The annual Microsoft Partner awards honour New Zealand’s Microsoft Gold and Certified technology companies, and Microsoft Small Business Specialist companies who have delivered innovative solutions for their customers.
In this years Microsoft technology Awards, Datacom is delighted to have been honoured twice with category wins for two major initiatives.
2009 Application Platform Solution of the Year
For New Zealand Post, characteristics of their existing legacy technology prohibited a quick and agile data collection and analysis for business intelligence within the Post Shop Retail network. NZ Post senior staff identified that “legacy management information was based on ageing point solutions that relied on manual processes, and which resulted in an inconsistent view of the business”.
Based on a number of products from the Microsoft technology stack (including Windows, SQL and PerformancePoint Servers, MOSS 2007 and Reporting/Analysis Services) Datacom developed a business intelligence Retail Management Information System (“RMIS”), alongwith a new Retail portal which is the central access point to NZ Post retail business systems. The RMIS systems retrieves real-time transactional data and allows, via an intuitive self-service dashboard framework, Post Shop owners to analysis retail trends from the shops and make instant decisions around shop product efficiency.
In making the award, Microsoft commented that “Datacom took the benefits associated with the latest versions of the Microsoft stack and compared it to competitor Specialist BI vendor products. They delivered outstanding business results, providing comprehensive business intelligence to the entire client organisation”.
2009 Services-Ready Partner of the Year
Based on the Citizen Service Platform (CSP), Datacom and Microsoft Consulting Services together worked on delivering the first CSP application in New Zealand for the North Shore City Council (NSCC). Both parties leveraged off the Microsoft services learning and engagement frameworks that have made CSP successful in Europe. Using MOSS 2007 and BizTalk together in the CSP framework, a rich UI web based application was delivered to provide Electronic Building Consents to the Council, forming the building blocks of a stream of council services being delivered through CSP.
For NSCC, the project demonstrated the ability of Datacom to work in a highly agile and flexible manner to deliver value added services quickly and efficiently in a complex government body environment.
Of Datacom and this award, Microsoft said “A great application, highlighting the strong relationship that the Services Ready programme has enabled Microsoft Consulting to build with Datacom, around a customer project that is high impact and important for the wider NZ market”.