"Visual WebGui is second to none when it comes to deployment… the development experience is fast and enjoyable compared to the WYSINWYG (What you see is NOT what you get) in .aspx pages"

Overview
LearningRx learning centers provide cognitive skills' training that empowers anyone of any age to learn faster and easier. Tutoring and other programs reinforce what students must learn. LearningRx learning centers identify and strengthen the skills behind how students learn by providing testing and life-changing training for students of all ages who desire to learn and read better for life.

Learning centers are franchises that use the LearningRx HUB application to run their franchise. The application allows those learning center to track & manage client, students, sessions and test scores.

Business needs
The former solution was an ASP.net DNN application and was required to be updated since the database and functionality provided did not meet the needs anymore, due to the company growth. The growing number of learning centers needed this application to run their franchise.  Without the HUB, tracking clients, students and test scores was nearly impossible and it was needed to provide franchisees with a better way to manage clients and contacts and scheduled appointments.

As a result, it was decided to develop an enhanced solution for those 70+ franchisees which would provide more efficient processes, quicker response time and more accurate reporting. The application must be web based, allow multi-user access and at the same time fast and secure. It needed to allow multiple windows to be open at any given time and still have those windows tied back to the application. For example, a client could be in the office at the same time a lead calls in.

Learning centers can be very busy and the application which needs to handle student testing, center finances, scheduling, and contact/client tracking had to stand up to these tasks. Therefore, multitasking was very important without compromising on performance and a familiar windows-like environment which does not require getting used to.

In addition, it was important that the development time would be quick and that it could be done with only 3 developers on a nearly 0 budget.

The Solution
Visual WebGui provided the platform to build the new HUB application.  Visual WebGui allowed the team members which were Windows developers to jump right in with almost no learning curve due to a visual drag & drop designer that is similar to WinForms. "We know the business, and with Visual WebGui were able to get the solution completed in short time window," said Daniel Bardi and added "Other platforms take longer to develop and are not nearly as robust as the Visual WebGui solution."

The benefits trickle down from developer to end-user experience.  The design time and runtime GUI is so intuitive and similar to windows that the learning curve is almost not there. "This helped our development process move much faster and also helps us with training new users in the system," said Daniel Bardi and commented that "The Visual WebGui development experience is fast and enjoyable compared to the WYSINWYG (What you see is NOT what you get) in .aspx pages."

Since VWG runs on the server, state management is no longer an issue and the new application can handle multitasking that other web applications didn’t measure up to. It is also "second to none when it comes to deployment. Copying a few assemblies (dll) and some resource images was all that was needed."

Benefits
Using Visual WebGui as the platform for the HUB application provided the team's Windows developers with an intuitive, familiar environment that included Visual WebGui's innovative visual drag & drop designer (windows like environment). This meant that it allowed converting Windows application to Web with almost no learning curve which resulted in the completion of the complex project with limited amount of developers while cutting in half the entire project duration.

In addition, Visual WebGui allowed creating with minimal efforts a user interface that is intuitive, familiar, responsive and secure to the end users. The unique 'Empty Client' architecture of Visual WebGui means that the application is secure by design and that there were no additional design efforts required in order to provide it the exact same look in both IE and Firefox. It also means that the deployment process is super easy and fast.

As a result, developing the new HUB web application with Visual WebGui saved more than $100,000 while allowing centers to run more efficiently with the much improved user interface that the customer experiences.

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