CAP enhances Software as a Service – Reporting Dashboards

This white paper is one of a series, outlining how CAP is being used to enhance a Software as a Service application.

Keywords:

Cloud, SaaS, Data, CDN, Reporting

The context:

A large retailer is outsourcing their e-commerce application to a third-party provider. This relationship has existed for a long time, however the retailer grew increasingly frustrated with the cost and time involved in enacting any changes to the user experience and the lack of certain features. Adding to the sense of frustration was the fact that any requests were completely at the mercy of the third party provider.

The solution:

CAP was installed in the Amazon cloud between the end users and the third-party provider to help overcome some of these problems. By taking advantage of the CAP Agent’s built-in adaptive static content caching and ability to act inline in real time with minimum performance impact, the retailer resumed control of their brand and reputation.

Deployment diagram:

Why CAP:

No other product on the market offers a CDN-like capability that also involves enhancing and enriching content on the fly on a massive scale as well as addressing urgent security shortcomings. The retailer needs this capability to have some measure of control over third party software they are otherwise unable to change.

The story:

The retailer was struggling to react to day-to-day events whilst relying on data provided from weekly reports. In the fast paced ecommerce order lifecycle and increasing use of social media, the retailer felt that they were losing traction in the marketplace. They realized that they would continue to do so unless they could respond faster to customers and market trends.

The retailer was aware that there were solutions offering some of their requirements already on the market. However not one of these solutions offered the full range of reporting required and in real time.

Using CAP, a plan was quickly hatched to resolve the issue:

A solution was quickly implemented whereby the retailer had access to all of the data he required, from all of the various data sources, in real time. There was even the option to receive alerts and review the reports, securely, from mobile devices.

Example dashboard:

The limitations:

The only limitation was access credentials available for particular databases, if the data could not be accessed then the report required could not be generated.

Business benefits:

Not only did the retailer gain access to real time reporting for sales orders but also real time reporting on fraud events or even server/website outages. For the first time the retailer could react, in real time, to events as they happened. This enhanced their reputation greatly and allowed them to take advantage of current events e.g. by offering market relevant time limited sale items.

Rules blocks and components used:

File Reader (report template)

SQL Query Execution (database lookup)

Http Session Writer