THE BUSINESS ISSUE

Companies are focusing on their core business, the skills and knowledge that set them apart in a competitive market. With this in mind, activities that are unrelated to core business expertise are increasingly delegated to external organizations (vehicle fleet management, cost management, etc.).

IT is no exception, and it is often entrusted to outside companies specialized in application maintenance.

THE ARCAD APPROACH

 

If you plan to outsource all or part of your information system, you have to start with a preliminary inventory and cleanup. This essential step is needed to build a third-party application maintenance (TPAM) perimeter that corresponds to a set of components known to be reliable and in use.

The inventory process involves a technical audit of available software components. You will reduce the time to do this audit with ARCAD-Observer, or ask to ARCAD to do it.
The audit uncovers:

• Objects without sources
• Unused objects
• Objects that have a source with a different date than a compiled object

By experience, you will decrease  around 30%  the number of technical objects that are placed in the TPAM scope. ARCAD-Observer provides you access to all of the technical components related to outsourcing. A common and standard technical documentation can be automatically generated, covering:

Integration
This stage makes it possible to consider a new version while automatically analyzing the impact on a company's information system in order to guarantee its integrity. This analysis allows one to discover which components are impacted and what actions will lead to integrate the new version (modification, compilation, etc.).

• Database diagram
• Cross references
• Program flowcharts

A Transparent Relationship
TPAM will then be managed in software configuration (version controlled). Tasks performed by the service provider are listed in detail with the implementation of ARCAD-Skipper. The user-provider relationship is managed through our request tracking solution, ARCAD-Customer, which supports compliance with ISO quality standards for improving the application maintenance process.
When the TPAM is running, you can use ARCAD-Observer to automate the non-regression tests at any shipment (version, PTF,…), and to maintain your users satisfactied. Finally, you have to plan reversibility. Indeed, you could need to insource or to research another provider. ARCAD solutions will help you in this phase.

ADVANTAGES

ARCAD Software solutions provide invaluable help in:

• Quality of estimates made prior to modifications (automatic impact analysis)
• Traceability of completed work
• Up-to-date technical documentation
• Total traceability of user requests and request handling

Then, you manage and reduce your maintenance costs, with maintaining your service quality.