Service/Product Configuration Applications: Redevelopment & Migration Considerations

  Product Configurator Application forms a vital link in the automation process of “To Order” type of industries. Most such organisations today have some form of Configuration system in place and wish to move to a newer and better Configurator – either to be developed in-house or a third party product implementation. While working with customers who have migrated their existing Product Configurator to new systems, we have observed some common challenges. Anyone who wishes to embark on this journey will benefit if these challenges are addressed in the early stages of the redevelopment program.

• The Configuration business logic is embedded in the current application (or Excel) that is in use over many years. This logic is usually not very well documented and/or the SME is no longer in the organisation. Reverse engineering of the existing application becomes the only way of extracting this logic which can then be migrated. Depending on the technology stack of the current application, some degree of automation is possible here. However, this remains a predominantly manual and time consuming task and forms a critical path for the final rollout.

• With application migration as an opportunity for change, most organizations attempt to rationalise and standardise the Service/Product Portfolio. This means identifying common business rules that can be reused as well as simplifying the configuration parameters/rules. This is usually a non-IT activity and requires significant involvement of business users for successful abstraction.

• For the end-users, the ease of use for configuration is of paramount importance. UI design and validating it with the users by means of very detailed prototype becomes a critical element of success.

• Usually the business logic of configuration is complex and performance becomes a bottleneck. Usage of external rules engine is one solution that helps in both aspects – performance improvement as well as externalizing rules.

•  If the volume of rules to be processed is high and the response requirements are critical, then it is also worthwhile to consider rules processing on the local client machine instead of server based centralized processing. This also means a possible choice between a browser based application verses a client-server application.

• End-users have a need to be able to work in a disconnected mode, where they may not have access to the centralized server. This adds an entirely new dimension to the functionality and the design of the application. The organization needs to decide what functionality should be available in the offline mode, and the designers have to think about local execution as well as data synchronization capabilities.

• Usually the organizations have two distinct groups of users that deal with the Configurator - one group (Modeller) owns the definition of the configuration logic (configuration rules) and the other group is the actual end-user of the Configurator. In most cases, the end-user group gets all the focus and attention and the requirements of the modellers remain unaddressed.

• The second key issue is the degree to which the Modellers can maintain the logic themselves verses the logic that has to be written / maintained programmatically. This has a great impact on the flexibility that needs to be offered in the User Interface that is to be used by the modellers. The frequency at which the logic changes also has to be considered as the changes in logic have to be published to the end-user community. A good design should allow the publishing of the logic without recompiling of the application and redeployment.

Ensuring that the redevelopment program has duly considered and addressed these issues will be critical to the success of the program.

 

 

Comments

[Sanjeev Samala]

Agreed !! In-house developed Configurator Applications over a period of time need to be re-developed or migrated, which may be a baggage of old custom code, undocuments.

In case of 3rd party tool, upgrades and backward compatibility can assist but as you rightly said..they are other challenges one need to address;
Information you highlighted is very thoughtful.

Thanks !

[Jeff Paul Shortcuts]

I found your post really interesting. I found Internet marketing a really a great way of promoting a website. I found good results when I started internet marketing my website.

[Internet Business Review]

Really Nice Post. More and more businesses are indulge with online presence, it is costly if you find a wrong company to do your job