In addition to having worked extensively with SAP E-Sourcing, Sunshine Systems has worked on custom software development projects. Learn more these projects here.

Web Based Reporting Solution for Retail Markdown Management Application:

Sunshine Systems developed this Web based reporting solution for a vendor of price optimization software specifically to meet the reporting requirements of their customer, a major clothing retailer. The solution was developed using Java technology and executes on BEA’s WebLogic J2EE application server.

The solution allowed the retailer’s merchandise planners and managers to request markdown decision support reports and price change reports using a standard browser. The users could specify report type, report options, as well as company, division, and department filter criteria. Report generation took place in the multi-threaded application server and was capable of supporting many simultaneous report requests.

The reporting application collected business information from the price optimization application’s Oracle database. The data was aggregated and summarized based upon the specific report type and filter criteria requested by the user. The final report was rendered as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, which was stored on the report database server for that specific user. Reports could be seamlessly and easily viewed using the same browser.

The final application was a great success for both the retailer and the software vendor.

The retailer liked the solution because they had instantaneous access to critical business data through an extremely easy to use browser interface. They did not need to train the broader user community on all the complexities of the optimization application. Furthermore, the reports were generated in an Excel spreadsheet format, which everyone was familiar with and which also allowed further data analysis using standard Excel features. The software vendor was pleased because the solution could be deployed in a pure Linux environment, was highly scalable, and very easy to deploy and maintain. The solution was so succesful, we worked with the software vendor to deploy the solution for other customers.

Collaborative Internet Transportation Application:

One of Sunshine Systems’ largest projects is a Collaborative Internet Transportation Application. Developed for a multi-billion dollar steamship line, the application has been running in production for four years, with over 5000 user transactions per day, resulting in millions shipping container movements.

The application allows the steamship line to distribute work to their trading partner trucking vendors via the Internet, replacing antiquated use of the telephone and facsimile. The system is designed to work with multiple steamship lines in an industry standard way such that the trucking companies can have a common view of their work across multiple customers.

Sunshine Systems participated in two phases of the project. The first phase was enhancing a partially developed solution, preparing it for production release, and rolling it out to the steamship line and a number of their vendors. The phase of the project included project management, requirements gathering, design, software development, quality assurance, and training. Over a five-month period, Sunshine Systems developed several significant features and tightly integrated the application with two other legacy-based systems. The first phase of the project lead to the go-live activities in April of 2002 and included training.

The second phase of the project was a joint development project including members of the steamship line’s information technology group. The second phase included the development of an invoicing module allowing the trucking companies to invoice the steamship lines on-line. This phase required integration with an additional system. With the exception of the joint development, Sunshine Systems participation in this phase of the project included the same activities (e.g., project management, requirements, etc.) as was included in phase one.

The application is completely developed in a Java architecture with an Oracle database. The application runs on BEA’s WebLogic application server and makes extensive use of Enterprise Java Beans (EJBs) for the application layer, Java Server Pages (JSPs) for the user interface, and XML interfaces for the integration layer. Additionally, the application utilizes the Java Message Server (JMS) to push processing intensive activities to the background.

Field Service Management and Execution Application:

Sunshine Systems is currently engaged with an electronics manufacturer of laser trim and marking systems. The project involves maintaining and enhancing a field service application. The application has three major components: a call-center incident tracking module used by the customer service organization, a disconnected field service application that synchronizes work orders with the server application, and a module for managing and tracking training activities.

The application is deployed worldwide using a Citrix server. It includes a Windows interface and utilizes a MS SQL Server database.

The initial phase of the project required Sunshine Systems to analyze the customer service and field service business processes. Sunshine Systems interviewed numerous personnel and produced a comprehensive review of the organization’s business process, including opportunities for improvement.

Other parts of the project have included:

- Development of the customer training application
- Port of Microsoft SQL Server to Oracle database server
- Design of a contract management component
- Design of an integration strategy to integrate the field service application with the client’s Oracle financials application

Sunshine Systems remains actively involved with the client implementing many of the components recently designed as well as continuing to manage the application and provide level one support to the user base.