Customer Profile: With annual revenues of $20 billion, our customer is the premier global provider of transportation, e-commerce and supply-chain management services. The company offers integrated business solutions through a network of subsidiaries that operate independently.

Challenge: One of our customer's business analysis groups needed to develop and deploy a quick, scalable web-based tracking application. This application would enable participating airline companies to view and share information about the various services that they provided to our customer. The team wanted to build the application themselves without having to depend on their resource-constrained IT team. Because of the IT team's pre-occupation with existing projects, the analysts required a platform that would not involve the hassles of software installation and implementation. In short, they wanted a rapid, effective and scalable development framework that would enable them to build business applications with minimal technical expertise.

Solution: One of the analysts discovered zeroCode, the powerful new framework to create web-based business applications It was accessible as an online subscription service needing only a browser and an Internet connection. The entire framework was hosted on PK4's servers, allowing the analysts to focus on using their domain knowledge to construct the application without worrying about issues like data security, back-ups etc.

The tracking system was developed by a business analyst team of just two people with minimal technical skills. They were able to complete the application in just over a week due to zeroCode's powerful capabilities in terms of speed, scalability, fault tolerance and security.

Using zeroCode, the customer spent a total of 51 hours developing the tracking system. Using traditional programming tools, this project of a 120 function-points, wouldve probably taken 800 hours to complete. zeroCode took only a little over 50 hours, including training, saving 85% to 94% of development time on this project.

Without the hassles of installing servers and software for developing a quick application, the analysts were able to build exactly the application that they required. They could begin working on the project as soon as they signed up for the service with no delays from either side. They then decided to host the application on PK4's servers, thus reducing the TCO of the application considerably and with complete independence from the IT group.

The developed application helped our customer to track maintenance records and performance statistics for fleets of various airlines, including Northwest, Delta, United, FedEx and UPS. An existing application was used to populate this database with raw information, while the zeroCode-built application allowed all participating companies to view and interact with the data completely online PK4 provided the team with the necessary training to complete the project in time. Due to the powerful capabilities and the ease of use of the framework, and the nature of PK4's Software-as-a-Service model, the analyst team was able to design, develop and deploy the system, completely on their own.

Benefits:
 The biggest benefit derived from using zeroCode for development was that the customer saved 94%
   of development time and quickly designed a top-quality, reliable database system.
 The visual, drag-and-drop interface enabled the business analysts to design, construct and deploy the
   application themselves without involving the IT team.
 Data security issues and back-up were taken care of by PK4, allowing our customer to focus solely on
   developing the application.
 There were no installation or implementation costs involved. Our customer could start using the software
   immediately and achieved benefits within weeks, rather than waiting many months for results.
 People with minimal programming skills could develop and deploy applications due to the powerful features
   and functionalities of zeroCode.