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The Chicago Tribune generates a tremendous volume of autmotive classified advertising. In 1999, the Tribune contacted Adeas to investigate the Y2k compliance of a, then, mainframe-based analysis system. The system was used for analyzing new and used car sale transactions in Illinois and apply the data to dealer target advertising. This system, having served its purpose for many years was old, slow and fairly inaccurate. Reports took many hours to generate and were very inflexible, mainly due to the fact that the code was written in an almost forgotten language.
In order to move the Tribune into the '90s (yes 90s) Adeas proposed building a web-based solution that would utilize a typical three tier architecture. For the front end a web browser would be used to talk to Active Server Pages which in turn gathered data from a MS SQL database. During the initial design of the system, Adeas interviewed the management team of the advertising and marketing departments. We asked what features they needed, what they liked or disliked about the current system and ultimately in a blue-sky world, what did they want.
This was then assembled into a design document and subsequently implemented into a production system. The system has been a great hit. It generates complete analysis reports for any of the Tribunes marketing regions in seconds rather than the hours it would take before. THere are additional mapping features, query storage, pregenerated reports and more. In fact, this system has been such a success, Adeas was asked to freshen the design and add a few new features just last year.
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