We recently helped a customer interface with their third-party performance management software and created a JEE-based store reporting application. The store performance software was developed by RedPrairie and uses several protocols in its interfaces, including SOAP calls, straight XML or HTTP, and CSV-based file posts. The integration will allow our customer to manage the communication to the Web application, without the need for external programming resources.

The store reporting application is a Struts-based Web application that uses a generic table-based JSP file, a Java interface, and a few abstract Java classes to quickly create commonly-formatted reports. The reports can summarize the data based on the organizational structure of the company. This allows store management to view statistical data at any level of the organization.

In the third quarter of 2008, we were asked by Group Transportation Services, a logistics company that specializes in LTL shipments, to automate one of their existing order entry procedures. They regularly receive orders from a few of their customers via email. The emails contain an attachment that is received and processed internally through their order entry system. After processing, an acknowledgement email is sent back to the customer. The processing time for this workflow was generally two to three days, due to the human interaction that was required. We automated this process using Mule ESB and reduced the time to less than ten seconds.