a key element of the pro-posal. Using WEBDEV allowed us to

ALTEVA has implemented

a complete solution for

managing building and of-

fice maintenance requests

at Bristol-Myers Squibb’s

European headquarters.

New remedy at Bristol- Myers Squibb:WINDEV Mobile

H E A L T H

build a custom and fully operationalprototype in a few days. Let me tellyou that it was crucial to the finaldecision made by Bristol-MyersSquibb", proudly declares ChristianBlandin.He also confided: "Creating dyna-mic pages with WEBDEV is ideal. Itoffers the same ease-of-use asWINDEV, the acknowledged leader.We even recovered windows fromthe Mission application and conver-ted them into pages".

1600 requests permonthEach month, 1,600 requests arerecorded on the "Cristalia Services"portal and dispatched automaticallyor manually to the relevant techni-cian. Actually, based on therequest’s object, somebody assignsit according to the currentconstraints (urgency of the request,vacations, etc.) Finally, the last module in this offeris "Mission Pocket", the softwareavailable on the PDA of the techni-cians who work in the building."WINDEV Mobile established itselfas the best solution on the market

in term of development speed aswell as in quality of the UIs that canbe built. Furthermore, it uses thesame language as WINDEV andWEBDEV”, underlines the ALTEVAco-founder. “The ease-of-program-ming and the ability to share codeamong products in the PC SOFTsuite provides an invaluable gain oftime. We could not envision usingthree different development tools.The timetable would have neverbeen achieved without WINDEV,WEBDEV and WINDEV Mobile", headds.

WiFi connectionThe ten technicians, equipped witha PDA (Dell Axim) receive in realtime the requests assigned to them."With WINDEV Mobile, the applica-tion uses timers that regularlyquery the database using WiFi andautomatically update the list of cur-rent requests", clarifies ChristianBlandin.All the information needed for asuccessful intervention (object anddetails of the request, completecontact information of the reques-ter, location, telephone number,extension, etc.) is available on thetechnician’s PDA.

Intervention time splitin half for 44,000 m2(473,600 ft2)!"Our 44,000 m2 building covers anarea of roughly 200 meters long by33 meters high. Using MissionPocket allows us to processrequests better and faster. Thisreduces the number of trips pertechnician. They can go from onerequest to another without goingback to their desk. They are autono-mous and manage their workloadas they see fit. We were able to cutour incident response time in half,which frees us to better concentrateon preventive maintenance actionsfor the building. This is why we areseeing a considerable decrease inthe number of technical requests"explains Sébastien Le Drogo,Project manager for Bristol-MyersSquibb, explains.

Link to existing OracledatabaseOnce an intervention is done, thetechnician creates his reports on his

PDA in 2 clicks ("that’s the abso-lute truth", notes ChristianBlandin). Using a WiFi connectionthrough a RPC server, the centraldatabase is updated in real timeand the requesters can be notifiedby e-mail that their request hasbeen completed. "Both for the back office and thefront office we use Oracle. It is ourclient’s choice, and for us from atechnical standpoint, it is transpa-rent", underlines Christian Blandin.

Effective real time andoptimal communica-tion; WINDEV, is likevitamins!Through “Cristalia Services” therequesters can be kept informed ofeach step of their request’s resolu-tion (initial request, acceptance,planning, intervention start, total orpartial resolution, etc.) "This solution provides for ultimatecommunication between all theplayers. From inception to closingof a request, from the easiest to themost complicated (personnel moveand/or office move for example)"clarifies Sébastien Le Drogo, who isdelighted by the solution providedby the ALTEVA team.Management can keep track of theworkload for each technician andcontractor on their team.

WINDEV Mobile makeslife even better Bristol-Myers Squibb is going to goeven further in servicing its tenantsby adding a meeting room manage-ment module. "In the Pocket PC part, we are plan-ning to include inventory manage-ment, access to equipment historyand data entry through a bar codesystem", concludes ChristianBlandin. ALTEVA can be proud of its success,which is reflected by the 200 ormore sites that use its back officeapplication in areas ranging frominsurance, luxury goods and financeto industries and transportation aswell as public sector and healthcare.

The companyThe French family business CLA-RINS reached an internationaldimension at the beginning of the70s, and it signed its first contractswith exclusive agents abroad.The first branches started in the80s, first in the United States inJanuary 1981. In 2007, the ClarinsGroup, consists of 20 distributionsubsidiaries, over 150 countries,with over 6000 people with annualrevenues of nearly one billioneuros. CLARINS Suisse (CLARINSSwitzerland) is one of these bran-ches.For our beauty, CLARINS conceivesproducts that give preference to100% natural ingredients: face andbody care, tanning, make-up, malecare and recently CLARINS perfu-mes.From the wonderful alliance bet-ween Clarins and the talentedcreator Thierry Mulger, and laterAzzaro, great fragrances wereborn.

ProjectManagementJJeeaann--LLoouuiissBBeelllleevveerrgguuee is res-ponsible for compu-ter software withinCLARINSSwitzerland.

WINDEV tooptimize theAS/400 “All our applications

are mostly and historically on ourAS/400. Whether they are internaldevelopments using RPG or com-mercial software packages. Whenwe studied the possibility of unitingall the data contained in the AS/400as well as the one stored in theoffice automation tools, WINDEVseemed like the most reasonablechoice. In fact, we had a strict dead-line to produce new applications. Ithad to be up and running quicklyand it had to take into account the

development team’s profile”, decla-red Jean-Louis Bellevergue. “Theease of development inherent inWINDEV and its AS/400 nativeaccess played in its favor”, headded.

CLARINS’ Swiss branch

has chosen the WINDEV

IDE for its internal deve-

lopment. The export ship-

ping management project

is the precursor of seve-

ral projects that are

based on a client/server

architecture using an

AS/400.

B E A U T Y

CLARINS Switzerland: WINDEV takescare of its export

Export ship-ment follow-up Product export not onlytargets the duty freemarket for Europe, butalso the reseller marketabroad. Before the com-puter department imple-mented an applicationto centralize the data forthe follow-up of foreinshipment, the ware-house manager keptinformation on Exceland would send his datato the export manager,who was in charge ofbilling.The objective was there-fore to automate bothtasks.The application bringssome added value interm of insight into the administra-tive tasks and into orders being pre-pared.

The sweet smell ofsuccess thanks toWINDEV 5GL“The creation of the UI is an unde-niable advantage of WINDEV. To beable to create your screens in aWYSIWYG environment, to easilydefine a control’s properties, tohave a simple link to the data in theAS/400, brought us efficiencywithout comparison”, states thecomputer software manager.“For those in our team who pro-grammed in RPG, programmingwith the WINDEV 5GL highly inte-rested them since learning it wasvery fast. With the ability to pro-gram more clearly and concisely,there’s no need to use object orien-ted programming and the developercan easily find his way”.

Printing with the grea-test care Today, the centralized database canbe consulted and modified by allparties depending on their rights.The gain in time can also be valuedwhen printing all the administrativefiles, such as the delivery ordersthat go along with the products thatare exported (content of the orderwithin the package, weight/volume,instructions regarding shipping,

potential special handling instruc-tions). “The Report editor has beenappreciated by the team because ofits ease of use and its effectivenessin producing quality printouts”,admitted Jean-Louis Bellevergue.In view of the positive outlook onthe shipping management applica-tion other projects have been imple-mented, such as Swiss client mana-gement. This project groups infor-mation, which, until now, wasspread out over several sources(AS/400 files, Excel spreadsheets,paper documents) and was maintai-ned by different contributors:Management, Sales, Marketing. “The experience of developing withWINDEV’s IDE has made us realizehow much faster we could getthings done, and it has also madeus want to develop several projectsor adapt our existing software toour needs. Between continuing todevelop in RPG and choosing acomplex technology, WINDEV com-forts us in the idea that there’s noneed to wait and that we have notime to lose either. WINDEV is thebest choice in a context of producti-vity and reliability”, concluded Jean-Louis Bellevergue.

The companyShell’s industrial activity covers allaspects of the oil industry, from oiland gas prospecting to fuel deliveryat gas stations and including explo-ration, transport, refining and alsosale of a wide range of products tothe general public. Shell Gas is asubsidiary company of the Anglo-Dutch group Royal Dutch/Shell andhandles the LPG (LiquefiedPetroleum Gas) activity.

Project leaderTThhee GGBBSS tteeaamm aatt IICCEEBB..ICEB builds business administrationsoftware and is now a main playerin the oil industry.

WinDev: quite simplya strategic choice! ICEB’s objective was to ensure fullcontrol over the management of thegas distribution chain. To date,solutions adopted by Shell Gaswere either general ERP (EnterpriseResource Planning), or "in-housesolutions".For the GBS (Gas Business System)

project, the choice of developmenttool was therefore strategic for

ICEB. "WinDev was the only plat-form offering both a wide range offeatures and real productivity.Without WinDev it is clear that theGBS project would have not met itsobjectives or even got off theground ", explains Bruno Seux.

There are two key types of gasmanagement: bulk (tanks) and bot-tles. GBS handles both. All parame-ters had to be taken into account,from prospecting to invoicing notforgetting contracts and deliveryand all this while respecting thevarious local rules and regulations.

The ERP system also had to managebottle return, tank maintenance(security) and tank filling percenta-ges, provide real-time consumptionforecasts based on temperaturechanges, etc. "MS SQL Server (over350 tables) was chosen to managethe large amount of data and trans-actions among the headquarters inevery country. Hyper File is alsodirectly installed on the distribu-tor’s machine. Data consolidation iscarried out by exporting data viatext files. Hyper File’s free deploy-ment and high reliability wereimportant arguments in our deci-sion to use this tool extensivelythroughout the company", addsBruno Seux.

500,000+ invoices:another WinDev per-formance! In some countries, up to 500,000invoices are processed each year."WinDev was certainly up to thischallenge, thanks to the perfor-mance of its Native SQL ServerAccess" according to Bruno Seux.He adds: "Offices accessing head-quarter data via secure connections

are also very satisfied with accesstimes. Some sites have passive ter-minals and access servers via TSE".Most of the time, delivery men areequipped with remote terminalsthat allow them to enter deliveryinformation or to edit invoices onthe spot. When they return to thewarehouse, their terminal unit isconnected to the central system inorder to upload the data. It's child'splay!

Online translationwith WebDev GBS is available all over the world,including Italy, Belgium, Romania,Spain, Holland, Great Britain, SriLanka, Argentina, Hong Kong, andmany other countries. "PC SOFT

In order to optimize its

gas distribution manage-

ment, the multinational

oil company chose ICEB

for its ERP system, deve-

loped in WinDev.

SHELL: WinDev fuelling development!

E N E R G Y

products make it much easier toimplement an international stra-tegy" comments Bruno Seux.The ICEB technical staff has alsodeveloped an original solution bycreating TTWeb with WebDev. Thisonline software provides fast, effi-cient communication between cus-tomers and development teams.The customers are the ones whoprovide the most suitable transla-tions. "Our team appreciates that itcan concentrate on technical ques-tions. With WebDev, we don’t wastetime writing miles of code lines andthe site is operational within the setdeadline" continues Bruno Seux.

AJAX and the AAF areof direct benefit tothe user GBS has evolved partly thanks to

the changes in WINDEV andWEBDEV: “In WebDev, AJAX is fabu-lous with the automatic features,the new fields. At a developmentlevel, our team has taken advan-tage of the major changes inWINDEV, particularly in terms ofteam development. It’s a realadvantage”, stated Bruno Seux.He added: “Our applications havebecome stricter. Version and branchmanagement are allies to our stra-tegy. Regarding the free technicalsupport, it has really helped usthanks to its responsiveness andthis has also helped us respect ourdeadlines”.

WinDev: unlimitedreserves... of ideas Thanks to the success of GBS, ICEBis now attacking the oil industry.

Some processes developed for G BSwill be re-used later. “The modulardevelopment offered by WinDevand the object-oriented program-ming allow us to re-use the code",comments Bruno Seux. Rose Bates, Shell Gas (LPG) GlobalInformation Technology Manageroffers her conclusion on the resultsachieved with WinDev and WebDev:"We never ran into any develop-ment limits while accomplishing ourobjectives. WinDev is really totallyadapted to large-scale projects.Without WinDev, we would neverhave reached our objectives".

GBS is available in 6modules: • CSC (Customer Service Center): aCRM module used to manageorders with automatic order crea-tion, call centers, appointments,work schedules, messaging system,etc.• CICS (Cylinder InformationCapture System): a managementmodule for clients or bottle retailerscovering delivery routes, bottleinventory, accessories, vehicles andalso payment control.• BICS (Bulk Information CaptureSystem): module for “bulk” custo-mers with automatic order genera-tion, delivery scheduling, paymentcontrol, tank management, etc. • STOCS (Stock Transport OrdersCylinder filling System): module forheadquarters and filling centers. Itis used to manage and controlinventory via product, tank and bot-tle movements (supplies, transportfrom refineries to depots, bulkinventory, bottles, accessories andvehicles). • MACS (Maintenance ApplicationCapture System): module dedicatedto bulk management. This applica-tion controls each maintenanceaction performed on customertanks. In addition to these 5 ERPmodules, invoicing is integratedinto the TIMS (Third PartyManagement System). Invoicingcovers workflow between headquar-ter and regional distributors oragents and also between agentsand clients. Commission calculationand deposit management are alsopart of the ERP. Activity report sta-tistics and sales forecasts are avai-lable in all modules.

IMPRESSING NUMBERS! This project needed over 800man/months of developmentwork. It includes:• 500 SQL Server tables• 350 Stored procedures • 50 Hyper File tables• 20 GB of data for just one coun-

try• 200 users on one site• 15 remote sites connected to

headquarters • 4000 queries • 1400 windows • 400 classes • 900 printed reports • 14 foreing languages • 100% written in WLanguage.

© Th

omas

Sco

ch 2

005

The companyPorsche cars are renowned theworld over. Porsche France is a fullyowned subsidiary of Porsche AGwhich is located in Stuttgart (pro-duction unit).

Project leader

JJeeaann--BBaappttiissttee BBooiissbboouuvviieerr managerat Porsche France SA.

WinDev, SAP andAS/400 used in a win-ning combination Porsche France’s IS department wasasked to develop reporting toolsand additional pro-grams for the com-pany’s executivesand dealers on topof AS/ 400 and SAP.“When I first assu-med the responsibi-lity of the computerdepartment atPorsche, I discovered that we weremissing a tool for the graphicalvisualization of data. The AS/400 isperfect for its power and its reliabi-lity but we had to offer users aninterface that took advantage ofWindows PC’s user friendliness”,declares Jean-Baptiste Boisbouvier.He added: “WinDev emerged as thelogical choice thanks to its open-

ness, notably regarding theAS/400", states Jean-BaptisteBoisbouvier. “This way, we can getthe best of both worlds: the AS/400for its security and WINDEV for itsproductivity and user-friendliness”declared Jean-Baptiste Boisbouvier.At the French subsidiary of PorscheAG, the data required by Porsche

France (movementslogistics, prices,etc.) from SAP ERPand the AS/400 isextracted everynight.Then, a series ofbatch programsdeveloped with

WinDev analyze data, extract theinformation required by manage-ment and Porsche Centers and storeit in Hyper File format files. "Thefree deployment of Hyper File data-base also contributed to ourWinDev choice ", adds Jean-Baptiste Boisbouvier.

Hyper File: a super-

charged, finely tuneddatabase engine! The computer department designeda set of dashboards that providedclear details on vehicle orders,spare part orders, invoicing, war-ranty periods (sales to end custo-mers). The wide range of criteriataken into account (timing, region,vehicle type, etc.) makes the repor-ting tool all the more valuable. "All our users appreciate the levelof information provided and thespeed at which the results areobtained", continues Jean-BaptisteBoisbouvier.Numerous statistics are also calcu-lated and compared to objectives .Porsche France’s sales strategy is

boosted by the ease and simplicityof access to the resulting data. "Users can export data to Excel atall times. No special programmingis required for this with WinDev",underlines the computer manager.

WebDev for the dealers’ Intranet Pleased with the success of projectscompleted with the WinDev IDE,Porsche France’s IS department ini-tiated the development of anIntranet site to improve communica-tion with its dealers. "WebDev was the natural choice! Itis just as powerful as WinDev butdedicated to the Web and also justas easy to use". Now PorscheCenters can analyze and updatedata relative to vehicle ordering,sales of spare parts and options.This has become a really powerfulcommunication tool with study anddocument downloads available inPDF format for a wide range of com-munication applications.

Porsche France SA uses

WinDev & WebDev for the

development of its

internal and external stra-

tegic reporting tools. High

performance handling

and security guaranteed!

WINDEV & WEBDEV: a driving force forPorsche France SA

A U T O M O B I L E

Publi Dossier 01 INFORMATIQUE•109

A CRM signed WINDEVOther applications have been deve-loped for the distribution networkusing the WinDev-WebDev combina-tion. “For our Porsche Centers, wedeveloped a program named“PFI_CRM”, software for the salesteam. Today it is our CRM tool and italso works as the front office forconfiguring the Web at the plant(using XML interchanges throughWINDEV’s Soap functions)” speci-fies Jean-Baptiste Boisbouvier.In a dealership, the official Porscheorder forms signed by the customerare generated by the program thatwas developed using WINDEV.

WinDev - WebDevhave attracted inter-national recognition"Every year at the world subsidia-ries’ IT meeting (USA, Japan, GreatBritain, Italy, Spain, Germany,Australia, etc.), we share our expe-rience about computer projects .Our achievements are recognizedfor the speed at which we developnew programs on a very tight bud-get. The PC SOFT platform providesa close loop between analysis anddevelopment resulting in fast pro-duction of highly targeted applica-tion software ", underlines ourcontact.“For example, we responded to auser request for a better follow upof the orders placed in a dealershipand compare them to the ones pla-ced in the plant. The result: rightaway we used WINDEV to create aprogram that prepared user-confi-gurable queries. Furthermore, theAS/400 native access gives us awonderful response time. The usersand decision makers are always

amazed by our responsiveness, andwe owe a lot of that to PC SOFT’stools”, admitted Jean-BaptisteBoisbouvier.

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