How do you keep an extended family together?
How do you ensure that the knowledge and spirit of a community
propagates through generations? An Indian community with
a long history of leadership, courage and philanthropy
found the answer - a Community website-portal that would
ensure the longevity of not-to-be-forgotten.
About Client
Our Client is a community Trust. It has been running schools,
hostels, old age homes, hotels and orphanages since 1990s.
The Trust is engaged in promoting heritage tourism, placing,
counseling services, matrimonial services, sponsoring
events, funding student scholarships and providing financial
assistance to the widows and the needy. The Trust maintains
a genealogy of over 250,000 people.
The Need
With time and growing member population, it became difficult
for the Trust to manage and run operations. The need for
an electronic solution was felt, that would manage information
with efficiency. Besides, it was realized that such a
platform might be enhanced for enabling convenience of
communication ad interaction within the community. What
evolved was building a community portal that would:
- Bring community members from world over on a common
platform
- Propagate community tradition and culture across generations
- Communicate the facilities and offerings of the Trust
from a single broadcast-point
- Offer an e-commerce platform for small business units
Solution
Net4India was awarded the consulting and implementation
work for "internet enabling" the concept. Based
on the understanding of the Terms of Reference, the project
managers designed the database structure; broke-down the
project into phases and then into modules and finally
awarded assignments to the project leaders and the team
units. Each module of development was tested and documented
in concurrence with their completion. The project entailed
"active involvement" of Net4India in business-logic
complementing. It was ensured that "concept drove
the technology" rather than "technology dictating
the concept". Specifically, challenge was to define
a homogenous data structure that would cater to a heterogeneous
community performing complex cross-functional operations.
The projects teams of Net4India at Delhi and Hyderabad
were assigned the responsibility of implementation.
A combination of programming languages was utilized to
harness their best offerings. At the same smooth transition
of data and sessions across them were ensured. The software
was built on a Microsoft Windows platform using a combination
of Java and ASP running an Microsoft SQL 7.0 database.
Advantage!
Today, the Trust's website receives hundreds of visitors.
Some members in promoting businesses and services actively
use the platform. These businesses are now able to manage
and update their own content. One of the most popular
section on the portal is the family-tree (genealogy map),
where members may trace lineage - or add to them through
a few simple clicks. The final solution is equally friendly
to administrators as it is to the visiting members.
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