NATIONAL TRUST

Project

We redeveloped the inherited applications in .NET to communicate with the new system making it more stable. We have improved the success and stability of their website – which was initially working 80% of the time, and now, thanks to our help, this has increased to a 99% success rate.

What we did

 Custom Application Development

– Deployment and Training

Project Information

Making old and new applications work together.

The Challenge

As websites evolve and grow, they can become unstable. A clutter of new and legacy applications meant the National Trust’s website was not working one-fifth of the time. We redeveloped the inherited applications to work effectively with the new.

This software integration stabilised the website and improved up-time to 99%, so the charity would not miss out on crucial income or risk damaging its strong reputation.

When the National Trust introduced a new look and Content Management System (CMS) to their website it improved control but created problems with some of the old applications that remained. Because of incompatible technologies the new system could not communicate properly with the existing applications.

Over time it became unstable and costly to maintain, crashing for up to three hours at a time. With customers unable to make bookings or purchases they were not coming back – and that meant lost income. The payment system was not able to accept all credit cards and posed a potential security risk as well as a risk to the National Trust’s reputation.

The Solution

To help The National Trust address their problem, we redeveloped the inherited applications in .NET to communicate with the new system making it more stable. The mix of different databases was then streamlined into one clear structure to make it easier to use and help to prevent any duplicates. In addition to this, we also created a more secure administration tool to retain the functionality of editing data and offer a user-friendly solution for their employees.

We have improved the success and stability of their website – which was initially working 80% of the time, and now, thanks to our help, this has increased to a 99% success rate. Regarding membership applications, these are registered and processed faster and more accurately, improving the end user experience, and encouraging more people to join The National Trust’s membership scheme. This also translates to an increase in re-visits and avoids lost income. A key focus for us on this project was also regarding security. We are proud to have ensured that all personal data can now be managed and stored securely to comply with data protection and GDPR.