Record Tech Electronics Chooses Dynamsoft's SourceAnywhere for Document Version Control

SUMMARY

Record Tech Electronics, a provider of electronic sensors for measurement of mechanical quantities, had an established office since 1971. Recently, as the company grew, it started experiencing problems finding key documents when needed. Documents such as source code, product designs and more were spread across up to 50 desktops. Furthermore, any one desktop might have one version of a document while another might have had a new or older version. While the data was centralized to one office, it quickly became a dysfunctional process to finding the right resources when needed. Now, they had opened a new office 175 kilometers south of the main office. With staff starting work at the new location, collaboration and the proper use of the right versions of documents became more difficult. The company had to quickly find a document revision control solution or risk continuing losing time, resources and money wasted on hours each month looking for documents or recreating ones that couldn't be found. It found a cost-effective, simple to use, source control solution in Dynamsoft's SourceAnywhere. The benefits were immediately obvious.

THE COMPANY

Record Tech Electronics is a company operating in the field of measurement of mechanical quantities using electronic sensors. To this end, they supply strain gauges, load cells, pressure cells, LVDTs, position sensors, accelerometers, tilt monitoring and crack monitoring solutions, and more. The company has two locations. One, opened in 1971, is in Roorkee (Uttarakhand), India where 40 employees are based. The second location is recently constructed, located in Ghaziabad, India, around 175 kilometers south of the main location in Roorkee. Approximately five employees have started work at the new location and plans are in place to grow the workforce there. Naturally, inter-office and multi-office collaboration is crucial to both offices. Each location regularly depends on access to project work and documents for source code, product designs, project management, and other general documents such as for training.

www.recordtek.com    (Main office)
www.hillsindia.net     (New office)

THE PROBLEM

The Roorkee location was experiencing growth and as a result was suddenly enduring document management problems that were hindering collaboration and productivity. With the addition of the Ghaziabad location, Record Tech Electronics quickly went from operating with fragmented document systems and resources to a totally decentralized state. The consistency of documents, or their revision number, became even more difficult to track. And, with the new location, seamless access to data and other resources between the two locations has become critical.

The documents in question are vital to running an efficient operation. They include source code for product firmware, product design documents for hardware, general project documents, and other documents used by teams for projects and training. Before the new office, the documents were at least centralized in one office. But, even in this state centralization started to become haphazard as the company grew. Important documents were often spread across different desktops. It started to become difficult to remember which desktop one document might be on. When you start to need to find two year old documents that could be on one of any nearly 50 desktops, it becomes a chore. Sometimes, documents were not found and had to be recreated from scratch. The lack of efficiency needed to be addressed before it began to impact customer service.

Some of the company's executives had previous experience with Microsoft's Visual SourceSafe® (VSS). This is a source control software whereby the application creates a library of computer files. However, the final version of SourceSafe was provided in 2005. So, Record Tech began a search for similar but newer software to try and alleviate their document management problems.

THE SOLUTION

The company didn't want to return to SourceSafe because it was too old and they found it restrictive to use. While doing a web search for SourceSafe, the company came across a few similar tools to SourceSafe but, they were either too expensive or didn't suit all their needs. They also came across open source tools but, their past experience with them proved they were unfavorable or too limited in functionality. A continued search quickly found Dynamsoft and an online demo video of the company's SourceAnywhere product. The demo alone demonstrated all the functionality they needed including the ability to map SourceAnywhere to a prior image Record Tech had of their VSS file. This would help save a lot of time creating the document library.

Dynamsoft's SourceAnywhere was an instant hit. It looked similar to but more modern than VSS. It also quickly proved easy to use. In addition, while getting SourceAnywhere up and running, Record Tech found Dynamsoft's support and sales team to be very responsive and attentive to all the company's needs. It also helps that, based on previous experience with SourceSafe, Record Tech estimates SourceAnywhere runs 10 times faster.

SourceAnywhere is a source control solution by Dynamsoft specifically designed as a VSS replacement. Using Microsoft SQL Server as the backend, it is a simple yet robust version control and document management tool that satisfies the needs of both local and remote teams. It's provided as an on-premise or hosted solution.

It features enhanced 128-bit SSL and Blowfish encryption for data transfers and storage. It boasts a unique caching mechanism to significantly improve remote connection speeds and compression for data transfers and storage. It's also provided as a Java client and Windows client. This enables server access from any platforms supporting Standard Widget Toolkit (SWT), such as Linux, Mac, Solaris, etc.

THE BENEFITS

Record Tech started with a single license for SourceAnywhere and plans to expand licensing as needed. The migration to using SourceAnywhere started with legacy documents – adding them into a central server. Then current projects were migrated onto the server for SourceAnywhere to keep track of it all. Improvements in efficiency were instantly apparent. Right away, one of those nagging searches for a document that used to take an hour or more to find worked like a charm. Record Tech immediately located a correct revision of a schematic for a PCB fabricator they use. The fabricator had an older version of the schematic which was not to be used. Not having to redevelop schematics or other such documents saves the company time and money.

Record Tech has realized a significant number of man hours saved. Previously, executives wasted many hours each month either searching for correct documents or having to recreate them. Now, such scenarios are gone. This is especially critical given the new second location. Without SourceAnywhere, the inefficiency would have extended to that location and to a lack of productive collaboration between both locations. With SourceAnywhere both locations easily collaborate and find appropriate resources when they need it, no matter what office staff might be in.

QUOTE

"Having been a developer myself for many years I really appreciate tools like SourceAnywhere," said Abhinav Kumar, Head of Sales and Marketing. "It's especially helpful when tools like this are so simple and easy to implement and use. I rate SourceAnywhere very highly because it quickly and significantly contributed to our productivity and efficiency."