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Magic Information Systems Increases Customer Satisfaction With Help From Pervasive
"Our customers operate within complex environments where large volumes of inventory and numerous simultaneous transactions are the norm. When it comes to providing our customers with top-notch application availability, data integrity and performance, Pervasive.SQLâ„¢ sets a new standard."
Isaac Rapoport, CEO, Magic Information Systems Inc.
About Magic Information Systems Inc.
Magic Information Systems Inc. (MISI) has been supplying its clients with innovative and integrated management information systems for more than 15 years. With an excess of 150 customers, comprised mostly of wholesale distributors throughout North America, MISI provides growing, mid-market companies with fully integrated business solutions.
Its flagship product, eWholesaler, formerly known as ACCOUNTWARE, is a technology-based solution built for importers and exporters with distribution and manufacturing activities. The early eWholesaler product was created using the application tool, eDeveloper, from development platform vendor Magic Software Enterprises. Selected due to its ability to integrate with Pervasive.SQL, Rapoport commented that the Magic Software development tool not only worked well with all the relational databases but it worked with Pervasive's core transactional capabilities, which leverage the popular Btrieve® engine. The database and development tool combination proved to be a success!
Business Challenge
For MISI customers, who range in size from five to 70 system users, application availability, data integrity and performance are the most critical aspects of a business application. To meet the needs of importers and exporters, MISI needed a high-performance, lightweight and reliable database engine to process inventory and transaction management information. All this must be accomplished without the expense of additional resources, since eWholesaler application users are far more consumed with managing their business, not their IT infrastructure.
"Our clients are mainly mid-sized companies and are not likely to take on an additional IT staff or a database administrator to tune and maintain the database," states Rapoport.
To accommodate the diverse environments in which its customers operate, MISI also required a database with the flexibility to operate within a variety of platforms from Windows (standalone) to Novell to Windows NT (server based). Additionally, MISI's goal was to keep administration costs to a minimum to maintain a low total cost of ownership for its customers.
A frequently fielded request from MISI's customers was the need for self-service functionality to produce customized reports detailing in-depth analysis of their businesses. MISI offered this service, but it was a tedious process requiring extensive time and resource involvement from MISI. The previous version of eWholesaler lacked the ODBC interface needed to connect to third-party reporting tools that would provide an answer to customers' requests. The data storage space saving techniques employed in the previous version of eWholesaler further made connecting to third-party applications difficult. MISI needed a robust, multi-platform embedded database that allowed the company to keep eWholesaler current and viable in a rapidly changing IT environment.
The Pervasive Solution
MISI considered several database tools, but selected Pervasive.SQL because it stood out above the rest in providing reliability, performance and low-maintenance costs. Additionally, Pervasive.SQL proved to be the best choice for MISI because of its functionality, flexibility and dual-mode access and control of data.
"Having transactional and relational database access is a major benefit to MISI," said Rapoport. "With Pervasive.SQL, MISI can tap the increased functionality of the SQL-based relational database access without losing the efficiency, total control and flexibility of using the transactional ISAM record manager that we came to rely on in Btrieve. These benefits would not have been the achieved with Microsoft SQL Server or other database options."
Pervasive's low administration drives down MISI's support costs and enables customers' applications to be consistently available. With better memory allocation, MISI customers have noted the improved ability to scale multiple services concurrently on the network.
As for the customer request for self-service reporting capabilities, Pervasive was able to assist with the solution that MISI could deliver in a cost-effective and timely manner. MISI utilized the OBDC interface in Pervasive.SQL to integrate eWholesaler with Seagate's Crystal Report Writer, allowing customers to develop and benefit from customized reports. The increased performance and functionality of Pervasive.SQL ensured that the application exceeded the minimal load addition experienced as a result of the integration with Crystal Reports.
Bottom Line
According to Rapoport, there has been a 20-30% speed increase with MISI's application since the upgrade to Pervasive.SQL from the earlier generation of the Pervasive Btrieve database. The small footprint and self-tuning features of the database have helped to extend the life of the application and the customers' hardware investment.
Pervasive.SQL's support for multiple environments and platforms enables MISI Information Systems to install eWholesaler on any of the Pervasive.SQL-supported platforms without having to rewrite or recompile the application, therefore, helping MISI keep development, implementation and maintenance costs low.
Ultimately, the solutions from Pervasive enabled MISI to provide increased customer satisfaction. MISI was able to shift its focus from efforts previously spent on custom report development to enhancing the product and increasing other areas of customer satisfaction.
"I would call Pervasive our competitive advantage, except for the fact that most of our competitors now also use Pervasive.SQL," said Rapoport. "Previously, our competitors' systems were based on other databases and every time an operating system moved ahead their systems would fall apart. It is no surprise that the majority now rely on Pervasive."
About Pervasive Software®
Pervasive Software is a leading global data-management company powering the success of application developers by providing solutions that deliver the industry's best combination of performance, reliability and low administration costs. Pervasive's strength is evidenced by the size and diversity of its customer base, serving tens of thousands of customers with hundreds of thousands of end-users in nearly every vertical market around the world. Founded in 1994, Pervasive sells its products into more than 150 countries and is based in Austin, Texas, with offices in Europe.
For more information
To learn more about Pervasive Software and our solutions, please visit www.pervasive.com. To reach the North American sales office, call 1.800.287.4383, extension 2. For Latin, Central and South America, Australia and New Zealand, call +1.512.231.6000. In Europe, for Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, call +800.12.12.34.34. For any other European, Middle Eastern, African or Asian countries (excluding Japan), call +32.70.23.37.61. For Japan, please call +81.3.3293.5300, or visit www.pervasive.co.jp.
