Microsoft Windows Server System
Customer Solution Case Study
Online Treasury Tool Helps Microsoft Improve
Efficiency and User Satisfaction While Saving
Money
Overview
Country or Region: United States
Industry: Information Technology
Customer Profile
The Administration IT Treasury Product
Group (EAS-TPG) is responsible for
supporting and maintaining the information
systems used to manage the Microsoft
Treasury Department investment portfolio of
approximately $50 billion and the Microsoft
Accounts receivable business group.
Business Situation
The EAS-TPG of Microsoft IT wanted to
improve the efficiency of its business
processes, enhance the satisfaction of
internal users using financial tools, and save
costs.
Solution Description
The EAS-TPG used smart client technology to
develop a new accounts-receivable
collection tool called MS Collect.
Benefits
 Consolidation of databases
 Savings of over US $3.5 million in
collection of past-due accounts and
automation of activities
 Automation of Activities reduces
manpower requirement
 Faster report turnaround time
 User Independent
 Secure access to application
 Rapid application development
“The use of smart client technology significantly
reduces the effort needed to deploy an application,
either globally or to a managed desktop environment.
This allows us to get products out to our customers
faster while reducing costs.”
Tony Kent, Group Program Manager, EAS-TPG Group, Microsoft Corporation
The Administration IT Treasury Product Group (EAS-TPG), a part of
Microsoft IT, used smart client technology to develop key tools to support
internal treasury operations. The group built a unified collection tool, MS
Collect, that both third-party collectors and Microsoft account managers
can use to manage the collection process.
Using the Microsoft® .NET Framework and smart client architecture for
the accounts-receivable collection tool with Windows® Forms provided
intuitive, full-featured interfaces. Web services provide security for stored
data to enable the distribution of the tools outside the Microsoft corporate
firewall. The dual benefit of fast deployment and high functionality made
smart clients a more viable option.
MS Collect has helped the EAS-TPG improve the efficiency of its business
processes and save costs. The automation has saved about U.S.$1.5
million in collection of past-due accounts and about U.S.$2 million in
manual labor.
Situation
Award
The MS Collect solution won the
Alexander Hamilton Award in
Technology in 2005
The Administration IT Treasury Product Group
(EAS-TPG) is responsible for supporting and
maintaining the information systems used to
manage the Microsoft Treasury Department
investment portfolio of approximately $50
billion and the Microsoft Accounts receivable
business group.
The application portfolio managed by the
EAS-TPG consists of over 40 applications that
integrate Microsoft® and third-party solution
architectures. The team is based in
Redmond, Washington, in the United States
and Hyderabad in India, with a world wide
customer base.
The Administration IT Treasury Product Group
of the Microsoft Information Technology
(Microsoft IT) group implements IT solutions
that promote process efficiency and
automation, continuous improvement in user
satisfaction, and tangible business benefits.
The group faced three key challenges. The
first was making full featured applications
available to users outside the corporate
firewall. Security guidelines had to be met.
The second challenge was a smooth upgrade
to the new applications. The EAS-TPG team
wanted to ensure that new applications did
not disrupt the day-to-day activities on the
older applications.
The third and final challenge was to deliver
new applications with a familiar look and feel,
so that retraining was not required.
Before 2004, the accounts-receivable
collection tool was a third-party distributed
application that ran on 12 different
databases. The tool was connected directly to
the databases. The EAS-TPG could not
distribute the application to collection
vendors because they were located outside
the Microsoft corporate firewall. Therefore,
the vendors were unable to access the server
resources across the Internet because of
non-compliance with security guidelines.
Reporting was difficult using the collection
tool, as it had a distributed nature because of
the differing structures of the data and
databases. Manual intervention of managers
and other users was required often to collate
all data into a single report.
Thirdly, the architecture of the tool required
significant effort in regression testing to
ensure compatibility with various computer
configurations and parallel application suites.
Each time a new application is created or a
new feature is added, the entire application
had to be thoroughly tested, as it could cause
problems with other applications or servers.
The impact of one application interfering with
another is significant as it can result in an
inability to process transactions. The usual
solution to this problem is exhaustive and
costly compatibility testing. However,
because the .NET Framework supports
multiple versions of the same component on
a system, using the .NET Framework enabled
the EAS-TPG to significantly reduce
compatibility testing costs.
The Microsoft EAS-TPG wanted to create a
standard collection process to ensure
consistency and control across the entire life
cycle of receivables.
The EAS-TPG wanted end-to-end visibility of
billing disputes and issues. The tool could not
retain the history of events made on behalf of
customer accounts. The majority of
communication occurred through e-mail and
was not visible in the collection tool. Also, the
EAS-TPG wanted a tool that could be
continuous improved upon to bring efficiency
improvements through process automation.
Solution
The EAS-TPG used a smart client application
to solve the problem of limited visibility and
control of its accounts-receivable collection
process when using vendors.
Microsoft account managers can use to
manage the collection process.
Smart client technology was chosen because
it extends user interface features at par with
thick client applications. It makes application
deployments easier through extended copy
(xCopy command). Smart clients
automatically update themselves by
detecting version changes and downloading
the latest versions.
The architecture of MS Collect uses a threetier architecture that segments the
applications into distinct components and
uses Web services for communication:
In addition, smart clients can execute
different versions of the similar shared
components in parallel, thereby eliminating
version incompatibilities that arise from
component upgrades.

The presentation tier consists of the
client interface (Windows® Forms) that has a
familiar column-and-row appearance.
Windows Forms and Web services in
Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1
provide flexibility and easy access to internal
and external collection teams. It allows
Microsoft to keep pace with the changing
business environment.
In addition, smart clients can optimize local
resources available on the desktop (in both
hardware and software) and on local devices
such as barcode readers to provide complex
business functionality that typical thin clients
cannot offer.
“The use of smart client technology
significantly reduces the effort needed to
deploy an application, either globally or to a
managed desktop environment. This allows
us to get products out to our customers faster
while reducing costs,” explains Tony Kent,
Group Program Manager, EAS-TPG, Microsoft
Corporation.

The middle tier consists of the Web
service data access layer, running on Internet
Information Services (IIS) version 6.0.

The data tier consists MS Collect
database tables and procedures running on
Microsoft SQL Server™ 2000 and SAP
running on the beta version of Microsoft
SQL Server 2005. It consolidates the 12
databases from the previous application into
a single database to meet the requirements
of 11 different lines of business across 109
countries.
Microsoft .NET software supports multiple
languages, and MS Collect was going to be
used in many countries. This fact and the fact
that it integrates with Microsoft
Visual Basic® .NET development system—a
development language the MS Collect
development team in the EAS-TPG was quite
familiar with—made a .NET solution an easy
choice for increasing productivity and
reducing development time.
Solution Architecture
The group built a unified collection tool called
MS Collect that both third-party collectors and
Deployment
MS Collect has been deployed successfully
with more than 250 global users within and
outside the Microsoft corporate network—
including two vendor organizations that use
non-Microsoft technology on their computer
networks.
Microsoft partnered with Wipro Technologies
for the development and deployment of the
smart client solution for MS Collect. Microsoft
and Wipro worked collaboratively to allocate
activities (analysis, deliverable review,
prototyping, testing, and related efforts)
between their locations―Redmond,
Washington, for Microsoft and Hyderabad in
India for Wipro. The two companies also took
advantage of the time difference between the
two locations to work on the projects
continuously, reducing overall development
costs and shortening the delivery cycle. For
instance, the Microsoft team would test in the
morning what the Wipro team developed
during the night.
The project personnel used formal and
informal communication mechanisms
throughout the project life cycle to stay
aligned with business priorities and
constraints.
The core features of the application were
delivered in early 2004, nine months from
the start of work on MS Collect. Quarterly
releases continue to provide incremental
functionality.
Benefits
MS Collect has enabled an end-to-end
collection process management—from credit
scoring to dispute tracking.
Consolidation of Databases
MS Collect consolidated 12 collection
databases into a single database. Supporting
collection activities on a single database
provides easy data flow and consistency
across regions, in addition to avoiding the
need to support multiple databases.
Cost Savings
Using the .NET Framework and smart client
architecture for the accounts-receivable
collection tool has helped the EAS-TPG
improve the efficiency of its business
processes and save costs. For MS Collect
alone, automation has saved about $1.5
million in collection of past-due accounts and
about $2 million in manual labor.
Increased daily customer contacts and
expedited dispute resolution have led to
better collections. Worldwide collection on
past-due accounts has saved Microsoft
U.S.$1,474,000 as of this writing by reducing
average collection time from 45 days to 43
days. Overall accounts receivable increased
from U.S.$3.679 billion in April 2003 to
$4.484 billion in April 2004.
Automation of Activities Saves Manpower
Each month, the Microsoft retail line of
business faces more than 100,000
deductions. This amount is deducted by
retailers from the payments they owe to
Microsoft because of various factors such as
damaged products and incomplete
shipments worldwide. Each deduction needs
to be matched and cleared by the correct
credit memos and/or validated back to the
customer for issuance of payment. The
automated functionality in MS Collect avoids
the need to employ a minimum of 15 people
to manage the process manually, saving
approximately $1.9 million per year.
MS Collect also has features such as
automated e-mail notifications for contacting
groups or individuals who can validate or
resolve disputes, automated paymentrequest letters in the customers’ languages,
the option to configure views on all of the
screens and set priorities and create
customer groups.
Faster Report Turnaround Time
Smart clients enable users to search, sort,
and manipulate data in real time without the
need for development resources to create
every customization. For instance, turnaround
time for reports has decreased from three
weeks to just a few minutes.
User Independent
MS Collect includes e-mail functionality that
captures the entire history of the collection
process for each customer. This feature,
makes moving or temporarily assigning
accounts to different collectors easy.
Rapid Application Development
Smart client applications developed through
the .NET Framework can be prototyped and
deployed much faster than thin client
applications that have an equivalent
functionality. Smart clients developed using
.NET can be deployed through Web browsers,
whereas traditional thin client applications
have to be deployed by literally sending .exe
files to each user’s computer. Also,
prototypes can be developed quicker
because of the various controls and APIs
available in .NET
Security
Web services provide security for stored data
to enable the distribution of the tools outside
the Microsoft corporate firewall.
Future Plans
The group plans on developing a reporting
module for MS Collect using the beta edition
of Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Reporting
Services; this project is currently underway
and is scheduled for deployment in August
2005.
For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products
and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information
Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the
Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877)
568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-ofhearing can reach Microsoft text telephone
(TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the
United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada.
Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please
contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access
information using the World Wide Web, go to:
www.microsoft.com
For more information about Wipro Technologies
products and services, visit the website at:
www.wipro.com
About Microsoft Windows
Server System
Microsoft Windows Server System™ is a
comprehensive, integrated, and interoperable
server infrastructure that helps reduce the
complexity and costs of building, deploying,
connecting, and operating agile business
solutions. Windows Server System helps
customers create new value for their
business through the strategic use of their IT
assets. With the Windows Server operating
system as its foundation, Windows Server
System delivers dependable infrastructure for
data management and analysis; enterprise
integration; customer, partner, and employee
portals; business process automation;
communications and collaboration; and core
IT operations including security, deployment,
and system management. For more
information about Windows Server System,
go to:
www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem
Software
© 2005 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO
WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.
Microsoft, SharePoint, Visual Basic, Windows, the Windows logo, Windows
Server, and Windows Server System are either registered trademarks or
trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other
countries. All other trademarks are property of their respective owners.
Document published March 2005
Technologies
- Windows Server System
− Web services
− Windows Server 2003
− Windows Forms
− Internet Information Server version 6.0
− SQL Server 2000
− The beta edition of SQL Server 2005
Hardware
− Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1 Proliant DL580 server running Windows
Server 2003 Datacenter Edition and SQL
Server 2000:
− 4 x Intel Zeon 2-GHz processors
− 15 GB RAM
HP Proliant DL580 running Windows Server
2003 Datacenter Edition and Internet
Information Server:
- 4 x Intel Zeon 700-Mhz processors
-3.75 GB RAM