At the other end of the channel, service delivery has been completely automated. In Inspectech’s case, the delivery of service is through a comprehensive Home Inspection Report that was traditionally posted to the customer and various intermediaries. This process of getting a home inspection done and getting the final report typically took 6-8 days.

Iqura has completely automated the service delivery of Inspectech by creating systems for delivering the report directly on the Inspectech website. This is achieved through a complex enterprise-wide application that Iqura developed for Inspectech. Inspectech’s current information systems generated a home inspection report through Seagate’s Crystal Reports that was printed out and mailed to the customer, prospective buyer, the home inspector and the real estate agents involved.

The first component that Iqura created is a real-time 24x7 engine that automatically converts each new Home Inspection Report (as and when it is created by the existing system using Crystal Reports) into a PDF (Portable Document Format) document that can be delivered electronically. A second engine constantly monitors new PDF document reports and delivers them via FTP to the remote web server hosting the Inspectech.com website and creating the necessary linkages between the website and the report.

During this process, a component sends e-mails to the various entities (prospective buyer, seller, home inspector, real estate agents) informing them that their report has become available and a URL where it can be accessed. An account is automatically created for the home inspection report. On the website, customers only need to login with the unique ID provided to them and view/print their report. In this manner, Inspectech now is in a position to deliver its service offering completely online in a time span of a few hours after the actual home inspection.

The E-delivery system successfully integrates the different technologies and bridges the new web technologies with Inspectech’s existing legacy IS systems. These include a Sybase Enterprise Server database, Crystal Reports, ActivePDF, FTP and scheduling functions, Visual Basic components, ASP pages, etc.

Besides developing the applications themselves, Iqura has defined the specifications, developed the strategies for implementation, advised Inspectech on moving their systems to the Internet, hosting and server configurations and we continue to manage their servers and systems.