Taking Action to Improve Quality Improves Savings as Well

XcitekSolutionsPlus software is used internationally by global financial institutions, as well as financial accounting and processing software vendors, to process and act on corporate actions-tender offers, stock splits, mergers, acquisitions and so on. For XcitekSolutionsPlus, software quality and quick development of new releases are vital to the success of the company and its clients.

Financial institutions receive much of their data on corporate actions from a variety of vendors. XcitekSolutionsPlus' client/server and web-based software product, called XSP, provides data management and cleansing tools for corporate action data, rules-based notification and response-gathering on corporate actions, and the automatic calculation of entitlements for individual portfolios managed by each client.

"XSP is a complete turnkey solution we provide to financial institutions," explains Gary Couvillion, senior vice president of technology for XcitekSolutionsPlus. "XSP takes in multiple vendor data sources reporting on corporate actions worldwide and produces a composite corporate action announcement. This helps to reduce errors or omissions commonly associated with the reporting of corporate action data by comparing multiple sources. XSP can then be used to notify brokers, financial advisors and end investors of corporate actions as well as gather responses to those types of corporate actions that require a response, such as tender offers. That's just some of the examples of the many uses of the XSP system."

Success Brings New Challenges

XcitekSolutionsPlus began in 1990 with only six employees. Today, with more than 60 employees, two-thirds working in the company's technology department, XcitekSolutionsPlus is in the enviable position of experiencing significant business growth. With that success, however, have also come the challenges of managing that growth, including improving software quality and reducing development and testing timeframes.

"As most software development companies can attest to, we are always looking for ways to improve the software development process," says Couvillion. "We already had outstanding products; what we needed, because of our growth, was a way to develop and test our applications much faster and better than by doing it through traditional means."

XcitekSolutionsPlus' choice of Compuware and its integrated product suites for automated software quality (ASQ)—QACenter and DevPartner—has fit the bill perfectly. QACenter tests and validates applications running in a wide variety of environments, isolates and corrects problems, and ensures applications can handle anticipated load—before they go live. DevPartner helps developers automatically detect, diagnose and facilitate resolution of software errors; maximize code performance; and ensure optimum code coverage and testing. Compuware's ASQ solution improves team communication and helps deliver high-quality applications by integrating requirements management, defect tracking and workflow automation.

"Compuware just 'gets it done'—leveraging its development and testing solutions together and giving us actionable information in a way no other vendor can," says Couvillion. "With Compuware, we serve our customers better and faster while achieving internal ROI goals, and our application development and testing are several orders of magnitude better than before."

Achieving Automated Software Quality

The continuing business success of XcitekSolutionsPlus and its XSP software could be undermined if manual development and testing processes were left unchecked. "We had to find better means for our development and testing teams to communicate the results of their work to each other," says Couvillion. "Further, our growing client base meant more input into product changes. From development to testing to creating documentation to tracking application requirements—all had to be completed more quickly, without sacrificing our high standards of software quality."

Couvillion's team looked at several competing product suites and stand-alone products, and Compuware's stood out above the rest. "The suite is more integrated, across the board," notes Couvillion. "Compuware DevPartner gave us more tools that bring added structure to our Visual Basic development than other tools offered. For code review and performance analysis, Compuware products delivered capabilities we couldn't find elsewhere. With an integrated set of products like this, Compuware just came out ahead for our environment."

Couvillion's team uses the DevPartner performance analysis feature to track down performance issues on their systems and on remote client systems. "In the past, it could have taken weeks to pinpoint performance-related issues on remote systems," says Couvillion. "But now, with the DevPartner Performance and Coverage Remote Agent, we can put our finger on the source of the problem sometimes within minutes. Additionally, we now catch those types of issues on the front end, before they are released to a customer."

Couvillion uses QACenter Performance Edition to conduct load testing—to great effect. "We recently had a client who was very concerned about the volume that they needed to put on the system. QACenter enabled us to measure and prove to them that our new release would handle their load."

QACenter and DevPartner have also shown their value as Couvillion's team brings new product releases to market. "Once the modules are completed and unit tested, we can cut certain tasks associated with compiling a release in half, time-wise."

"For an end-to-end, integrated package, Compuware made the most sense at the right price," explains Couvillion. "Having a single vendor was very advantageous, in terms of product integration. We can take performance analysis data and carry it over from the development side to the QA side to look at performance from both angles. Using DevPartner and QACenter, you can add structure to the whole application life cycle, from the requirements-gathering process all the way through delivery."