Dixon Appointments Success Story
.NET customisation enhances competitiveness for Dixon Appointments
Industry: Permanent and temporary administration and business support staff
Headquarters: Melbourne, VIC
Revenue: $7 million (2002-30)
Staff: 18 internal staff
The existing system
The company has had a fully integrated suite of FastTrack’s desktop products — SkillsBase and Recruitment Manager, Recruitment Payroll Manager, Integrated Ledger, FastScan, plus various other modules — for nearly four years.
Although Dixon considered five companies’ products, the true integration of the FastTrack suite, its track record and local support made the decision easier. “I don’t think I ever would have selected a non-integrated suite by choice,” Dixon said. “I know a lot of people do, trying to save money. But I have the best integrity of data because if you update something, it updates across the whole system. It’s a huge benefit, and that alone justifies having an integrated system.
“And now that FastTrack has added EasyQuery to its product range, I can pull data from anywhere across the system. Access to our data is a big thing for me. That’s why I love EasyQuery, because I really want control of my own information.”
Dixon said that the FastTrack system had been a significant contributor to the company’s productivity improvement and growth. As an example, the FindIt search function, powered by ISYS search engine technology, had improved permanent placements by 10-12%. Staff also find the FastTrack system easy to use, which contributes to their sense of confidence and well-being in their jobs. Dixon said that everything was done through the system, all staff had access to it, and thereby the potential for errors was vastly reduced.
The need
Dixon Appointments wanted a time-saving and productivity-enhancing customisation of its FastTrack system: the ability for candidates to register their information in real-time into the live company database through its website, without the need for any intermediary steps or systems. The aim was to eliminate the need for candidates to fill in a series of paper forms, and for a staff member to then have to key that information into the system. Dixon wanted the information to flow directly into the live database. Although this functionality was available through the existing FastTrack WebBase product, Dixon wanted a more comprehensive and flexible range of fields and features.
The solution
FastTrack’s product development manager, Jamie McIntyre, said that in deciding how to build this customisation, FastTrack considered questions such as the complexity of what was required, stability, security, ease of upgrading, and compatibility with FastTrack’s overall system architecture. “We wanted to be able to develop this feature in new technology, to give us quicker code development and therefore faster delivery to the client and a better interface for the client to use,” McIntyre said.
To achieve these goals and to meet the client’s needs, FastTrack chose to develop the new feature in VisualBasic .NET, the latest suite of software development tools from Microsoft. McIntyre said that these tools made it a lot easier and quicker to write software, particularly web-enabled applications. “We’ve been investigating the .NET tools’ capabilities for a while now and are starting to apply them to FastTrack’s architecture,” McIntyre said. “FastTrack will continue to develop and remain at the leading edge of technology as we progressively introduce .NET capabilities into our suites.”
McIntyre said that the new feature could have been developed using other tools, but that with the capability required by Dixon Appointments and the direction of FastTrack development, the opportunity was there for a superior win/win situation. “This was an opportunity to push the development of FastTrack’s technology and improve our efficiency, while also providing Dixon Appointments with an enhanced feature, faster, and at a lower cost.”
McIntyre said that, over time, using the VB .NET tools would enable FastTrack to produce code quicker, making product enhancements, upgrades and customisations faster and lower cost. For FastTrack clients, it will mean software with improved flexibility and greater functionality that will work more efficiently with other .NET-based products — efficiency gains that can be passed on to recruitment companies’ clients. FastTrack clients will also benefit because the FastTrack suite and code development comply with industry standards, making it compatible with emerging technologies.
The benefits
The new candidate registration customisation went live in Dixon Appointments’ office in October 2003 for testing, familiarisation and use by candidates in the office. At the start of June 2004, the customisation went live to the company website.
Even before it went live to the website, about 90% of candidates were registering with Dixon Appointments through the new feature at the office. The aim is for 100% registration. Dixon said: “Time will tell how many use the web access to complete their registration before coming to the office, but we believe that busy candidates and senior people will prefer the convenience and privacy of registering from their own home or office.”
Dixon Appointments found immediate benefits from the new customisation. Candidates no longer had to spend hours in the office filling out forms, and more of the time that they did spend was quality time with consultants. The accuracy and level of information about candidates in the database increased, and was available more quickly, providing the opportunity for faster placements. There was also a significant reduction in the amount of data entry required.
Dixon said that candidates had responded “very well” to the new registration procedure. “People seem more relaxed registering online and they can see that the information is being correctly and immediately entered into the database,” she said. “I think they see this as a necessary and not too unpleasant step to getting a job.”
Another benefit of the new feature is that the number of candidates added to the database can be increased dramatically without a similar increase in consultants’ workloads.
“We have already seen cost savings as we no longer do the tedious data entry that was taking about 20 hours per week,” Dixon said. “Once we have the candidates doing this online we should have further cost reductions as we will not need the administration staff to spend as much time assisting candidates to register.”
Dixon said that FastTrack was “really good as a business partner”. She enjoyed the company’s participation in the Melbourne user group and was pleased with its willingness to listen.
“They are always around and they always do make the effort to help you, they are beaut staff,” Dixon said. “My FastTrack contact people are beaut and they often pop in. You couldn’t ask for more, and I am demanding. I select my suppliers really carefully and I am very loyal. Once I work with a company I do try to be loyal to them, so I appreciate partnering. I don’t like to be treated like I’m just one of many. I like to feel they are involved in my business and certainly FastTrack does that.”
