Customizing Commercial Software
Using EASA, an organization can create multiple software “wrappers” around one or more applications, giving users one point of access to key software tools and data through a simple, custom interface designed specifically for the task at hand.
Most organizations use multiple and diverse applications spread across an enterprise. Therefore a typical process has many steps requiring input from various employees each using specialized applications. For example, typical steps within a process in a manufacturing company might be: design, analysis, data processing, and reporting.
The process requires one or more experts in different fields to execute several steps using specialized software tools. A process like this may be executed hundreds of times annually and cost thousands of hours per year.
In contrast, once the process has been simplified, automated and “wrapped” with an EASA application, it can be executed by any authorized user using any computer with a browser regardless of geographical location. The user is not exposed to and does not need to be an expert in the underlying software, and yet can execute the process within minutes.
The time saved is scaled by the number of processes a company decides to improve in this way. EASA customers have saved thousands of man-hours per year, equivalent to saving millions of dollars per year.
In addition to many engineering software products such as CAD and CAE, EASA has been used by clients to “wrap” numerous other applications including:
- Office applications such as MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, and MS Word
- Other desktop applications such as WinZip and Adobe Acrobat
- Databases such as MS Access, MySQL, Oracle, SQL Server
- Scientific applications such as MathCAD, FACSIMILE, Matlab, DICTRA and gPROMS
- Graphical packages such as Tecplot, EnSight, Adobe Flash, GNUPlot, ImageMagick
- Commercial queuing software such as LSF and PBS
- CRM systems such as Salesforce.com
"Globally dispersed and culturally diverse internal customers have not historically had access to some of our most valuable tools. The EASA platform has changed this; we can now rapidly build and deploy to the enterprise custom web-based applications that facilitate the use of our existing tools, such as CAD, Excel, and even legacy codes and databases… This results in improved product quality, and reduced time to market." - John Clisham, HPC IT Manager, Procter & Gamble.
P&G: Leveraging software assets to increase the bottom line. Read the CXO magazine article on EASA