The company

Kalyx is an independent contract research organisation servicing the agricultural industry for 25 years. With over 100 employees strategically positioned across 14 branches in Australia, Kalyx work with scientists and scientific organisations around the world to help them get their new technology tested and verified as being useful and safe for agriculture.

We spoke to Ashley Bacon, Managing Director on how they have better positioned themselves for future plans.

The challenge

Kalyx developed a database to manage the operational side of the business that utilises Microsoft Access, Microsoft SQL and an android application.

“The database was designed with a specific objective and has grown and evolved and is now heavily integrated with other critical systems, becoming a central point of our business.” says Ashley.

Kalyx flagged there is a risk due to the technology being old and reliance on the single party developer who built the database.

“I knew we needed to do something and that needs to start with getting an independent party to look at what our needs are and propose a solution because the challenge we’re facing must be one other businesses are facing” says Ashley.

The solution

“AC3 came in and scoped out our existing system, worked out what we needed and then mapped it out in a really objective way” Ashley stated.

AC3 completed a full review by conducting a series of activities including workshops, documentation review and code analysis.

“They developed a report that effectively allowed us to look at the different criteria solutions proposed across the five solutions, allowing us to score what was important to us in terms of cost, risk, usability, time and all manner of stuff.”

The results

The assessment provided a clear understanding of the current application landscape including any risks and technical debt and has allowed Kalyx to quickly narrow down the direction they could take based off recommendations and scoring.

“The project wasn't about writing a new system. It was giving us direction on where we should head and just demystifying it and saying what's a realistic objective, what are we roughly going to be looking at cost-wise. And that's where we've got to now, which is great.”

“AC3 gave us a really good framework for making a decision and removing all the noise that can go around those sorts of things”

“When I sit down with the IT department and our senior management team, I can say, look, here is the facts.” Ashley concluded.