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Transition provides timely help for DRS
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Many businesses can benefit by outsourcing specific IT needs to a specialist company, saving time, trouble and money -
particularly during periods of peak demand. One such company is DRS Data Services Limited, which recently supplemented
its team with expert help from Milton Keynes-based Transition Computing.
DRS is a world leader in the provision of data capture technologies and solutions for large volume, mission critical and
complex projects - such as examination processing and marking, census projects, election counts, voter registration and
large or complex survey work.
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Responding to unpredictable demands
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DRS' Software Development team is headed by Roger Kingston, and includes 15 Developers, six Quality Control Testers, a
Business Analyst and an Administrator. The team plays an integral part in supporting the software development element
of the wide variety of tailored data capture projects that DRS undertakes for its customers. It is kept very busy with
new and innovative applications.
Having been approached by a customer to undertake a data capture project involving a web application, DRS needed to expand
its capacity in this unpredictable area. The company therefore decided to outsource this element of the job to a specialist
developer of robust web applications. It looked for a company that would be flexible to work with; would be available when
needed; would provide PRINCE 2 project management; and was willing to work within the department's Agile methodology. DRS
settled on local company, Transition Computing, which has extensive experience and expertise in web applications.
Roger Kingston comments: "Transition seemed to be the best and most methodical of the candidates we reviewed. Initially,
we decided to run a trial project in which Transition was asked to provide a web interface so that our customer's employees
could search for, retrieve and display images of form-based applications. These had been derived from our own imaging
technology, designed and manufactured here in Milton Keynes and stored on our SQL Server database."
The application that Transition developed was to help support school administration, enabling schools and universities to
review scanned forms easily and quickly. Transition's Managing Director, David Gibson, remarks: "We worked in close partnership
with DRS. We are fully committed to their objectives, and therefore gave Roger as much flexibility and control over our team as
he has over his own."
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Becoming part of the workforce
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Roger Kingston responds: "Working with Transition enabled us to effectively extend our workforce overnight, and allowed us to
provide the extra capacity exactly when it was needed. We set out to establish an external resource that would help us to cope
with the peaks in our workload, and we feel that this has now been achieved.
He adds: "The trial was a success, and the team from Transition are always pleasant and straightforward in their dealings. We
have no problems about working with them again in the future."
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