Case Study - Accelerated Mortgages
The Company
Accelerated Mortgages is a well established business based in Buckinghamshire specialising in providing Buy to Let mortgage schemes.
Background
Due to an increasing workload and high volume of sales enquiries it became necessary for Accelerated Mortgages to expand.
Because of the specialist nature of their business it was decided that it would be better to 'join forces' with another company specialising in a similar line of work, rather than try to find new resources and train them up.
To this extent Accelerated Mortgages formed a partnership with 'Smart Mortgages', a similar company based in Newbury, approximately 30 miles from their existing office in Bourne End.
Even before this expansion Accelerated Mortgages were beginning to experience problems with their in-house computer system. They were running a Windows 2000 based peer to peer network and using Microsoft Office for their business needs. Microsoft Access, in particular, was central to the business requirements as it maintained information about all their existing and prospective clients along with other mortgage and contract details.
However, they were finding that the use of Microsoft Access for their main data store was quite limiting. Although it handled the data adequately it became difficult to maintain data integrity in situations when staff occasionally needed to work from home, which was becoming more and more of a requirement. For the same reasons it was difficult to take the data off site when visiting a prospective client. Their reporting facilities were limited with little in-house computing expertise - it was always a bother to get another report produced.
Now that there were in effect two separate offices, both of which needed access to, and the ability to update this common information, the problems only escalated.
The Requirements
Following initial investigation it became clear that apart from the main requirements of being able to share and access some common data from several locations, there were also a number of other areas that needed to be addressed.
In particular, as is often the case in any busy workplace, little time was being spent in relation to system maintenance, organisation and data backup. The lack of backups would leave the company vulnerable in the event of data loss or catastrophic disk failure.
Whilst the advantages of having a managed centralised data source was going to be of great benefit to both companies, not only would they be able to share their common data, it was quickly realised that this same system could also be used to organise and manage each company's own personal information i.e. data that did not need to be shared.
To this extent it was decided that the system would be developed in such a way that it would meet all the needs of both companies. By implementing security groups and access rights the data that need to be shared would be, and data that was pertinent only to each particular company would remain private.
Requirements Summary:-
- Create a centralised multiuser web based database system.
- Schedule regular maintenance and backups.
- Normalise the existing flat file data from the Access database into a relational form suitable for SQL Server.
- Improve existing reports and develop new ones.
- Import existing client/customer information into the contact system.
- Integrate with scheduling system to more readily track 'work in progress' and potential sales leads.
- Generate mail shots
The Realisation
Although there are a number of differences in interface design techniques between a desktop applications such as Microsoft Access and a web based applications (this is mainly due to limitations in web browsers), the existing Access database made a useful starting point. Even though existing forms needed to be re-designed and additional entry forms and report were required it did represent a good overview of the general work flow and required functionality.
It was going to be necessary to run both the new and existing systems in parallel for a period of time in order that any bugs or anomalies present in the new system were corrected before full reliance was placed upon it.
Routines were written to import the existing data from Microsoft Access into the web based solution and integrated with our existing contacts and scheduling solutions. Testing then took place over a period of four weeks before the new system was accepted and went live.
Conclusions
Accelerated Mortgages was expanding and their computer system needed to expand with them. They needed to move away from their existing peer to peer network to a centralised data store which allowed multiple access from multiple locations.
In truth, because the system was to be used only by 'in-house' personnel the requirement to make it available across the internet was not high among the list of priorities, and there were a number of other ways their main requirements could have been achieved, by VPN for example.
However, with only limited 'in-house' IT resources, and even less interest, their existing system was already lacking the maintenance and upkeep it needed. These 'other' methods would have involved the purchase of additional items of hardware, each with its own added complexity and need for maintenance.
Our solution has not only provided a very cost effective, flexible and expandable system. It has been implemented with minimal disturbance and has actually reduced the amount of time they needed to spend maintaining in-house systems.
Comments from Accelerated Mortgages
Comments from Mr Peter Willingham, Director of Accelerated Mortgages
Having built up the Access database from scratch, it served our needs very well for many years - but it was becoming very frustrating as we endeavoured to grow the business and work effectively from several different sites with the same data.
We were nervous about 'going live' with the website based system - but after a short period of 'bedding in' we are finding it a great improvement to the two systems used before. Because the data now is integrated, it is a great deal more useful to the business because it tracks everything 'live' and any user can see the results instantly from any location. Notes can be added and data generally updated for all others to see which is a great improvement for client handling.
In addition, we have a series of business reports and enquiries, which we can run to assist control activities from initial enquiry, sales follow ups, client relations, sourcing, submission of business, through all the detailed progress of a mortgage case including exchange, completion and final payment of all commissions and management accounting matters. It is also easy to revise and upgrade as our needs change and we become more familiar with the huge flexibility of the system.
We would not now like to be without it!
