The ICommander Accounting Application systems are extremely flexible in their
ability to be adapted to the characteristics of various industries and to user
preferences in many areas. We like to believe that our flexibility enables us
to adapt to at least 90 percent of the specific needs of customers.
The last 10 percent are those needs that are completely unique and require custom programs or modifications to accommodate. Custom programs can be risky when developed outside of the context of the overall system. ICommander has purposely designed the ICommander Menu, Control, and Security System to be able to accommodate custom extensions within the context of the overall system.
When a custom program needs to be substituted for a standard program, such as a check printing program that will print signatures, ICommander provides a facility that does exactly that. The custom program is setup as a replacement only for the particular customer involved and is then automatically substituted for the standard program when that customer accesses the menu choice involved.
When a custom need involves several programs that need to function as an extension of part of an existing ICommander System, customer-specific menus are easily setup to accommodate that need. Examples of this often involve importing data from various sources, such as meter readers, hand-held devices, cleared check files from a bank, purchase card transactions, and so on.
There may also be cases where a completely new custom system is needed with or without interplay with one or more existing ICommander Application Systems. If such a new system may be useful to other customers with some modifications, we discuss that intent with the customer who is paying for the development. If the customer is willing to let us adapt the new system for other uses later on, we will design the new system with the necessary flexibilty to enable that. Some systems that are now part of the ICommander packages started out that way. Any such system will always work the best for the customer that drove its development but the building block approach used in ICommander System Development enables structuring even a custom system to be adaptable. That adaptability often proves valuable to the customer who paid for the initial development as their own needs change over time. Instead of additional costs for new flexibilty, we can often just vary some options to accommodate the customer's new needs.
In all cases the custom software becomes part of the overall ICommander software that is supported and tracked by ICommander Corporation. Custom programs are only updated to the customer sites to which they apply but all are tracked on our development server. ICommander System Control provides several facilities to track all customer-specific programs in place and to maintain them just like we do the general programs.
One-time use custom programs are also developed. ICommander also provides a facility that lets us track all of these and to make available to the menu system in a "hidden" way. A frequent need for such programs is when ICommander is implemented and it is necessary to convert various master, data, and history files from the current system. The conversion programs invariably need to be custom due to the wide range of formats of source files for doing the conversion and the differences in fields stored by the current system versus ICommander.
Some systems have the ability to extract data subject to conversion to ASCII files of one form or another that MAY simplify the process. In other cases we have redirected reports from an existing system into files and then have developed programs that are able to parse the reports to extract the data needed. It is not unusual to find that there is no single source from the existing system that will dependably pull together all information needed.
ICommander Implementation Staff will review the feasibility of electronic conversion of existing data with you after exploring what the present software can make available. Usually we can find a way to do the conversion electronically but it can get expensive. If the cost of our building the conversion programs is not justified, either more time will be required to key in the information or you may elect to proceed without bringing some historical data into ICommander.
We have accumulated several examples of conversion programs that now help to make the process more efficient but there is no magic solution that does not involve some costs. We have designed ICommander to be your PERMANENT accounting software so you will not need to undergo the time and expense of another conversion in a few years. Should you ever decide to switch away from ICommander, you would find that our Free-Form Data Extraction programs will result in electronic conversion to another system being a relative piece of cake. All master file, data, and history file information is easily extracted to ASCII files that greatly simplify conversion program development.
It is also not unusual that requests from customers for new features will become
a part of the general ICommander Application Systems instead of being developed
as custom programs for the customer requesting. ICommander Corporation believes
that this approach benefits all of our customers. We are continuously adding
new features to ICommander but when a particular customer is willing to pay for
development of new capabilities, they get top priority. As with custom systems
that evolve into standard systems, the customer driving the development of the
requested new features will most immediately and directly benefit from them.
The accumulation and adaptation of such features for other customers over time
continues to extend the power of ICommander for both existing and future
customers.