Brief on the client:

Client: University of New South Wales
Industry: Education and Research Institutes
Subject: Blood & Tissue Sample Inventory System
On the Web: www.unsw.edu.au

The client was University of New South Wales, a leading Australian research university ranked among the highest. The university even runs a lot of government funded research projects. They also received a lot of requests from various organizations for sample storage and handled huge amount of samples. The client had a centralised storage system for all these samples where the data generated was not only critical but also the volume of data generated was humongous.

Challenges:

There were plenty of challenges upfront in order to build a system that would meet the client’s expectations:

1. The research methodology followed by the university brought about challenges in organizing the information which was already complex and huge in volume.
2. Collating the chaotic and scattered information lying at various places, subsequently managing its flow through the system.
3. The data being preserved in the system for various organizations was highly confidential. Hence, data privacy was one of the biggest concerns for the client.
4. Multi staged process with complex workflow which was supposed to be managed by the new application.
5. The required system needed to interface with the existing system, so there was a need for integration.
6. The previous vendor did not provide ample support although the prices offered by the vendor were very expensive.
7. GUI requirements were typical in the sense that the client wanted the look and feel to be desktop application style, although the application was supposed to be a web based application. There was a typical requirement for the application’s ability to allow the user to perform each activity even without the mouse and purely just the keyboard.

Astra Galaxy I.T. solutions approach:

Astra Galaxy took up the endeavour to deliver end-to-end services for the project. The services offered to the client included Consulting services as well as application production, with activities beginning from project feasibility to maintenance and support.

The team comprised of 10 development specialists and 4 Quality assurance professionals with 1 project manager managing the project activities.

It took about 8 months to come up with the solution that the client had asked for. Although there was a lot of effort and smart work that went into the solutioning, the solution not only met but also exceeded the client’s expectations as it countered all the challenges effectively and successfully. To know more about how we used our Application Development and Delivery (note: refer to the last section for this approach) to develop the application, please contact us at info@astragalaxy.com.

The final result and client experience:

The final application that came out had multiple features like:

• Information management was done in such a way that the flow of information was efficient, quick and the system integrity was in place.
• The parameters to be used in the application for various projects could be defined by the project admin, making it a very dynamic system with a lot of on-the-fly-form creation, dynamic database. The application got quite popular because of such dynamism in the database.
• Sufficient privacy and confidentiality of data preserved in the through the use of access privileges and secure pages.
• There was seamless integration with the existing system after a detailed analysis and study was conducted on the existing one.
• The system was high on usability, while it also offered collaboration between various research organizations in terms of sharing project info with each other.
• There was a task management module embedded into the system, which was quite exhaustive in itself.
• The reporting was extensive and dynamic because the system was exhaustive and detailed.
• Owing to the data modelling capability of the system, a lot of analysis and statistical predictions could happen.

UNSW after getting the new system designed got to realise that it could use the system and earn revenue out of royalty by offering subscriptions to other research organizations that could use the new system. The business model till date is highly successful and UNSW continues to have excellent relations with Astra Galaxy since 2005.

Astra galaxy was initially referred to UNSW through another of our clients who were quite happy with their business relations with us.