Case Study - From Excel to Excellence

The challenge

FAB (Verein zur Förderung von Arbeit und Beschäftigung) is a non-profit association, that helps people get a foot into the labor market by, among many other things, holding courses for their clients. Courses are taught by one or multiple of their 20+ employed trainers, each having different time and location preferences as well as different qualifications.

You can probably imagine, that managing these courses involves intricate planning, assigning trainers based on time, location and, of course, qualification needed, all while trying to utilize all trainers to their full capacity.

This planning process was, up till now, done in various excel sheets. While some aspects of the Excel-based system were staight forward, others proved to be quite challenging.

One notable challenge was the time-consuming and error-prone task of finding replacement trainers, for example when trainers needed rescheduling due to circumstances such as illness. This process involved manual searches through all available trainers, and if a replacement was found, required updates in multiple locations, leading to potential errors and inefficiencies.

The solution

Together with FAB we designed and implemented a custom, web based application for managing their courses and trainers.

With this new application, FAB can maintain a comprehensive database of trainers, complete with qualifications, availability and various preferences like their prefered locations. During course planning, this takes the guesswork out of the equation, by instantly suggesting trainers who are an ideal fit for the given course. This not only streamlines the planning process but also acts as a safeguard against common pitfalls, such as overbooking a trainer.

In cases of unforeseen circumstances, such as a trainer falling ill, rescheduling is now both swift and efficent. With a simple creation of a sick-leave event in the trainer, the application automatically calculates all adjustments that have to be made. These adjustments are displayed in a global warning list, providing an overview of every issue that requires attention across all courses. This real-time system empowers the users to address challenges quickly and maintain smooth operations.

Additionally, we integrated various reports in our application. Historically, these reports had to be manually created within Excel, consuming valuable time and resources. Now, users can generate reports just with a single click of a button.

What we did

• Design
• Frontend
• Backend
• Hosting

Technologies we used

• Typescript
• Next.js
• Ant Design
• ASP.NET Core
• PostgreSQL
• DigitalOcean

Thanks to Codenite's solution, our course planning is now efficient, streamlined, and hassle-free. It has truly transformed the way we manage our courses and trainers, making our work more productive and enjoyable.