Mantra Case Studies

Application Development & Maintenance

Customer – Large Financial Institution in NY

Domain - Financial

Challenges – Customer needed to - bring new version of product to the market faster, reduce the support cost of old, complex app, ability to find and retain the resources to work on old technology, realign current resources team towards newer version

Mantra’s Solution – Mantra worked very closely with management and IT teams and designed 4 tier smart sourcing solution. Off-shoring was just a 1 tier. Entire project was broken in to 22 milestones with proactive risk mitigation process for all milestones.

Value Addition

• New product was beta launched 6 weeks ahead of schedule.
• All 22 milestones delivered on time,
• 41% reduction in maintenance cost of old app,
• 22% reduction in support calls through code enhancement,
• 12 hour turnaround time on level 1 and 2 defects in old application.
  
  

Project : Performance, Security and System Testing

Customer: Midsize Independent Software Vendor (ISV)

Domain: Financial / Telecommunication

Challenges: with in-house team developing a very complex web based application, customer wanted an offshore testing team to quickly learn the app and perform performance, system and security testing. Major challenge was how to transfer the domain knowledge to the offshore testing team of 15 test engineers.

Mantra’s Solution: Mantra came up with a very effective sourcing model by combining all onsite/offsite and offshore resource teams. It then formed special processes for communication and Knowledge Transfer (KT) phase. Finally, Mantra came up with master project plan with very tight deadlines. Mantra’s 1 project manager, 2 team leads and 15 test engineers executed that plan relentlessly to ensure successful delivery.

Value Addition

• Mantra’s offshore testing team exceeded all the expectations that customer had.
• At the end of testing phase – this web based app was very well received by the end customers and provided a distinct competitive edge.
• Mantra later moved on to maintain this application for the customer, with in-house team focusing on newer version.

Team Size: 4 QA Engineers

Technology: Mercury TestDirector, Silk Test, Test Track Pro

Client - Regional Healthcare Provider in GA

Domain - Healthcare

Challenges – With the new acquisition, the biggest challenge for this company was to integrate key database systems from both the companies. Making sure all data is covered, HIPAA secured and readily available. Another challenge was to ensure that applications are ported to the new .NET platform without losing any operational time.

Mantra’s Solution – Mantra proposed onsite / offshore model. With very detailed analysis of both the systems and right combination of onsite/offshore resources Mantra was able to successful integration of both the systems. Project managers went a step further by creating contingency plans for every mile stone to ensure that all the deadlines are met.

Value Addition:

• Successful and optimized integration of both the systems.
• No loss of data, productivity and efficiency.
• 0% down time.
• Customer got a very quality applications, faster turnaround times.
• And, resource scalability with faster ramp up and down times.

Technology: MS SQL Server 2005. 2008, SSRS

Team Size: 3 Database Developers, 2 QAs

• Better end-user experience
• Improved code quality and stable production release
• Established monthly release cycle with set of features rolling in every month.
• 100% increase in customer base within 9 months.
• 8 hour turnaround time on level 1 and 2 defects in old application.

Team Size: 6 Developers, 2 QAs and 1 DBA

Technology: Microsoft .NET, C#, ASP.NET

Client: Internet Automotive Sales and Marketing Company

Domain: Automotive / eMarketing

Challenges: With huge amount of information coming in from various sales channels customer needed a way to build intelligence from that information, empower sales force to accurately forecast and aggressively sell, provide detail analysis to end customers, provide online reporting functionality, dashboard metrics

Mantra’s Solution: Starting with domain knowledge and technical understanding Mantra came up with robust and scalable data warehouse architecture in a very short time, once approved by a customer Mantra team proceeded to development and created prototype before final model,

Value Addition:

• Data warehouse in operation for around 3 years
• Numerous features added since initial development
• Around USD 3 million of revenue generated through custom reports generated through DWH.
• Very low cost maintenance.
• Fully automated ETL and reporting provided.

Team Size: 3 Database Developer, 1 QA

Technology: SQL Server, SSRS Reporting Engine, Crystal Reports

Project: Web Based Invoicing System (SaaS)

Customer: Small Start-up company from CT

Domain: Financial / Accounting

Challenges: Create a custom, secured and scalable invoicing system for small shop owners that could have 100s of customers and 100s of products. System was to be offered as SaaS and Hosted versions, based on end-client needs. Time was of essence and budget was limited.

Mantra’s Solution: Mantra came up with a very effective sourcing model by combining all onsite/offsite and offshore resource teams .Starting with idea conception Mantra arranges number of brainstorm sessions with online white boards and story books. At the same time Mantra evaluated many technologies for best fit for client's needs. Mantra suggested phased approach for the project.

Value Addition

• Release 1 with limited features was rolled out in 3 months.
• With Release 1, client was able to start making money.
• Based on client feedback and suggestions Release 2 was scoped and planned.
• Within next 2 months, Release 2 was rolled out.
• Team is currently working on Release 3.

Team Size: 2 PHP Developers, 1 QA

Technology: PHP, MySQL