Adobe Success Story

Inmarkets wanted to consolidate its financial e-learning modules into a single deliverable that would form a robust platform for custom projects and future releases—at the same time showcasing the company's unique, interactive e-learning interface.

Benefits

· Using ColdFusion, developers saved an estimated two months in development time
· Combing Macromedia Flash with ColdFusion, Inmarkets reduced data download time by 70% (compared to the Macromedia Flash-only version of the product)
· Improved average time spent by users from 18 minutes to 58 minutes per learning session
· Intuitive navigation reduced e-mail support requests by 70%

Project Details

"We recently had the task of putting 1500 of our employees through a training program on compliance. With the use of Inmarkets' courses we have been able to deliver an engaging online experience launched from our own internal eTraining site. The user management and reporting system has allowed us to not only monitor the success of the program, but to roll it out to all 1500 users in a very short period of time." Gareth Jones, Director of Online Learning

According to surveys done by IDC Research, electronic learning programs are one area where the Internet will continue to deliver significant value—spending on e-learning programs will reach $10 billion by 2002.

Based in London, Inmarkets Training is a leading player in this industry's lucrative financial market niche, providing web-based corporate training products to clients all over the world.

Originally, Inmarkets Training used the Macromedia ColdFusion application server for developing its robust web applications, and Macromedia Flash for creating small animations to embed in its HTML pages. However, after creating a library of more than 400 financial e-learning modules, and developing significant expertise with both ColdFusion and Macromedia Flash, Inmarkets Training saw the opportunity to win additional accounts with a new product geared toward a total financial training solution.

"We had enough market coverage to consolidate our smaller courses, which we had been selling individually, into a flagship product," says Anthony Miller, CTO at Inmarkets Training. "We wanted to create a visually impressive, dynamic e-learning product that would cover everything in finance, from the nature of business partnerships to securities, equity and foreign exchange. "Because we sell subscriptions to our online e-learning services, we needed robust content management and user management on the back end. The new product, Fincarta, has a 100 percent Macromedia Flash client, which dynamically interacts with our ColdFusion application server to deliver the most interactive, engaging e-learning experience in the financial market. The application also provides a solid infrastructure to anchor our product development moving forward."

A Proven ColdFusion Infrastructure

Since its inception, Inmarkets Training has always found ColdFusion "an ideal platform on which to build web applications." Its robust user management system, developed in ColdFusion, sets user permissions and tracks activity (lessons completed and scores achieved) and provides that information in reports to clients' training managers. The system stores data as XML, which makes it easy to integrate with third-party learning management systems.

"The ability to quickly develop complex products by leveraging custom tags, including those created in previous applications, is priceless," says Miller.

ColdFusion tag-based scripting language, CFML, allows Inmarkets Training to extend applications faster than with any other application server, and the application server itself is very easy to install and configure, requiring just one hour to set up a new server on the network.

"ColdFusion saves time because a lot of the low-level coding is built in," says Miller. "What would be ten lines of code in Java, often turns out to be only one in ColdFusion.

"Many common procedures such as querying databases, outputting query results and serializing data into xml can all be achieved with a single ColdFusion 'tag'. For these reasons, we weren't surprised when we saved a couple of months in development time building Fincarta. Even though we've already built the application in ColdFusion 4.5, I can see that user defined functions and the query of queries feature in ColdFusion 5.0 would have saved us a lot of time, and the fact that ColdFusion 5.0 applications can be wrapped up in an archive file for quick easy deployment across servers is also very attractive."

Combining Macromedia Flash with ColdFusion

Banking on the strength of its original ColdFusion infrastructure, Inmarkets decided to leverage that product's scalability with Macromedia Flash to create the Fincarta product. "We wanted to combine the efficiency of a database driven ColdFusion application with the high impact graphics and interactivity provided by Macromedia Flash," says Miller.

The ColdFusion/Macromedia Flash mix enables Inmarkets to provide a rich user experience with low download times. "We have reduced the total amount of data downloaded to a user's machine in a typical one hour session by at least 70 percent, compared to a Macromedia Flash only product," says Miller.

When developing Fincarta, Inmarkets leveraged ColdFusion's WDDX capabilities, storing all content and user tracking information in WDDX packets.

Storing data in structures and arrays, rather than traditional database tables, has vastly increased the efficiency and extensibility of the application, making content updates extremely easy. "This provides great value, because not a day goes by without someone updating the content in one of our modules," says Miller.

"ColdFusion enabled us to create an entire content management system that's secure, but can still be accessed on the Internet. We can control the whole process while making it accessible to all of our content experts, regardless of their technological expertise."

Macromedia Flash Delivers a Unique Online Learning Experience

Even though it only took four months to create Fincarta, Inmarkets' latest product is really the result of an evolution towards developing and defining the company's unique, interactive e-learning interface—a development that coincides with the company's growing expertise in working with Macromedia Flash.

"Eighteen months ago we were running pretty well everything in HTML," says Miller. "However, as we started working with Macromedia Flash, we began to see the potential of its scripting language, which can be relied upon to work on any browser which has the Macromedia Flash Player installed, and the way we could exchange data with our ColdFusion servers. Consequently, we evolved from using the product to brighten up our HTML pages, to a 100 percent Macromedia Flash interface."

The result is a unique e-learning experience that dovetails with the company's education philosophy.

"I don't know of any other players in this market that can offer the user experience that we provide with Fincarta," says Miller. "Other providers tend to rely mainly on HTML content, and interactivity is limited to working with graphs, or doing calculations. We believe that games, simulations and interactive case studies are essential in e-learning. They not only render the user experience more interesting and enjoyable, but they also increase users' retention of the material. Macromedia Flash is the only credible choice for delivering the interface we required."

Inmarkets' clients agree. "Inmarkets' use of interactive case studies and games throughout their products has resulted in such a rich user experience that our learners have actively studied the non-compulsory courses too. In a topic area like compliance, this is unprecedented," says Gareth Jones, Director of Online Learning, M & G Asset Management.

"Since we started using Inmarkets e-learning program, we've seen a quantifiable improvement in all-round market and product knowledge," says Jim Garrison, VP of Derivatives Operations, AIG.

Users are definitely spending more time learning with Fincarta. Inmarkets' previous products generated average user sessions of 18 minutes. The average time spent per session in Fincarta is 58 minutes—a significant increase, even taking into account the newer product's increased content.

Intuitive Navigation

Macromedia Flash enabled Inmarkets Training to build intuitive navigation into Fincarta that's improving the site's usability and boosting customer satisfaction. A single large "Proceed" button at the bottom of the screen controls whatever happens so, for example, if a user is taking a quiz it becomes the answer choices, A B C or D. "We know the Fincarta product is easier to use by the reduction of e-mail support requests we are receiving," says Miller. "Per 1,000 users it's running at 30 percent of the level we were experiencing with the previous product range. On average, support requests are resolved in 1.06 e-mail exchanges, also an improvement over the previous products."

Unlike HTML, in which the entire page is reloaded every time the user clicks a link, Macromedia Flash enables developers to control data downloads, optimizing site performance. Inmarkets Training uses Macromedia Flash to dynamically load raw data or swf files from ColdFusion as needed in a certain order, pre-empting how a user will navigate through the site. Inmarkets Training also reduced wait times for new data by using Macromedia Flash to load most of the functionality behind the scenes from ColdFusion while a user is logging in. Fincarta combines Macromedia Flash and ColdFusion to deliver a highly engaging, interactive learning experience for the user that's unique in the industry.

"Online learning requires users to be self-motivated," says Miller. "With a topic such as finance, you simply can't get away with the sort of scenario where a user sits reading pages and pages of text on the screen. Our users are going to be at the computer for extended periods of time, working through our courses. It's imperative that we engage them with interactive, visually impressive content. When we look at other e-learning companies that don't use Macromedia Flash, we find it hard to comprehend."

Site Summary

Inmarkets Training, Ltd.
156 Blackfriars Road
London
SE1 8EN

Macromedia Products:
ColdFusion Server 4.5, Enterprise Edition; ColdFusion Studio 4.5, Macromedia Flash 5, Dreamweaver 4

Hardware:
Pentium 600 servers

Operating System:
Microsoft Windows 2000

Database:
Microsoft SQL Server 7.0

Size of Database:
1 gigabyte

Development Team:
Three ColdFusion Developers, four Macromedia Flash developers/designers

Site Traffic:
10,000 hours of Fincarta usage per week

Industry:
e-learning; financial training content

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