Case Study

 

Spanlink and Hennepin County

 

Cleo’s Transaction Processing Software provides an important link for a major county’s emergency assistance program.

Hennepin County, Minnesota provides hundreds of services to its more than one million residents in Minneapolis and 45 surrounding cities. One such service is a voice response system that provides emergency cash assistance. The service is an important social program helping thousands of residents that are in crisis. The ability to automate many of the processes involved in the program helps the county to serve more people in less time, and at less expense.

The Challenge

Hennepin County was replacing their Integrated Voice Response (IVR) system. As a part of this effort, they desired a new case management application. Hennepin County needed the ability to have their clients validate a case number and then get information on any monetary disbursements made for the case number, as well as current status of the case and a history of various activities/documents which had been filed for their case. To solve this problem, they turned to a Cisco Interactive Voice Response system.

As Cisco and its application partner, Enventis, began design of the application, they realized they needed the ability to gather key data from a host mainframe. In turn, they asked Spanlink, a leading provider of integrated IP Communications solutions based on Cisco Systems' AVVID architecture, to subcontract all host connectivity for the application. Spanlink began a search for 3270 software. They wanted to explore the most cost-effective solutions before committing Hennepin County's application. Their needs included software that would use a Java interface, be reliable, and efficiently handle not only the 100 calls per hour, but also the multiple host interactions for each call. Spanlink was familiar with Cleo software from previous engagements and therefore included Cleo in the evaluation.

The Solution

Since Spanlink had worked with Cleo before, they trusted the Cleo software to be reliable and efficient. Spanlink examined Cleo's Transaction Processing Suite of software and was convinced that this approach was the answer. The tools provided in the suite allowed Spanlink to quickly and accurately develop the interaction between the mainframe system and the Cisco IVR system.

The IVR application written by Spanlink uses custom Java code and Cleo's Java API to pass caller input, run the transactions and retrieve the output from the host screens.

The power of the rules and branching functions in Cleo's Transaction Designer allowed Spanlink to conditionally extract data from a very complex multi-page screen that normally would take several screen captures/definitions to accomplish. Using the Transaction Processor Java Interface, Spanlink could control additional processing as well as determine which lines of data to retrieve. "The power of Cleo's Transaction Designer allowed us to reduce development time from approximately 120 hours to 40 hours," said Bruce Shaver, Consulting Engineer for Spanlink.

The Solution at Work

Using the new Transaction Processing suite of software, Bruce Shaver believes they were able to save 25% to 30% of the normal development time for the connectivity portion of the application. According to Bruce, there were many advantages to their choice of Cleo. "The Transaction Designer was a lot simpler to use than other methods that are out there," he explains. The developer did not have to know 3270 terminology and was able to build and debug transactions very rapidly.

By building transactions, development time was reduced because the "program didn't have to call screen by screen" to the host. Bruce continues, "Being familiar with it now, it would probably save us even more time. The competitive price was yet another benefit, along with the reduced development to help Spanlink provide a cost-effective solution to our customer.” Bruce ended his description of the application with a special thanks to the Cleo support team. "The support that Cleo gave us, as far as I am concerned, was beyond compare. I'll buy this again from Cleo."

Cleo Communications helps companies of all sizes connect with and utilize mainframe data and applications. To discuss the benefits of Transaction Processing for your application or project, contact Cleo today.