CSA-2 Customer Service Application

Abstract

• Customer is US company pioneering new ways to deliver convenience by integrating technology with the routine shipping and mailing needs of today?s small office/home office users and individual consumers.
• The CSA-2 system was developed by Argussoft in order to support the full circle of vital business processes of the customer company. The system was deployed Nov 2000.

Purpose of the Project

The system had to facilitate work of Customer Service, Technical Support, Marketing, Shipping and Accounting departments. The system should support existing and new Neopost Online customers. The following areas, related to company business had to be supported by the system:

• Online order procurement
• Customer care services, contact data and incident maintenance
• USPS customer licensing and reporting process automation
• Support for postal label printing through whole range of end-user products
• Inventory management
• Financial services
• Sales information analysis, statistics and reporting

Project specifics

• The system had to be certified by USPS for compliance and security
• Support for custom hardware (postal meters, thermal printers, digital scales)
• Support for encryption algorithms found in SMD — Secure Meter Device
• Integration with external systems, including CyberSource and USPS

Customer Requirements

Software platform:
Windows NT 4.0 .Windows 2000 
MS SQL Server
MS Transaction Server/COM+
Active Server Pages

Hardware platform:
Intel PCs

System Architecture

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• Redundant hardware solution
• Three-tier system, having all the logic on the application server
• Componentized architecture allowing flawless system evolution
• Clients communication with the server using XML/HTTP

Solution

Searching
Advanced search capabilities
Easy-to use data query constructor
Company staff can easily respond to customer requests and resolve problems

Reporting
Advanced reporting capabilities
One click report sorting and information digging
Perform operations on report items directly from report screen

Access control
Complete staff access control
Auditing of staff operation
Easy user management

Fully integrated web-site
Customer orders and billing history
Credit card processing through CyberSource
Tax calculation through Vertex (www.vertexinc.com)

Key Benefits

• Taking advantages of MS ADO technology, the system is able to monitor database on different servers, such as Oracle or others.
• Component based 3-tier architecture, which makes system support much easier.
• Based on open standards (XML and HTTP) which allows interoperability and extensibility
• Provides integrated all-in-one solution for all company’s business processes