THE CHALLENGE: Update a broken legacy system and make it more flexible for the future.

Things that should have been easy to fix ended up being very difficult. The data-base structure of our legacy system was really poorly designed, which led to a very fragile environment, and there was no past documentation. Our business needs were changing and the company was growing rapidly, so these were serious problems.

We had been talking with another consulting group, but we got the feeling our project was “not a fit” for them. Then one of our guys heard a Headspring employee speak at a .NET User Group. We looked up the company, and we gave them a call. I liked that there would be a whole team at Headspring that could work on our project, not just one or two people

Headspring helped me grab hold of the issues so I could do the work myself. They did an architecture review and looked through all the existing code and user interface. We were able to evaluate the system, prioritize problems, and come up with a game plan for fixing them. Then, as I worked through the recommendations, Headspring was there to provide advice and training to make sure I was changing or adding code in the best way.

Headspring got me up to date on new technologies, tools and processes. Now, I can build features out a lot more quickly and with fewer bugs. Before, when customers would query the database, the search would frequently time out and produce and error. Now, customers get results almost instantly. As a result, complaints about the site’s performance have disappeared.

And the faulty business logic on our legacy system has been resolved. We had automated jobs running nightly to process data and if it threw one exception (for example, if an email sent to a customer bounced back), it would stall the rest of the process until I arrived in the morning to correct it. With Headspring the issue has been completely resolved.

I’d say they’re my trusted advisors. I could get most things done on my own, but Headspring offers guidance and expertise to make sure it is done the best way. They’re problem solvers.