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Solutions Overview
Scenario
Keynote customers were accustomed to analyzing the statistical performance of
their web site on-line through a simple and easy-to-use browser-based interface.
However, the process was slow, especially when numerous days or sites were being
reviewed. In addition, the on-line application was limited and did not allow any
ad-hoc analysis or reporting. Customers asked for an Excel based application to
provide the flexibility they wanted, and the ability to handle larger and larger
amounts of data.
Company Profile
Keynote is the world's largest supplier of Internet performance measurement,
diagnostic, load testing and consulting services to companies with e-commerce
Web sites. Keynote currently collects data on thousands of URLs, immediately
providing measurement data to customers through any Web browser.
Situation
Keynote’s came to Willow to build an Excel-based application that would provide
their customers with speed, flexibility and the capacity to analyze large amounts
of statistical data about their web sites. Since most of Keynote’s customers are
e-commerce companies, the performance of their web sites is crucial to the success
of their business.
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- Keynote provides e-commerce companies with on-line tools to
measure performance and improve the quality of service they
provide to their web based customers.
- Willow Solutions was contracted to develop a desktop version
of Keynote’s on-line analysis tool that allowed their customers
to analyze larger amounts of data in a more flexible and expedient
manner using Microsoft Excel.
Customers were requesting a desktop version of Keynote’s popular
on-line analysis tool to measure performance of e-commerce web sites.
Based on recommendations from Microsoft, Keynote hired Willow to build
an Excel-based version of their on-line tool, with added enhancements
of speed, capacity and flexibility.
Willow began the project by developing a prototype, replicating many of
the functions of the on-line application such as graphing data by time,
city, agent, backbone, or ISP, and the ability to compare multiple URLs
in one graph. Using Excel, Willow was able to provide a broader variety
of graphs, improved statistical functions and algorithms, and the ability
to create ad-hoc reports that could be disseminated through the company.
Once agreement was reached on the look and feel of the prototype, work
began on the full development effort. Features were added to automatically
update client’s local database with the latest data. Both Microsoft
Access and SQL server versions were created to handle smaller customers
as well as those analyzing gigabytes worth of data.
The completed product was beta tested and released and now provides
Keynote’s customers with the ability to create and share meaningful
reports utilizing the robust calculation and charting capabilities of
Microsoft Excel. The enhanced product gives customers greater flexibility
at a faster rate and they can now analyze much larger amounts of data in
more meaningful ways.
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