One of Europe’s leading business software suppliers, Mark information uses Roundtable TSMS to satisfy the demands of its customer base while also expanding its application into other markets to generate new revenue streams.
With more than 1,000 installations and 300,000 users worldwide, Mark Information A/S enables companies across a broad range of industries to optimize productivity, resources, and savings through its innovative ProMark Workforce Management software.
Internally, at its Copenhagen-area office in Denmark, Mark Information relies on Roundtable® Total Software Management System® (TSMS) to enhance its own efficiency, specifically, the collaboration between its developers and programmers within Progress® OpenEdge® as they design, configure, and integrate their business solutions software.
Mark Information implemented Roundtable TSMS in February 1996; today, the European software supplier is one of Roundtable’s longest-running clients.
“Roundtable is a valuable tool that helps us function on a day-to-day basis,” says Bo Haslund, system architect for Mark Information A/S. “Along with the Progress [OpenEdge] platform, it’s an important part of our software development process.”
Initially, Mark Information utilized Roundtable primarily for soft coding. Nowadays, nearly all their code is managed with Roundtable as the TSMS software has continually evolved with Progress OpenEdge to meet Mark Information’s needs – all while their initial setup of the solution from 1996 has remained virtually unchanged.
“From our perspective, one of the most valuable aspects of Roundtable is the way it groups things together in a task,” says Haslund, who’s been with Mark Information for almost 25 years. “With more sources, you have more problems, but with Roundtable, I always find my way back quickly to a task.”
Mark Information also utilizes Roundtable TSMS internally to keep track of who changed what code, when, and why, helping to ensure quality control.
“Roundtable provides us with an excellent overview of our code base,” Haslund says. “If there’s a problem, Roundtable allows us to go back to find it and correct it very easily. As a genetic overview of our source code, Roundtable is a very efficient way of deploying our application because it tracks the source and all the files included in the system, helping us to maintain a high level of quality.”
Using Roundtable and Progress OpenEdge technology, the company has continued to modernize its ProMark application to satisfy their customers’ ever-changing demands of doing business, including a mobile solution and more intuitive interfaces, helping Mark Information to expand into other markets and generate new revenue streams.
“When we started with Roundtable years ago, it was difficult at first because it required us to follow rules in regard to changing code,” Haslund explains. “But it has been an investment that’s made us more productive over time. As we continue to work within Progress, Roundtable effectively keeps track of our code and enables us to control the different versions at each stage.”
In addition to version control, Roundtable TSMS streamlines task management, impact analysis, smart compilation, release control, and schema management.
“What began as simply an efficient way of using the Progress platform has transitioned into software that’s an important part of what we do every day. Without a doubt, Roundtable is the best system for working with Progress because it’s so integrated into the process.”
17 years later, the longstanding history between Roundtable TSMS and Mark Information is evidently clear. Haslund reports, “We completed our 10,000th Roundtable task in March 2013. We are now at 10,060 tasks…and counting.”
For more information about Roundtable TSMS, Software Configuration Management for Progress OpenEdge development, contact Roundtable sales or visit www.roundtable-software.com.
