Vormittag Associates, Inc.

Early in 2010, VAI noted a shift away from on-premises solutions in the ERP space. Customers that once balanced 80 percent on-site with 20 percent cloud operations were moving to the cloud. With business rivals already deep into cloud and web-enabled development, VAI needed a modernization initiative that would keep it competitive—without discarding 39 years of critical IP. The company also wanted to ensure that its investment in a new UI wouldn’t preclude focusing on other current customer initiatives.

VAI maintained all major functions with 5250 green-screen interfaces. When the company started working with Rocket, it had multifaceted requirements: a user-friendly interface with flexible grids and embed options, a single sign-on menu to help customers stay organized, and—most importantly—browser- and mobile-based capabilities—all with faultless integration with the company’s other applications. Customers of VAI were also expecting anytime, anywhere computing as well as the built-in responsiveness suitable for mobile deployment. “All of this,” explained VAI president and CEO Robert Vormittag, “became critical to us just to be able to compete in the marketplace.”

Before turning to Rocket, VAI attempted to use an application that injected HTML interfaces into its screen-scraped products. Because the UI was unyielding, and didn’t include the ability to customize by role, account, or data preferences, the user experience was poor. Ultimately, VAI abandoned the project.