An Irish software company focussing on databases for customer relationship management (CRM) and human resources (HR) applications has won a contract with the Department of Justice in Adelaide and will assist the Attorney General’s Office with data importing, data manipulation and extracting and reporting requirements.
The contract was won for DataKraft by Intec, a indigenous Australian reseller, which DataKraft met following a visit to the ICT Electronics Fair in Hong Kong in association with the Irish Exporters Association back in June. Intec is now an accredited reseller for dataKraft’s Studio product range for Australia.
The Department of Justice in Adelaide is one of South Australia’s leading government departments. The department is responsible for reporting on the progress made in relation to specific government initiatives in South Australia.
The department had an existing Microsoft Excel-based solution for the collection of data. This method was time consuming, labour intensive and costly to maintain and operate. DataKraft has provided them with a system that is easy to use, faster and simple to maintain.
Neil Thompson, systems delivery manager and associate director of Intec, said: “To be completely honest, we would not have been able to do these jobs without a tool like DataKraft; the first project had such a tight turn around that we would not have met their timeframes with a pure development approach.”
Phil Ingerson, managing director of Intec, concurred: “We have traditionally targeted large companies and government departments in Australia and while we have been aware of a large number of opportunities in medium-sized companies, it was never cost effective for us to sell to them.
“DataKraft has significantly reduced the effort required to serve these customers. Now we plan to use DataKraft as one of our focussed offerings and go after a market that we have not previously been able to target.”
Intec made the recommendation to the Attorney General’s office to use DataKraft based on its rapid data processing, low development cost, ease of use and flexibility. DataKraft also enables easy integration into the department’s existing investment in Microsoft tools.
“Initially the department required the new database solution to concentrate on capturing data for the South Australian Strategic Plan (SASP) but required a system that would be flexible enough to work for any similar initiatives introduced into government in South Australia,” said Jacques Lefebvre, CEO of dataKraft.
“The low level of maintenance was a contributing factor in the department selecting Intec’s DataKraft based solution. They now have a system that requires very little maintenance which can be carried out by themselves or Intec consultants if they wish.”
Budget constraints and the publication of a new Strategic Plan meant that the new system had to be designed, built and in place within a month and at a low cost. With dataKraft it was possible to meet all the business requirements within their budget and be developed within the required timeframe.
Experience has shown that DataKraft can be up to 20 times faster than normal development. End users rely heavily on Microsoft Office and Outlook. DataKraft has been designed to seamlessly fit into this working environment to ensure a rapid transition to a new system and keep training costs low.
DataKraft is the brainchild of Lefebvre and was born out of a frustration of not being able to create database applications quickly. “I wanted to develop professional database applications quickly that could be amended and extended without any coding or development,” said Lefebvre.
By John Kennedy
