Performigence

Improving Operations and Meeting Customer Demands

Commercial, federal, and local organizations have somewhat complex, knowledge-intensive processes. Performigence provides intelligent software services and technologies aimed at helping these organizations define, improve, and automate critical tasks— empowering frontline workers to operate at peak performance. 

ProcessGenius®--Performigence’s core solution—captures process knowledge and operational information and provides step-bystep guides, walking stakeholders such as workers, vendors, and customers through processes, providing just-in-time instruction. 

With a passion for advancing the operational needs for customers, Performigence requires efficient, easy software installation of its ProcessGenius solution comprised of intelligent agents. For many years, the company has turned to InstallShield from Revenera to meet customer demands

Performigence prides itself on two core values—a passion for delivering best-in-class technology solutions and providing the ultimate customer service. “The customer is our highest priority,” says Harry McElroy, cofounder and product development leader at Performigence, “and we partner with companies that are just as serious about customer commitment as we are.” 

Part of understanding the customer means recognizing industry trends. Company leaders understood the needs and sophistication of customers was changing, like the need to enable non-IT operations people to install smart software for their workers. Performigence technology had to evolve to meet the increased demand, and those changes required more complex yet reliable software installations. 

For example, Performigence was funded by The National Science Foundation along with several partner universities to create a smart system for food banks, with several locations acting as testbeds under the Feeding America umbrella. Backend activities for food banks are complicated and include systems for food intake, warehousing, product handling, distribution, and volunteer coordination, just to name a few of the critical processes key to the successful management of food bank operations. Performigence was brought in to apply ProcessGenius and its many agents to guide food bank workers through resource planning and work-oriented activities with greater efficiency and to streamline operations, empowering each location to do more at higher performance levels.

“What was different about this engagement, however, was the need to marry the operational knowledge with data found in databases,” says McElroy. “That was our newest challenge, and why we needed a powerful software installation solution that would not just run smoothly every time but also provide the necessary database connections so the food banks could start analyzing their data to run prediction and optimization models.”

Performigence needed to provide the food banks with:

• Procedure, activity, workflow, and problem-solving agents that capture subject-matter expert knowledge and deliver smart guides to frontline workers,
• A software installation solution that connects with backend databases and the critical data needed to run prediction and optimization models, and
• The right installation infrastructure that supports the data visualization needed for enhanced decision-making around donation, distribution and food-handling processes. 

As a longtime InstallShield user, it was time to re-evaluate and implement a more robust installation solution. According to McElroy, “We relied on an older version of InstallShield for many years, but realized we needed to move to the newest Professional version.” But the move was not automatic. As part of a larger due diligence effort, Performigence ran proof of concepts with several other installation vendors such as Inno Setup, InstallAware, Wix and Advanced Installer. In the end, InstallShield 2020 Professional came out on top.

Performigence selected InstallShield 2020 Professional because, “InstallShield was the most comprehensive solution with respect to combining the needed scripting power with a hardy integrated development environment,” says McElroy. “The database administrative setup tools in the IDE were an especially compelling reason to go with InstallShield.”

InstallShield provides robust, automatic software installations for non-IT frontline workers for all Performigence customers, including the food bank testbed locations. The Professional version of InstallShield allows for the automatic management of database connections in the Cloud without the need for IT configuration. Additionally, installation of all the needed files across multiple food bank sites is somewhat effortless. Workers simply double-click a desktop icon, giving them a seamless touchpoint with the smart system which guides them through the needed activities. 

Finally, a significant differentiator for InstallShield over other vendor solutions was the ability to include needed prerequisites such as—in the case of the food bank engagement—database drivers to support AWS and the SQL Server database connections for enhanced functionality. 

With InstallShield, Performigence and its customers, get:

• A simple, push-button solution for fast software installations
• The right administrative privileges for all ProcessGenius users
• Greater functionality through target prerequisite testing and enabling database connections for data analysis

“We knew we needed to refresh our software installation capabilities to keep up with customer requirements,” says McElroy. “InstallShield Professional allows us to adapt and grow as the needs of our customers demand more from us.” 

Performigence has also seen a significant reduction in the time they spend supporting customer installations, and the dynamic installation experience creates a user-friendly, easily repeatable process. According to McElroy, “We have seamless installations from start to finish. With the help of InstallShield non-technical users can easily run and use our solutions.” 

Performigence has strategic goals for the future growth of its ProcessGenius solution and InstallShield is a large part of those plans. The company sees great opportunity in expanding projects related to Machine Learning and AI as well as providing the ability to provide robust, automatic updates of all applications across all customer locations. McElroy emphasizes, “We wanted a software installation solution that gives us the headroom to expand and grow our capabilities. With InstallShield, we’ve got the room to do that and continue to make a difference with our customers.”