Post Office

Case Study

Post Office

PACE developed, and has since supported, the system responsible for the forecasting and day to day recording of all cash movements between the Post Office main cash centres throughout the uk. These figures are reported to the Bank of England from each major centre twice daily. The sum of cash holding (up to £2billion each day) is used by the Bank of England to determine what monies Post Office can use for their overnight Far Eastern market trading. PACE provide a 10 minute response and 30 minute resolution to all critical calls logged. We are closely managed by Post Office, and have a 100% success rate in resolving all issues.

There has been a very professional relationship between the Post Office and PACE over the years, and where support and advice has been required, PACE has never let us down. PACE has always achieved all that has been required of them, and have continuously exceeded the scope of our support contracts to ensure we receive the high level of service we have become accustomed to.

Andrew Ashall

Software

Key components:

  • Visual Basic
  • Access
  • Crystal Reports

The Cash Forecasting System has been used by over 50 sites.

The cash centres were setup in a hierarchical model, so the reporting of figures would need to filter from the basic cash centres, through to a regional office, then finally up to the main head office on a twice daily basis.

Each site already had PCs running Windows, so it was decided that a Windows application would be developed. The transfer of data would be made via a telephone line, therefore the application would need to integrate with a modem. For these reasons the Visual Basic programming language was chosen, as it offered extensive controls for this type of functionality. To keep the development consistent, another Microsoft product was chosen for the database - MS Access.

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Support

8:30am - 5:30pm, Monday - Friday

The following support call levels were used:

  • Critical: call must be responded to within 10 minutes and a permanent fix within 30 minutes.
  • Non-Critical: call must be responded to within four hours, a workaround provided within one day and a permanent fix within two days.
  • Non-Urgent: call will be acknowledged within one day, a workaround (if required) provided within five days and a permanent fix implemented in the next release of the software.

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