Advantage Systems

Step One: Design Phase		Step Two: Prototype Phase
We will arrange a meeting to obtain an understanding of your current business software objectives, long term goals and determine which programming technology will be best for your situation. We will work carefully with you to review your current business processes and identify time consuming bottlenecks. Where it makes economic sense we will automate these processes.		Advantage Systems will create a prototype of the important data entry screens, menu systems and reports. You will receive these prototypes shortly after we start programming, turnaround time to implement changes to the prototype and application design will be minimal since we are just focused on layout and design.

Step Three: Programming		Step Four Training and Testing
After the prototypes are approved we will begin programming your application. We will start with finalizing the database design. If you are upgrading a system to Visual FoxPro we will keep your current tables and just normalize the data model, if possible. We will add a database container, primary keys, and indexes to maximize performance. The programming to connect the forms to the database will be completed.		We will conduct a final testing phase to ensure the application meets your needs. We use this phase to verify that your report totals match your legacy system or manual process, and that your employees are trained on the new system before going live with the software. We will discuss backup and data recovery strategies. Most importantly we will support you after deployment from simple questions about the software through adding forms, report and subsystems.

Additional Recommendations

Keep It Simple - While it is tempting to include all the "bells and whistles" into your application, in most cases you are further ahead to implement the basic system so the software can begin "paying for itself" and later add additional functionality. If the system is designed properly these features can be added without endangering the integrity of the application and without any additional expense as if they were added during the initial development.

Minimize Training - If you are converting an existing system, keeping the look and feel of the application similar will reduce training time and acceptance of the application by the end-users.

Follow Windows Standards - By designing the application to behave like Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office you can reduce training time.

Hardware Considerations - Even the best application will perform poorly on outdated hardware. It is important to ensure your operating system, servers and workstations are able to accommodate your new software application.