Template-based development promising, but not a snap - developing software with industry-specific templates

Software Magazine, June, 1994 by Janet Butler

Developing applications with industry-specific templates is an attractive option for utilities and telecommunications firms, but head-to-heard competitors shy away. The technology's success depends on Case and object advances.

A "something old, something new" phenomenon is earning some followers in the application development arena. The phemenon, template-based development, has the potential to transform the software application market, and could also change how IS shops develop systems and reengineer business processes.

According to Debra Hofman, research associate at the Center for Information Systems Research at the Massachusetts Institue of Technology's Sloan School of Management, Cambridge, Mass., templates are "hybrids," combining the cost and time advantages of prebuilt software packages with the flexibility of custom software and the maintainability provided by Case tools.

An increasing number of firms are finding that marriage irresistible. One such firm is Illinois Power, a mid-sized utility in Decatur. It supplies gas and electricity to approximately 560,000 customers.

In 1991 the firm conducted a study with IBM to analyze the survival with IBM to analyze the survival potential of its customer system -- called COS for Customer-oriented System -- installed in 1974. According to Roger Pontifex, director of customer relations, the utility determined that COS, with its 3 million lines of Assembler code, was no longer meeting business needs.

With flexibility the primary goal, management opted to go with a customized system. However, when the price of such a system became apparent, Illinois Power turned instead to templates. The firm chose the Customer/1 template, a customer information system (CIS) from Andersen Consulting, Chicago, that it specifically designed for utility operations.

When Illinois Power purchased the Customer/I template, it was betting on the system's proven track record, and the incorporation of best practices in a utility-based customer information system, said Gary Mietzner, supervisor of application development. These included not only recommendations for added functionality to meet regulatory criteria, but suggestions for billing and budget processes.

The utility moved to the new system to expedite the interaction of customer service representatives with customers. Pontifex said one way Customer/1 helped in this effort was to provide a "screens-as-conversation" series.

With the old system, customer service reps had to learn 60 screens that dictated their dealings with customers. By contrast, the new system has 300+ screens, as well as 1,200 programs and 250 tables. The many screens are needed to increase customer response time. To ensure that the screens do not intimidate representatives, they are presented in a "conversational" manner that leads the reps through the steps necessary to complete a transaction.

The firm has the new system on an IBM ES 9000 mainframe, running the VMS operating system, as well as DB2 and CICS.

Andersen Consulting's Customer/1 was born in 1984 when the company developed a CIS for Baltimore Gas & Electric, according to Peter Sarsany, associate partner and director of Andersen Consulting's utility technology center in Dallas. Andersen has since worked on 25 Customer/1 projects at utilities with customer bases that range from 150,000 to 3.7 million.

According to Lin Pearce, chief executive officer of Template Software Inc., Herndon, Va., industry-specific application templates such as those shared by utilities give users an 80% head start on a system's development. Benefits like speed of application delivery, flexibility in meeting changing business needs, and improved user/developer relationships are not unusual with templates, and stem from their basic attributes: their use of Case tools, and design reusability.

Industry-specific templates are one of two kinds of templates being developed today, explained Gervais Johnson, a systems consultant in the technology consulting group at John Alden Systems Co. (Jasco), a Miami insurance firm.

The second type of template -- the kind Jasco produces -- can cross industries. For example, a company with a general CICS mainframe or server environment could benefit from the functionality and ease of use that Jasco's templates provide, Johnson claimed.

The firm uses the Application Development Workbench (ADW) from Atlanta-based Knowledge-Ware Inc. to produce "architectural templates" that can be leveraged across departments, as well as full application systems that take advantage of these templates. ADW is a full lifecycle, integrated Case toolset that allows developers to build an application model and then automatically generate application code. Information is stored in a central encyclopedia.

After developing a managed care application with ADW in the early 1990s, Jasco decided to use the Case tool to replace an antiquated application housing a repository of insurance agent information. Like many companies driven by business goals, Jasco wanted to be more responsive to its end users by adding new functionality, Johnson said.