The Support Activities report displays monthly usage by engineer.

CSAD covers the operational processes, which include managing new installations, handling fault cases, and performing preventive maintenance. The application helps the companys' support engineers maintain records of their onsite work.

The application tracks cases by individual engineer assignment.

CSAD can also track remote support work or training periods. Support managers can track the time of their staff, assess staff training needs, and be informed about the status of each customer. The application helps senior management evaluate the performance of individual teams, the profitability of the relation with each customer or vendor, the profitability per technology line, geographical area, etc.

The entry screen when creating a new support call.

When opening a call, the system shows a list of predefined call descriptions depending on the call type. When closing the call, the system shows a list of possible solutions depending on the pre-selected call type.

Open call screen.

Call closure screen. The solution menu is filtered based on the selected call type when the call was opened.

The call screen displays the history of each call.

As engineers perform actions against open calls, they specify in the system the cause of the problem. They do this by using four nested menus for hardware and another four nested menus for software. Because there are many types of calls (i.e. fault calls, installation calls, preventive maintenance calls, etc.), each call is tagged to the related project number, sales contract record (SCR), or maintenance contract number. The nature of the tag depends on the type of call and the relationship with the specific customer. This was an important requirement, so that the customer can report on the time and cost spent against each one of these parameters.

Site Work Details report where engineers record their call history.

The security part of the system was of considerable importance to Sytem Technologies in the Middle East. Due to the size and nature of the customer’s business model, we had to deal with a long list of business rules, system roles, and several groups of nested menus.

The CSAD application produced the following operational benefits for System Technologies in the Middle East:

	Proper internal and external escalation procedures
	Accurate tracking of the lifecycle of calls
	Detecting trends in the fault of parts and products
	Sharing knowledge among support team members

System Technologies use of CSAD also produced business benefits, including:

	Analysis of time spent on each site, project, maintenance contract, sales contract, etc.
	Analysis of time spent per product, part, product family, manufacturer and/or vendor
	Analysis of time spent by each engineer, office, project team, etc.
	Ability to report on workload per customer, project, and maintenance contract. This will enable the company to negotiate better contracts in the future.

All of the information in CSAD is backed up with a comprehensive reporting system. Reports of CSAD are categorized into four categories: Branch Reports, Support Management, Time-Sheet Planning and Vendor Reports.

CSAD report sample one.

CSAD report sample two.

CSAD report sample three.

There are more than 80 Web pages in the application. We estimate that the support team of 70 engineers uses CSAD on a daily basis, while 20 support managers and five senior management staff use the application as needed. At a minimum, we have 15,000 new records in the database each month.

Report listing in Timesheet planning category.

We used MS SQL Server Reporting Services for reporting purposes and integrated that into the application.

Report listing in Support Management Category.

This section appears in the "New Action" screenshot shown below.


New actions screen. Actions are the work done under each call. It shows two groups of interlinked menus (four menus each).

We used the standard Andes design theme in Iron Speed Designer.

We would have done CSAD application without Iron Speed Designer, but it would have cost much more. Iron Speed designer allowed us to be more cost effective and competitive in the market.

The new modules will allow new groups of users access to the new integrated system. The types of users will include finance staff, project managers and back office staff. This will increase the number of potential users to more than 200.