Alliance Resource Consulting is a nationally-known recruiting firm specializing in placing executives in municipalities, public sector companies and non-profit organizations. ARC’s competitive advantage is its network of executive contacts combined with its ability to proactively target candidates who may not be actively searching for new opportunities or responding to job postings.
Challenge: Candidate System Becomes Difficult to Maintain
Alliance Resource Consulting depends on its candidate tracking system to run its business, accept candidate resumes, and differentiate itself from its competitors. This application is core to ARC’s success and survival.
ARC, like many businesses, was sensitive to the cost of building a software application from scratch. The original application was built using PHP and MySQL, which kept database costs to a minimum.
When system enhancements started requiring more and more effort and relations with the original application developer deteriorated, it became obvious that the system had become too expensive and almost impossible to maintain. ARC realized they needed professional help to support and update the system as quickly as possible.
R.B. Zack & Associates, Inc. reviewed the more than 1,800 PHP pages used in the application and found that many software development best practices had been violated. While the functionality worked most of the time, support would be difficult at best. Any modifications or additional functionality would almost certainly break the application.
Solution: Rebuild Candidate Tracker Using Best Practices
Realizing that the application required a complete re-write to be maintainable, RBZ&A began a migration effort. Development and testing of the new Alliance Resource Consulting application took several months. The PHP pages and MySQL database were replaced with .NET and SQL Server technologies. Software development best practices were implemented and the number of pages was reduced from 1,800 to less than 400, making support and maintenance much more manageable. All of the original functionality was maintained, and new functions and features can now be added without risk of bringing down the application.