Case Studies

Project Profile for the Time Tracking System

Executive Summary

Company

SAFC Biosciences, based in Lenexa, Kansas was formed in 2005 and is owned by Sigma-Aldrich.

Solution Description

The internal web system provides a means for scientists to enter their project time and expenses. An administrative module was built for supervisors to maintain project information and to update scientist login credentials.

Software and Services

  • Microsoft Windows XP
  • ASP.NET
  • SQL Server 2000

Customer Profile

Sector: Biochemical & Cell Culture Reagents
Industry: Health Care

SAFC Biosciences develops and manufactures cell culture reagents and services targeted for commercial firms involved with developing and producing biopharmaceuticals. They have 6 production facilities in the US, Europe, and Australia and are the provider to more than 50% of approved drugs.

Business Situation

The company has scientists working from multiple facilities nationwide. SAFC noted the need for an efficient means for scientists to report time and expenses against a project. The previous system, based in Microsoft Access, suffered from performance issues since the application ran on a wide-area network between facilities. They needed an enhanced system that would be available for simultaneous access by scientists at different facilities. System administrators required the ability to centrally report against this data, as well as maintain project information.

Solution

Scientist Time and Project Tracking System

The team at alligatortek addressed the need for a distributed system with a web browser-based application. The system is available to internal users and offers a user interface that is simple and intuitive. Each scientist is able to run and view individual reports on their time and expenses, allowing them to manage their own project budgets. System administrators can run reports that aggregate time for all scientists and monitor project budgets. The system features ad-hoc reporting available to system administrators via a Microsoft Access Data Project that connects to the SQL Server back-end database.