When a company faces a major change, it's often tempting to completely turn over a new leaf and reinvent a system from the ground up. And sometimes it takes such an exercise to see clearly what parts of an older system have enduring value.

In 1999, such was the case Arrow Environmental, Inc., a family-owned environmental services company that handles landscaping, interior plant leasing and maintenance, and pest control in northern Florida. The company decided to leave the iSeries platform and move to PC servers to run its financial and other business applications. Company President George Pickhardt was particularly interested in a new customer service-request and lead-tracking system that would integrate with contact management components, provide extensive reporting capabilities for management, and offer a messaging system that would pass lead information electronically to field representatives.

Arrow began to implement the system, at a price of about $100,000, but the system never lived up to expectations. For example, the company had trouble verifying if service representatives were actually receiving electronic notification of appointments generated by the system.

Arrow receives hundreds of calls from customers and prospects every day. Because its application systems weren't integrated, Arrow had to cobble together a manual fix consisting of paper forms. When they received a call, Arrow customer service representatives (CSRs) had to record notes on a sheet of paper, review a field representative's online calendar, and book an appointment. The CSR then had to enter the information manually into the iSeries lead-tracking system and key corresponding information into Microsoft Outlook to generate an e-mail message that was sent to the rep's cell phone. This cumbersome process limited statistical information and left managers unable to distinguish between calls that were pending or completed.

After 18 months of struggle, Pickhardt decided it was time to regroup. In retrospect, the shortcomings posed by Arrow's former midrange-based system seemed superficial by comparison to the failed PC-server approach. For one thing, Arrow felt the lack of the iSeries' great reliability. If the company could modernize its iSeries applications by adding new functions and capabilities and integrate other technologies with them to accommodate an automated customer service request/lead tracking system, it would be willing to give midrange technology another chance. In February 2001, Arrow started a new dialog with Purvis Gray to see if they could recover lost ground.

Midrange Misperceptions

Joe Bolton, CEO of Purvis Gray Technology Group and a staunch IBM midrange advocate, observes that companies move from the IBM midrange to PC-based platforms often because of ineffective marketing. He sites IBM's inability to effectively position the iSeries platform as a viable solution to small- and mid tier-businesses as a primary cause. "Most customers don't know you can develop GUI and Web-based applications for the AS/400, or that it can be used as a file or Web server and integrated into existing network and office applications. They also think the cost of the iSeries is more because they don't understand the reliability factor or the true total cost of ownership over the life of the system," Bolton explains.

Bolton championed a solution that would represent a dramatic advancement in technology for Arrow and would also bring an iSeries and Arrow's legacy applications back into play. He proposed converting the application front ends so in-office personnel or field reps could access them using a common Web-based browser. Arrow agreed to the change in July 2001.

"We decided to make the leap over the client server environment," Bolton explains. "GUIs are nice but they really don't pose a great advantage in a decentralized computing environment." Taking a long view, Bolton felt that because most applications will be Web-enabled in the future, Arrow's applications should be browser-based so employees and partners can view business information from anywhere.

Purvis Gray's development team had extensive experience with ProGen Plus, an iSeries application development tool from Business Computer Design International, Inc. (BCD). The team had just begun to work with BCD's Web/Wireless solution called ProGen WebSmart, which helps developers place browser-based front ends and queries on legacy iSeries applications, and realized WebSmart was ideal for converting Arrow's software.

Purvis Gray developers assigned to the project used WebSmart's interactive development environment (IDE) to design Arrow's new browser-based applications and extend existing RPG programs. WebSmart's IDE includes more than 70 program templates, which greatly reduced the amount of coding needed. Its built-in ProGen Macro Language (PML), let them extend the logic of programs to customize the applications. PML facilitates development because it includes several programming aids such as a list of all available functions, prompts for values as you type function names, and pop-up info boxes with names of valid objects that can be specified for various parameters. PML also offers online help and a syntax checker and facilitates on-the-fly HTML editing.

WebSmart also includes an iSeries Web application server that runs Web-facing programs. These programs are generated in ILE CGI and take full advantage of RPG IV features such as bound modules, service programs, and subprocedures. A JSE component gives developers the added option of deploying their applications as Java servlets.

Using WebSmart and ProGen Plus, Purvis Gray integrated Arrow's core RPG business applications with a new customer service-request and lead-tracking system that uses Microsoft Exchange Server to handle scheduling and email messaging for people in the field. The system runs on a small iSeries model 150 and was operational in December 2001.

"The application provided a Web view of the iSeries data and the Microsoft Exchange calendar data for intranet and extranet access all on one Web-based screen," recalls Bolton. Text messages containing information on daily appointments passed to service rep cell phones from the application without the need to reenter the information. "BCD's WebSmart solution was pivotal in keeping Arrow on the iSeries because it let us update our customers' computing environment with current technology," Bolton remarks.

Purvis Gray didn't consider using WebSphere because the project would have taken longer and been far more expensive. "The ILE/RPG and CGI programs generated by WebSmart run much faster than the programs WebSphere would have produced," Bolton concludes.

Streamlined Customer Service

With the new system, when customers call in, CSRs can enter the lead information once, and programs automate updating the lead-tracking database and the field rep's calendar in Exchange Server, and send an e-mail message to the field rep's cell phone from a single WebSmart-developed, browser-based screen. Field reps who want more information or who need to enter times of unavailability can access the server remotely.

Improvements in customer service are visible too. The system maintains statistics and lets management review all calls pending. Also, managers can set alerts for various conditions, such as multiple calls from the same customer in a 30-day period.

Arrow intends to add offices in southwest Florida in the future. Because its iSeries core business applications are now Web-enabled, facilitating extranet access for the new offices will be straightforward and inexpensive. Each facility will link up to the iSeries and access Arrow's WebSmart-developed applications over a DSL connection.

Home Again

Was it worth Arrow's time and effort to stay with the AS/400? Bolton clearly thinks so. "Arrow is money ahead," he declares. "Because we used WebSmart as a development tool, our client now understands the iSeries is a viable business Web server that will continue to meet their present and future needs."

Robert Gast is a partner with the Chicago-area Evant Group and has written about business technology and management since 1986. You can reach him at evantgroup@aol.com.