Customization without the Complexity: Roundtable® TSMS Helps BDM Tailor Solutions to Meet Customer Needs

A leading provider of pharmacy software, BDM IT Solutions uses Roundtable TSMS to manage approximately 50 unique combinations of their application.

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As one of the leading providers of pharmacy software to acute-care facilities throughout Canada and the United States, BDM IT Solutions is continually adding new features to help their customers not only manage their medication inventory more effectively but also improve the quality of care they provide.

“Essentially, we develop pharmacy systems for large hospitals,” explains Gerald Meachem, BDM’s senior software analyst. “It’s more of an inventory control system, but it also tracks administration, as well as who gets what medication at what time, and we also interface with other machines that handle drug dispensing or tablet counting.”

With approximately 50 facilities operating on unique combinations of their code, the Saskatoon-based company uses Roundtable® Total Software Management System® (TSMS) to manage each client-specific customization as well as the base version of their software. BDM distributes frequent updates to their customer base, including new features or bug fixes. These changes are then rolled back into the baseline that becomes the next version of their software.

“We’ve found Roundtable TSMS to be flexible enough to help us support such a unique workflow,” Meachem says. “From development to deployment, Roundtable is an integral part of our operation.”

In 1993, BDM’s IT division was a small group operating with very little source-code control when they began using Progress® Software. When they started rewriting their system and developing their Windows application, BDM’s team realized that a paper-based system or email communication to keep track of such projects was increasingly archaic and ineffective.

BDM eventually implemented an early version of Roundtable to use within Progress and quickly improved how the company tracked code, according to Meachem.

“One of the biggest benefits of Roundtable is that it enables us to see who’s working on a specific object at a specific time without stepping on each other’s toes, preventing us from modifying the same files. With Roundtable, we can have a person working on a specific function, and it will group all their changes together, so we can document it all on that task and track it into our development system.”

Over the years, Roundtable TSMS has evolved with Progress OpenEdge® into a comprehensive configuration database management system for BDM.

“Roundtable’s cross-reference functionality enables us to see where an object is used in the application and what other objects are using a specific object,” Meachem says. “We make use of that a lot. And Roundtable’s schema manager provides us with an easy way to manage the schema, rather than using some of the tools built into Progress OpenEdge.”

As BDM prepares to further enhance its offerings to meet the ever-changing needs of their customers, including mobile development of its software, Roundtable TSMS will remain instrumental in the process, says Meachem, who’s been with the company for 20 years.

“I oversee how we deploy our software and get it to our customers, but I’m still a developer—I’m still in there coding. I’m actively using the system, and I can say that Roundtable is critical to how we do things every day.”

For more information about Roundtable TSMS, Software Configuration Management for Progress OpenEdge development, contact Roundtable sales or visit www.roundtable-software.com.

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