Coeus Solutions GmbH was contacted by abilita GmbH, a debt collection agency based in Regensburg, to create a light weight ERP system. The main goals of the system was to optimize processes within abilita GmbH and increase productivity. The key requirement was that the new system be commissioned within 3 months of project start so that it could be in operations as soon as possible.

Proposal

Coeus Solutions GmbH studied the requirements sent by abilita GmbH. The requirements basically described unique workflows as followed internally by abilita to handle different clients’ debt collection requirements. Face-to-face meetings were conducted at abilita’s office in Regensburg and different technical solutions were evaluated including open source solutions as well as large enterprise systems.  Coeus eventually proposed to build a custom system using Ruby on Rails which would allow quick turnaround (similar to an off-the-shelf software package) and extreme flexibility compared to any other custom software. Coeus also proposed to use Agile Project Management methodology despite the inherent risk in the nature of project i.e. as a business system, there were a lot of business rules to be implemented and an Agile methodology meant that there was going to be a lot of rework involved.

Project planning

As one of the key requirements of the project was to have the system in production within 3 months, Coeus divided the project into quick releases (14-day releases as opposed to the 30-day SCRUM recommendations). There were two key reasons for these quick releases:

1. To get feedback on what is being built as quickly as possible – the nature of business rules and timeline meant, there was no real time for detailed flows and documentation.
2. The development team spoke English as main business language where as abilita’s business language was German. To prevent any misunderstandings it was important that quick updates are made.

The execution team was divided into two sub-teams with 4-5 developers each under a team lead, and a project manager was assigned to overall project. The software was divided into following modules:

1. Accounting system – to take care of accounting and invoicing as one part of abilita’s business was accounting and tax management.
2. Debtor and address management system – this tracked addresses, debtors (making sure there are no duplicate debtors in the system), debtor credit ratings etc.
3. Documentation and communication management – this handled all document printing (thousands of letters in a single day), email handling, fax handling etc. Also all documents were catalogued so that context could be maintained.
4. Debt collection system – the debt management, reminder tracking, and partial payment agreement management system. This was the core of debt management.
5. Workflow management – this handled various workflows in the system as abilita had different work flows for different clients.
6. Reporting system – this was a reporting core of the system. Regular reports were generated for abilita’s clients.
7. User management – this handled internal and external users with different security settings.
8. Web services – these were built to extend the system and integrate with other systems e.g., integrating with clients’ accounting systems etc.

The modules were divided into the two teams so that each team focuses on just a part of the project.

Technical Implementation

Ruby on Rails was selected as it’s the leading rapid application development framework in the market. Database was developed using MySQL and Apache Lucene was used as indexing server to optimize search (there were hundred of thousands of debtors with millions of documents in the system that had to be on the tips of abilita staff, especially as they received calls from debtors regarding reminder / debt collection letters). The whole architecture was designed to be flexible and loosely coupled as lots of changes were anticipated in the system.

Deployment & Results

As per the requirements, the first version of was launched within 3 months. Data was imported from the old desktop based standalone software into the new system and abilita team started working on accounting system, user management and debt collection system. Later web services, reporting and workflow systems were added.

Deploying changes and updates to a live system used by over 10 employees was a huge challenge. Furthermore, hundreds of cases were imported in different file formats where it was impossible to implement a standard universal format – this meant that it was a big challenge to maintain database consistency, anticipating that there could be issues and ensuring that we recovered system from issues in minimal possible time (usually few hours). For the whole year, Coeus team provided practically a 24/7 support which included hot-fixes, new feature implementations directly on the live server, and taking care of any process changes that abilita might require in the system.

Eventually, abilita was able to process 50% more cases with fewer staff – despite the scalability challenges on top of tight deadlines. Because of the system flexibility, they were able to win more contracts and expand the business further. Following is what Sven Möller, the Managing Director of abilita GmbH had to say about Coeus Solutions GmbH:

“Coeus handled our project extremely well. Despite the requirements being changed constantly, the system was taken LIVE within 3 months of start. Since then it has been a race against time – to add new requirements while working with a live system. Following this project, we worked with Coeus developed other mobile and web applications for us e.g., our new coupons portal along with an iPhone and an Android application.”