MDS Legacy Systems Case Study
MDS Pharma Services, a worldwide provider of innovative drug discovery and development, routinely sends contractors and employees on business trips around the world. Yet the expense application it had lacked the functionality required to adequately track employee and contractor expenses. MDS turned to Axis Technical for a web-based solution with greater functionality, ease of use and greater tracking capabilities.
Overview of Axis Technical
Axis Technical is a premier business and technology services firm that provides comprehensive technology solutions to its clients. As a Microsoft Certified Gold Partner, Axis Technical delivers cutting edge business and technology solutions. Axis Technical helps companies achieve their business and technology goals by delivering the highest quality services and technical resources. Axis Technical provides a global team of dedicated professionals from their corporate headquarters in Southern California, to their offices in India and Mexico.
Problem
MDS had an expense tracking application on a Lotus Notes platform that did not provide the functionality MDS needed to manage employee and contractor expenses. It was difficult to use and complex to update, lacked features such as multiple currency exchange rates and conversions to U.S. dollars, and did not have the reporting capabilities MDS needed.
The previous application required MDS contractors and employees track expenses independently and log expenses after they returned from a business trip. And since the old application did not have conversion exchange rates, contractors and employees had to perform financial conversions independently.
"Employee expenses obtained during the process of monitoring business reporting get passed on to the client, so we needed a system to properly catalogue these expenses," said David Gregg, Senior Manager Global Application Development.
Finding people skilled in Lotus Notes who could maintain and upgrade the application was difficult for MDS and because of this, application upgrades were few and far between.
"Now MDS can hire anybody to maintain the application without a problem, whereas before the smaller labor pool made sourcing programmers much more difficult a task,” said Alex Espinoza, Software Development Manager at Axis Technical. “Nobody was able to budget properly if at all, because nobody knew how to do so and therefore the application became stale."
Solution
Axis Technical created a web-based Microsoft .NET application that tracks employee expenses with greater functionality and features than the previous platform.
"This application not only manages expenses but it helps the department managers budget projects," said Alex Espinoza. "They know exactly what was spent and therefore can create budgets based on separate expenses."
The expense entry page is easily accessible through a web browser and was built with Asynchronous JavaScript and XML techniques (AJAX) and the Microsoft ASP.Net 2.0 platform. Because of this, the page doesn’t need to be refreshed each time it is used, increasing speed and functionality. The program is linked to MDS’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and Oracle financial system.
Benefits
The Web-based nature of the application allows greater accessibility and ease of use for MDS contractors and employees on business trips. The application allows employees to log business expenses during a business trip from a web browser and convert foreign currencies to dollars.
"The legacy system had currencies, but whenever you added a new currency, it required new programming," Gregg said. "This new system has built-in currency tables and is much more data driven."
The application features rules that categorize types of expenses specific to each employee or contractor, notifying any expense limitations. The accrual workflow feature allows managers to predict future costs of travel expenses, identify expenses allowed, and retroactively approve or deny expenses.
"This system is completely configured down to the user level," Gregg said. "It has deep integration with the in-house clinical trial management system and our Oracle financial."
Contact Axis Technical today for all your legacy migration needs.