• Omnis multiple solutions •
Omnis allows developers to provide
a broad range of custom solutions in many market areas
Bentley
Western Australia
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The Challenge: Companies that provide customised software solutions need to be able to respond to clients with a wide range of needs and budgets, often under tight time constraints. For Logical Developments, who are based in Western Australia, their customers’ main requirements are reliability, value for money, and ease-of-use. Their clients come from diverse market areas throughout retail and trade including: point-of-sale (book shops and video hire), logistics, bus charter, driver training, accounting, manufacturing, and healthcare.
Some clients are single users, while others work across networks, taking advantage of the cross-platform, multi-user readiness of Omnis Studio. Responding to these diverse markets, while creating a successful software development company, is therefore dependent on using the right development processes and tools.
The Solution
Logical Developments have been using Omnis Studio for many years and use it for most of their development projects.
The powerful relational capabilities in Omnis enable Logical Developments to base many of their projects on a dynamic modular system, which works as one seamless application. Clients have the option of buying an off-the-shelf package, or combining existing modules, with customised modules added in to cater to their individual requirements. Adding further flexibility to this system is the extensive preference options and built-in Report Generator. Whatever the type of application, users value the minimal data entry requirements, and consequently the resulting speed, accuracy and efficiency of the system.
A stand-alone Bookshop application created by Logical Developments allows student guild bookshops in several Australian universities to manage stock and handle sales-on-commission. The shop can pull down a student’s number and contact details from the guild’s database, meaning accuracy and minimal data entry requirements while processing sales. An optional facility is an on-line item search, which can also provide students access to their contract using a standard web browser to check its status, including items sold, payments due, and so on.
Why Omnis
The speed and ease-of-use in the Omnis development environment means that Logical Developments can offer clients the flexibility of on-going modifications as their business expands with fast turnaround of their requirements.
The reliability of the web interface that Omnis provides has allowed Logical Developments to extend the functionality of their products. For example, the web interface is an important component in the calendar system they developed to work in conjunction with a client’s medical billing system, popular with specialists and hospitals across Australia. Using the web interface, they developed a colour-coded appointment system which pulls patient information from the main application and tightly integrates with it. The program’s flexibility enables users to define resources, appointment categories, default time-slots, appointment types with default durations. They are also able to import public holidays from the internet and appointments from other programs such as Outlook, Lotus, and Now up to Date. The system also allows appointment confirmation letters to be sent, using predefined templates.
Paul Mulroney
Head Programmer, Logical Developments, Australia