Technology

One of Compuware Changepoint's key advantages is the way our product and technology have evolved. In 1996 Changepoint released what was the world's first integrated business process automation solution for services organizations. This early client/server product was used worldwide by a number of companies to manage their end-to-end services business.

When the time came to transform the Changepoint solution from its original client-server architecture to an n-tier Web-based application, our R&D team had the luxury of a full scope "blue print" of the desired solution as a basis for rebuilding.

Without the distractions of acquired bits and pieces, Compuware has organically grown its entire product in house, such that it seamlessly integrates all of the critical business processes and data of a services organization by leveraging a single database architecture.

Driving Principles Behind the Compuware Changepoint Architecture

Role-Based Access: No matter what an employee's role, be it manager or junior consultant or administrator, each must have an appropriately tailored user interface and access. Changepoint allows administrators to configure any combination of over 180 features into assignable roles.

Mobility:  Software must enable a range of mobility options for the workforce to choose from. Changepoint not only enables access from anywhere via a browser, but also provides a disconnected browser, Pocket PC, and Pocket PC phone clients for those needing to work off line.

Back Office to the Front Office:  Provision must be made for front line, customer-facing staff to be involved in the workflow of many traditionally back-office processes such as charge-backs.

External Participation in Business Processes: With Internet connectivity now ubiquitous, business applications can now extend beyond the walls of the hosting organization to include third parties in business process. Changepoint's architecture has included the ability to selectively include contractors, staffing vendors and job boards in the staff acquisition and service delivery process.

Configurability vs. Customizability: Changepoint's powerful configuration capabilities make many changes a simple matter of changing settings rather than custom development.

Global Support: The Changepoint application is designed from the ground up to support large, multi-company, multi-language global organizations. Examples of global capabilities include support for global currencies and automated conversions, locale-sensitive date, numeric and language preferences, VAT and recoverable taxes, taxation by location and time-zone driven SLA management. The application supports all global character sets through the Unicode encoding scheme. The user experience is user selectable and available in English, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Korean and Japanese.

Integration to other software: With existing investments in CRM, HCM or accounting solutions, many companies may want to augment what they already own. It is critical that integration be as fast and efficient as possible. Changepoint, via a number of integration methods, can integrate with most anything a customer has currently deployed.

Network sensitivity: Changepoint has undergone extensive testing to ensure the ultimate efficiency in network traffic and bandwidth.

Scalable Architecture and Functionality: Global organizations require flexibility in deployment options in both technology and application functionality. Changepoint has been architected to ensure the most choices possible in topology as well as supporting business functionality. Changepoint runs on leading DBMS technologies from Microsoft.

Compuware Changepoint Client Strategy

Changepoint is a true "thin client" product. The standard Changepoint user requires zero code on the desktop and can access the application from anywhere there is an Internet Explorer Browser. Changepoint's role-based desktop is delivered and rendered on the fly depending on the logged in user rights, roles and language preference. The Changepoint client utilizes DHTML, XML, VML and JavaScript technologies to provide a rich client experience without the need to install software on the desktop.

Off line users and users running MS Project on their desktop receive lightweight auto-installed objects that enable a common browser with these advanced capabilities. Off line data storage is accomplished through client-side XML record sets that are synchronized with the server over standard HTTP. The Changepoint off line client requires no client side database engine or software container.

Performance & Scalability

Discussions on application scalability frequently become a comparison or benchmark exercise for the enabling technologies rather than the combination of the technologies and business application. Clearly, the larger challenge lies within the application's design and how efficiently it utilizes the underlying technology. The excellent performance and scalability the Changepoint solution has achieved can be attributed to two primary factors: an optimized architecture and application functionality designed for large organizations.

System-level Performance & Scalability
Extensive performance and scale testing has been performed by Changepoint as well as a number of global corporations that have subsequently purchased Changepoint. Changepoint customers have conducted extensive lab testing to ensure the application could scale to meet the demands of global deployments with many thousands of users.

Changepoint's n-Tier architecture allows for the addition of incremental resources such as CPUs and memory as the organization grows and thus, loads on the system increase. Constant R&D pressure on low bandwidth performance and optimization of high volume processes such as login, time sheet submission, Microsoft Project synchronization and replication with our off line clients have resulted in excellent scalability and an efficient user experience.

Functional Performance & Scalability

Examples of Performance & Scalability gains achieved through functional maturity include the following:

• Support for n-Levels of organizational hierarchy provides access control granularity and improved context at the presentation level.
• All application tree views dynamically load each level as the user drills down, rather than all at once.
• Tree view filtering with personal memory reduces network traffic by allowing a user to narrow in on what they need before delivering the information to the screen.
• Drop-down lists that contain large datasets (such as Customer and Resource lists) provide type-ahead searching to reduce the data returned to the browser.
• User-customizable dashboards with state memory provide dynamic loading to defer or eliminate unnecessary processing and network traffic.
• Automated charge-backs, server-side pre-processing and batch printing permit high-volume invoice processing.
• Multi-company and multi-billing office support within a single deployment allows cascading business rules and centralized control over global deployments.

Extensibility

Changepoint's configuration console and system management tool provides extensive configuration capability out of the box. Customers have been able to map Changepoint to their existing business processes, to reduce deployment time and the need for customizations. Because the user interface is created real-time at login for each user, the configuration tool enables other applications and intranet content to plug and play directly into the Changepoint application container. This third-party or custom application can even embrace the feature and role-based security model of the application.

The key behind this console-level control is the database-centric design of the application. For example, every field label and text string used to define the application is maintained within the database. In addition to the powerful on-site terminology changes this enables, it also permits the application to dynamically present each user's interface in their language of choice.

In addition to third-party tools, Changepoint provides a number of options and tools for integrating with other applications. COM and XML APIs, an integrated Export Wizard and pre-built imports are all available directly from Changepoint. We also provide a data dictionary and support third-party and platform-native tools. Packaged, or near-packaged integration toolkits are available for integration to Microsoft Great Plains. Changepoint has built integrations for most other ERP applications using the APIs described above.

Security

In order to ensure the highest levels of security, Changepoint has submitted its application to a number of third-party security audits.

With large global organizations in mind, the Changepoint application provides complete configurable control over the application and your company's valuable data. Native support is provided for a number of authentication methods including, single sign-on authentication using NT domain accounts, single sign-on authentication using ActiveDirectory accounts, Digital Certificates and a standard authentication method where each user is assigned an application user account and password. Additional third-party authentication services can be provided through customizations to provide customers with the ability to tailor the authentication process based on internal systems or processes. SSL encryption can be enabled to ensure data is protected over the wire.

Security within the application is controlled by over 180 functional control points, workgroup-level access restrictions, workflow-based controls and, where even greater levels of control are required, record-level access control.