Management Information

"Ignore it and your problems go away – Oh! so does your company"

Ever watched TV when there is a major traffic issue. Well next time have a closer look at those screens behind the interviewee. We wrote that software.

One of our staff developed a management information system for a major motoring organisation.

The management knew at the end of the day how many breakdowns had occurred, how long it took a patrol to get to a breakdown, unfortunately if things went awry, the end of the day is too late.

What they wanted was a real-time picture of what was happening to their business. They wanted to know if customers were being left waiting, so they could roster more patrols.

Real-time is a very over used word. However in this case the information should be absolutely up-to-date, within a second or so of real time. This would allow management to make decisions based upon what is happening now, not what had happened in the past.

The system reads data from all new and current jobs in the system and produces statistical information based on this data. At peak times hundreds of thousands of data items arrive and must be processed by the system, whilst still remaining up-to-date.

The real trick was to tune the database at the heart of the system. This database had many hundreds of thousands of rows of information. For each data item processed, a dozen statistical data items from the database are retrieved, updated and sent back. This requires the system to find about a dozen different specific pieces of data buried in over half a million other data items in a few milliseconds.

The statistical engine was developed using a variety of modern, efficient software languages on a UNIX platform. The UNIX server platforms are well suited to this type of mathematically intensive activity. A user interface on the MS Windows platform displays the data in a variety of ways that are configurable by the user.

As a result of this blend of technologies the management could make immediate decisions to prevent creeping trends causing a major problem later in the day. Also conversely, if their performance was too good, hence wasting money then patrols could be released.

This system allows the management to tread the tight rope between customer satisfaction and excessive expenditure more easily than had previously been achieved.