The Argos 4.0 Cost-Recovery Platform
a White Paper by Sepialine, Inc., San Francisco
A cost recovery platform needs to be flexible enough to achieve virtual transparency in each office’s operation – both in terms of workflow and cost-of-ownership. This, after all, is the crux of a seamless application.
Sepialine has developed a solution that we believe will change the way you think about print tracking. By approaching the issue of Cost Recovery from a radically different mindset than our competitors, we are tackling the individual needs of End users, System Administrators, Accountants, and FM Providers better than anyone else on the market today. The Argos cost recovery platform is the embodiment of our mission:
Sepialine is committed to delivering best-of-breed cost recovery and business metrics solutions – transparent and dynamic enough to address everyone’s needs without sacrificing quality and accuracy.
Quantifying your office’s operating costs shouldn’t come at the cost of workflow. With Argos, a wealth of information can be silently collected from your network while your business continues to function. With true client/server architecture built on Windows NT services, Argos offers unprecedented robustness and fidelity. At its essence, Argos is a peer-to-peer cost recovery data exchange; radically improving communication, lowering costs and seamlessly integrating with native Windows environment.
Excellent Usability
The look and feel of Argos is no accident. In developing products, Sepialine holds ease-of-use above all other considerations. And the market bears this out: time and again, our customers become enthusiastic advocates of Argos, based simply on the ease with which they deploy Argos into their businesses. Sepialine spends hundreds of hours with customers and FM Providers, testing, verifying, and retesting our assumptions about how people interact with the software.
The challenge in designing cost recovery software lies among the four audiences who interact with the product – four audiences whose needs conflict:
- End users are generally less than enthusiastic about cost recovery software – indeed, they view it as an impediment to the completion of their jobs.
- System administrators desire an integrated, centralized and secure environment where they can enforce corporate policy.
- Accountants and bookkeepers need flexible reporting and easy access to captured data.
- FM Providers need access to subsets of data relevant only to the services they provide. Moreover, FM Providers require assurance that the collected data is accurate and secure – data that translates directly into service fees.
Many products miss the mark in dealing with one or more of these audiences. Argos takes each into account:
The Argos Workstation product uses a “message” metaphor – similar to Microsoft Outlook. When a new print job is detected, an icon appears in the system tray, leaving the user to deal with it when it’s convenient. However, to ensure that users address the unbilled print jobs in a timely manner, the System Administrator can set a quota – a number of unbilled jobs at which the User Interface will display automatically. The Argos Workstation dialog remains on top of other windows until it is addressed.
The print job icon (circled) in the System tray indicates a print job queued
for user attention.
Built on Seagate Crystal Reports, Argos reporting is powerful, customizable and easy. Basic reports ship with Argos, and can be easily modified to include customer information, logos, etc. Or, advanced users can create entirely new reports. Sepialine provides custom report services to its customers.
Argos security features integrate with Windows NT, eliminating the need for separate credentials.
Argos Manager adopts an Outlook-like user interface, making it easy for Administrators to navigate through the product.
Argos manager has an Outlook-like user interface.
ArgosFM is a product in development to address the FM Provider community. By aggregating data from multiple Argos sites, ArgosFM allows reprographers and other service bureaus to generate billing information directly from the field. One of the most profound conflicts between FM Providers and their customers lies with deleted data. Argos users typically wish to delete print activity they consider faulty. FM Providers consider all prints valid, regardless of their value to the end-user. Argos employs a “soft delete” feature to mitigate these two needs. To the Argos user the data has the appearance of being deleted. To the ArgosFM user, the data remains intact.
Argos automatically discovers print devices on the Windows network. The Argos Printer Property Page shell extension seamlessly integrates into Windows.
Robust Architecture
Argos is the only product of its kind built upon solid client/server architecture. The implications of this fundamental design make Argos more stable and accurate than other solutions:
On the workstation, some software products – such as AutoCAD - circumvent the Windows printing system, creating a need for application-specific plug-ins in order to capture all print activity. Because Argos captures prints at the host server, Argos captures all print jobs, regardless of what application generated the print, and without the need for additional plug-ins.
Prints are captured, even when the software isn’t installed on the workstation. In Sepialine’s offices, we were pleasantly surprised when we installed the Argos Workstation component on our graphic designer’s computer, and found that every print she had generated – a month’s worth – had been faithfully captured and was awaiting her attention.
Users assign tracking data to print activity in accordance with individual
system policies.
Argos installs as a Windows NT Service on both print server and workstation. Services start and stop with computer, with no intervention from the user.
As with the original Argos for AutoCAD product, the client/server architecture doesn’t disturb the basic print process. No special drivers are required, and in the unlikely event that a problem occurs with Argos, users can continue to print – a premise introduced in Argos for AutoCAD, and continued in our Windows product. A system that holds print jobs hostage is a loaded gun, waiting to bring a business to a grinding halt.
Licensing Flexibility
Today, Argos is sold on a site license basis. What we consider important is that per-user or per-seat pricing schemes don’t best serve the customer. Administration headaches aside, customers increasingly view software products as part of a larger service – a fact best addressed through usage-based fee structures.
Clear Future Vision
ArgosWeb is Sepialine’s initiative to create an infrastructure, connecting people to their cost recovery data. Branch offices need to not only report activity to main offices, but also keep updated project lists. Service bureaus need to collect data from their customers every month.
ArgosWeb consists of components and protocols designed to flexibly connect these various data consumers. Using XML along with easily accessible Microsoft Internet Information Service (IIS), Argos sites can publish project lists to remote offices. Using a similar mechanism, remote sites can submit print activity data back to central offices. But not all offices are willing to operate private Web servers – many lack persistent Internet connections, or IT staff to maintain them. In those cases, Sepialine looks to offer a central, secure “clearinghouse” through which customers can share their data. The ArgosFM product includes a Web server component, allowing FM Providers to accept cost recovery data online from their customers.
In all these scenarios, Sepialine is working to develop a set of common XML grammars and protocols to be used on both private and public servers, both in-house and cross-enterprise. In all cases, Web servers can be configured with SSL encryption technology.
Open, Extensible System
From the beginning Argos has been an extendable and modular solution with an eye toward future directions. Such foresight has allowed Argos to remain free of cumbersome legacy code. Decisions such as purchasing components and implementing proven third-party solutions, typify our approach to platform design – leverage the best, most established tools. Our value-add is in understanding the subtleties of cost-recovery, not in reinventing schedulers and user interface frameworks. Our elegant architecture of standardized components has allowed us to quickly roll with the swells of the CAD industry.
Argos is deliberately built as an open system. With a COM-based Capture component, Argos can easily be integrated – with or without its native User Interface – into nearly any Windows-based application. Unlike competitive products, new Capture logic and UI need not be built for each application where Argos is used. Moreover, the Argos database is built on industry-standard Microsoft Jet technology (and is portable to MS SQL Server, MSDE, or any ODBC-compliant database server).
The COM-based plug-in mechanism allows developers to easily create Import modules for Argos Manager. This plug-in structure is used to provide connectivity with popular accounting packages such as Sema4, Advantage and Wind2.
Continuing in the open-standard vein, Sepialine is developing new capabilities for Argos based on industry standards. Argos Internet Server Extensions, for example, are built to take advantage of Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS) and employ XML technology to facilitate transmission of project and cost recovery data among remote locations.
Distributed Data Hosting
The design community is particularly sensitive to security issues. In spite of advances in Internet-based encryption and security, the design community truly holds its data closely. Nowhere is this more evident than in dealing with accounting data. The need to communicate cost recovery data among disparate parties - customer, reprographer, FM provider and Web ASP – is at odds with the customer's security requirements. After conducting extensive research in this area, Sepialine has arrived at a model that minimizes risks for each party involved and is built to integrate with external systems, such as online project collaboration, bid management, and e-commerce offerings.
Central to the Argos data-hosting scheme is the notion that customers are most comfortable hosting their own systems locally. By aggregating only the necessary data for outside parties, customer willingness to participate in a data-sharing scheme increases. Rather than a global data repository of customer data, each customer site contains its own repository. At each stage in the data-aggregation scheme - customer to reprographer, reprographer to ASP – summary data is "bubbled up."
Recognizing the varying sizes and complexities of our customer base, Argos is designed to function with leading database storage systems. For large installations where scalability is an issue, Microsoft SQL Server or its royalty-free downscaled version – Microsoft Data Engine (MSDE) – can be used with Argos. For basic installations, Argos can leverage the availability and low cost of ownership of the Jet (Access) engine.
Accounting package connectivity
Argos supports the AEC industry’s most popular accounting packages, including Deltek Advantage (formerly Harper Shuman), Semaphore, Wind2 and QuickBooks. Argos’ extensible plug-in architecture enables simple “push” and “pull” integration with other external systems.
About Sepialine
Sepialine is a provider of tools and services to the AEC industry. Founded by architects and design professionals in 1998, Sepialine is uniquely positioned to address the complex needs of design professionals around the world. Sepialine is an active participant in both the design and technology professional communities. Sepialine is a privately held California Corporation, located in San Francisco, California.
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