Pooling Cars and Pooling Applications in the Course of a Month

The studio was a mix of nerves and confidence today. Over the course of a month, the interns have been preparing their response to an RFP issued by train car pooling company, TTX. The IT team at TTX wanted to better understand how a portal application could improve communication and increase efficiency at the company, and the Cycle 26 interns were their go-to teams for clarity.

Each team—Bamboo Consulting, IT Squared, ITS, and ComplexITy Resolved—researched and presented the value a portal application could add to TTX employees and business partners. They likened this internal portal to iGoogle and My Yahoo! And with the help of volunteer extraordinaire, Les Shindelman, they presented brilliant mock-ups of the portal application to the TTX team using Balsamiq, a mock-up generating software.

And they did all this with users in mind. Each team outlined the specific needs of TTX employees and business partners. By doing so, they created unique default and customizable pages that had critical information for senior executives and those in the financial sector as well as links to key operational applications for the field maintenance operations unit.

The TTX team—Ellyn, Irene, James, Kathy, Mark, Purnesh, Rob, Vivek, Jack and Maris—was pleased not only with the teams, but with TTX for giving them the opportunity to participate in the RFP competition. As one TTX employee mentioned, “it’s not only great for the interns to gain experience, but it’s also great for the employee’s to take a step out of the day-to-day operations to think through some things. It…is a great learning opportunity for everyone involved. The interns bring ideas and tools to the table that…the organization hasn’t experienced.”

Thank you so much to Ellyn, Irene, James, Kathy, Mark, Purnesh, Rob, Vivek, Jack, and Maris and the their CIO, Bruce Schinelli, for helping us all to see stars!