IBM® Rational® Host Access Transformation Services for 5250 Applications (HATS for 5250) delivers tools to help you build integrated Web applications from existing terminal applications, thereby making your end users more productive and less error-prone. Because HATS creates a standard Web application, the only client software necessary for accessing the application is a standard Web browser. Access through a Web browser allows extension of all or selected functions of the green-screen applications to intranet, extranet, and Internet users.
The next release of HATS will support mobile device clients, too. After modernizing your existing applications with HATS, you can give your mobile service engineers access to your main, easy-to-use applications with the new mobile device support, thus providing them with real-time information that will alleviate errors and increase customer satisfaction. This article explains how HATS can help streamline your services business.
Service businesses typically have many different applications that track many different types of information, including inventory, service calls scheduled, billing status, customer account history, and previous calls. Businesses that involve field service, such as cable companies, appliance and office machine repair and installation shops, and alarm or phone installation, have their service engineers traveling all across the city on multiple calls each day. These service engineers need easy access to all types of information that is most often already entered into a system at the home office.
First, the applications need to be easy to use and understand. Companies typically have a large investment in their customer support applications and the systems that depend on them. These applications are generally tailored to the business and have been developed over many years. Companies value the functional capabilities that are built into those applications and have invested time, effort, and resources in fine-tuning these applications and the infrastructure that they operate in to achieve a high level of reliability and dependability. However, they are often built on old, obsolete interfaces. Rewriting or replacing these applications can be expensive and, perhaps, cost-prohibitive. Also, rewriting an existing application often increases risk in terms of stability, reliability, and dependability.
The key to improving the overall productivity of customer support and service operations and, therefore, increasing customer satisfaction, is to simplify and extend the user interfaces to existing applications upon which the service engineers depend. User interface improvement can also result in cost savings in terms of reduced average service times, training time, and employee turnover. Most companies don't have the funds or time to create that interface or rewrite those applications. But, if they don't, they may lose customers and service engineers.
IBM Rational Host Access Transformation Services (HATS) has helped many companies with these problems. With HATS, you can transform the support and service user experience without changing the underlying and reliable applications. You can improve the appearance and usability and streamline the navigation of the applications by creating screen customizations and macros.
Transform the field service experience
You can quickly improve the user interface of your existing applications and achieve integration with other business information with minimal development cost. The result is an easy-to-use Web interface for the application, which can reduce training cost, simplify the application, and even make the application accessible to new users.
For example, a typical customer support application might require the screens that Figure 1 shows to get to the customer account information.
Figure 1. Typical customer account application
User interface design has come a long way since these applications were developed, but it's typically too expensive for companies to develop new applications. By using HATS, you can transform the screens into a Web page more user-friendly, because it's much easier to read and navigate (Figure 2).
Figure 2. A much more user-friendly application
Figure 2 shows:
- Selected information from the green screens rendered in a Web page that matches your corporate style.
- Use of HATS macros to combine multiple screens into one Web page. A macro is an XML script that defines a set of screens and the actions to take on those screens. You can use macros to skip over unnecessary screens or to enter information for multiple host screens obtained from one Web page of user inputs.
You can enhance the usability of your application screens by adding widgets, such as drop-down lists, radio buttons, check boxes, macro buttons, and calendars. Using these widgets wisely can decrease the errors on such entries as order codes, countries, states, and date formats. Figure 3 shows a calendar widget and drop-down list added to an application to help reduce data entry errors
Figure 3. Calendar widget and drop-down list application enhancements
By using global variables, you can store a value (such as the customer account number) that will exist throughout the duration of a browser session. That value can then be entered automatically through a HATS screen customization or macro where necessary, further reducing entry errors. In addition, the Web Express Logon (WEL) feature of HATS enables single sign-on, so you don't have to log on again when switching between multiple applications.
HATS consists of two components: the development toolkit and the runtime.
The HATS toolkit provides a set of wizards and editors that guide you through creating and modifying HATS applications. The toolkit is integrated with the Eclipse-based IBM® Rational® Software Delivery Platform. This platform, which includes Java® 2 Platform, Enterprise Edition (J2EE), Java, team, Web (including Web page design), and portal development capability and multiple integrated test servers, enables you to develop and test a full-function application that matches your corporate look and feel in one development environment before deploying to the server. For deployment directly to IBM® WebSphere® Application Server, you would package the HATS application as a J2EE Enterprise archive (EAR) file. For deployment to IBM® WebSphere® Portal Server, you would package the HATS application as a Web archive (WAR) file.
The HATS runtime is a set of servlets and classes automatically packaged with the HATS application. The HATS runtime:
- Manages connections to the Telnet servers for the terminal applications that you are transforming
- Tracks users and their interactions with one or more HATS applications
- Provides a transformation servlet (HATS entry servlet) that processes requests from users and dynamically transforms terminal data to HTML based on the request, the screen received from the terminal application, and the customizations that the developer defines
- Provides an Administrative Console servlet that enables connection management and problem determination for one or more HATS applications
Figure 4 shows a typical configuration to develop, test, and deploy a HATS application.
Figure 4. HATS environment
Benefits of a HATS solution: A business scenario
By using HATS, you can make your customer service job easier, streamlined, and more efficient without rewriting your current applications and without the cost and disruption of buying a packaged solution. With the increased productivity and potential to offload some service calls to a self-service Web site with Web services, you will reduce errors and improve customer satisfaction.
For example, in a field service business, HATS can be used to update customer account management, service order entry, and inventory applications so they are easier to use, and, as a result, reduce input errors. When a service request comes in, either by a phone call to a customer care representative or from a self-service Web site, the required information is gathered and entered, without the need to re-enter duplicate information, and then saved to trigger scheduling the service call. The inventory application can also be used to ensure that the necessary parts are available and loaded into the correct delivery vehicle.
When your service engineers are on the road, with the new HATS mobile device support, they can easily use their PDAs to directly access the necessary applications to find their next customers' addresses and directions. The service order has been entered only once in the main application, so there is no chance for errors that often occur when the order is rewritten and handed to the service engineer. No longer will the cable company show up at the wrong house or the service engineer appear at the customer's door with the wrong cable box or wires because an address or part number was copied incorrectly.
The service engineers can also directly access the inventory application to note when they are running low on particular items, without having to remember to do so when they return to the home office. This will help ensure that parts are ordered quickly to prevent delays in customer service.
With the customer account and history information at their fingertips, the service engineers can be sure that they provide excellent customer service. A service engineer can see, for example, that this is a repeat customer and review which services they already have, thus which services they may need now. A service engineer who answers a call for an alarm system customer may be able to offer upgrades to newer technology to increase customer satisfaction and increase your company's sales. Making this information easy to get and immediately available to your service engineers on the road can open up a wide range of possibilities to save money, improve customer satisfaction, and increase business.
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