How HSD implemented an E-commerce system for Alphalink that streamlines their business processes and saves them $250,000 every year!

Challenge

Alphalink (Australia) Pty. Ltd. is an Australian Internet Service Provider (ISP) that was established in Melbourne in 1995. Providing low cost accounts to the domestic market, Alphalink found their business growing at an extraordinary rate.

Project Goals: -

Resolution

“A phased approached was taken to the solution, allowing returns to be realised just 5 months after the start of the project.”

"Alphalink has excellent networking and communication technical skills," said Grant Kinkead, co-Director and Business Manager of Alphalink. "However, where we are lacking is in the area of business database and software development. We investigated various other solutions but either they didn't provide what we needed, or they were cost prohibitive", he added.

Hammond Street Developments (HSD) has both the experience in developing business solutions and a strong knowledge of the systems and infrastructure used in IPSs.

"It was good to know that HSD could develop our business solution and integrate it with the network we use to provide our services" said Brett Murphy, Alphalink's other co-Director and Systems Administrator.

Description

Now boasting over 31,000 members, Alphalink has the following points of presence throughout Australia: -

The accounts sold are typically 12 month personal or business subscriptions with dialup access. Many profiles are available that come with varying services depending on the member's needs and location. Each member is offered a renewal on the anniversary of his or her joining date.
Situation Analysis
Alphalink was growing quickly; too quickly for the manual billing and member management process that was in use. Putting on more staff was costly and didn't improve efficiency. The obvious thing to do was to streamline the business processes so the same number of resources could handle a far greater number of members.

In late 1997, Alphalink realised the need for an integrated system that would provide for account management, membership management, charging and billing. The system was required to integrate not only with a database, but also with the authentication system on Unix. The system needed to be built to allow staff to access the functionality from anywhere on the Internet using a fast, scalable, secure and functional interface.

HSD was employed to analyse the requirements and provide an ISP Member Management System (ISPMMS) solution that was going to meet the requirements, be flexible, efficient, easy to use and would provide for growth in the ever-changing IT world.

Solution Profile

The solution manages the sale and billing of services by grouping services together into a Service Profile. Members then purchase these Service Profiles and are automatically billed on a recurring cycle at a minimum of one month.

The following list identifies (but is not the limit of) the key business drivers in the design of the software: -

The system is a compilation of the following five components: -

A Visual Basic n-tier application utilising DCOM and SQL Server 6.5 was used as the underlying technology for the solution. This provided for speedy yet secure connections between the staff and the database. This architecture also enabled the business rules of the application to be kept centralised at the server, simplifying updates and ensuring consistency between different client applications.

The client application was also written in Visual Basic and utilised a hierarchical form structure. This allows the user to drill down to the required functional area quickly. Common look, feel and behaviour standards are maintained throughout the interface, making it easy to learn and fast to use.

“With over 25% of our members using [HavEcomm], it has saved us incredible amounts of administration time.”

The database server was integrated with the Unix authentication servers to reflect account and service changes in real time. A custom interface/gateway (developed in C++ for the application server and C on the Unix server) was built to achieve this goal.

Daemons where built on the database server to automate the process for the cyclic actions that subscription based companies need to perform. These included: renewals, reminders, payment receipts, statements, account expiries, account suspensions and more. The notices that are sent to members are built from templates, allowing administrative staff and management to modify the static content as required.

Two easy to use MS-Access interfaces were built to deal with daily bank deposits, new member letters and statistical and financial reports.

In mid 1999, the requirement for taking real time credit card payments was realised. A connection to St George Bank was established utilising Ingenico's 'Online Credit Verification' technology, allowing Alphalink staff to take payments through ISPMMS.

An e-commerce website was also developed to allow existing members to pay for their account renewals via the Internet.

"The web payment services had an excellent response from the members," said Kinkead. "With over 25% of our members using it, it has saved us incredible amounts of administration time" he added.

Implementation Approach and Timetable

A phased approached was taken to the solution, allowing returns to be realised just 5 months after the start of the project.

The first release of the application used ActiveX EXEs called through DCOM. These EXEs were written in a stateless manner, allowing the future conversion to ActiveX DLLs using Microsoft Transaction Server (MTS) to be as seamless as possible. (MTS was only just released and was considered to be too much of a technology risk at that time.)

In 2000, with the introduction of the GST in Australia, changes had to be made to the accounting system. At this time a more advanced accounting model utilising journals and a general ledger was designed, built and implemented. Aside from the general accounting features gained from such a model, it also introduced the ability to perform complex cross grading of profiles and services with financial accuracy. GST billed to and owed by members into the new financial year was tracked, invoiced and reported on. (This was a requirement set out by the Australian Taxation Office for subscription-based companies.)

The database was upgraded to SQL Server version 7.0 and the ActiveX EXEs were converted to ActiveX DLL's and loaded into MTS.

A web interface was built and members were encouraged to utilise this to update their socio-demographic information and pay subscription fees to renew their accounts. The secure site was hosted in IIS using VB Script. It utilised the existing business transaction layer that existed in the MTS objects.

Figure 1 - ISPMMS Main Interface

Business Results

The benefits were seen immediately. Tasks that previously took many staff to perform, now took only a small portion of one staff member's time. This allowed for the staff and management to focus more on directing the growth and service quality of the company, rather than being bogged down in the day-to-day running of the business. A main contributing factor to this newfound productivity was the many reports that provided useful graphs and statistics.

Since the implementation of ISPMMS, Alphalink has been saving at least $250,000 annually.

"All staff have instantaneous access to the latest information, as well as being able to make changes that take effect immediately. It made an incredible difference. We are now in a position where we can easily handle anything up to 200,000 members with pretty much the same resources" said Kinkead.

Case Epilogue

In early 2000, it was decided that this credit card gateway should be made available to others. This service, known as HavEcomm, enables registered merchants to perform (secure post) credit card transactions. A single response is returned, indicating a receipt number for success, or an error code for failure. In 2001, and with approximately 30 customers, this gateway processed around 6 million dollars over 71,000 transactions, with an average transaction time of 5 seconds.

Further Information