Today, the organization uses a point-of-sale retail system to sell tickets to passengers and provide support for those sales through an Accounts Receivable system. The system, which is more than 10 yrs old, is unable to support a Regional Fare Coordination System (Smart Card) that would streamline purchase and integration of transportation fares across a seven county area in Washington State. Additionally, Washington State Ferries’ collection system is unable handle variable pricing that would fluctuate based upon rush/peak hours, day of week or special promotions.

Avanade has defined a five-phase project to develop the new application, integrate with existing internal and external systems, and migrate existing data into the new system. The system will support prepaid, cash, debit, credit, magnetic stripe, and bar code. Integration between Washington State Ferries’ external systems and other applications is delivered using BizTalk Server 2004, which itself makes extensive use of XML Web Services to transport data within the organization. Microsoft SQL Server database is used to store data while the BizTalk SQL adapter will be used to retrieve the data from the legacy system. Routine reports will be created using SQL Server Reporting Services. The data will then be processed by business logic components within a BizTalk orchestration. Ultimately, the system will leverage Windows 2003, SharePoint, and Great Plains.

In the case of receiving reconciliation data from the bank, the Great Plain’s Bank Reconciliation module will be used to automatically receive the data and forward it to the general ledger maintained within Great Plains. Avanade is also preparing the architectural guidelines so that the Washington State Ferries IT department can execute future enhancements unassisted. Avanade will develop this custom application using Visual Studio .NET, with integration between the Great Plains and Galaxy portions of the system written in .NET languages such as C# and VB.NET. Finally, Avanade’s intellectual asset, Avanade Connected Architect

• 20 Washington State Ferry terminal locations around Puget Sound converted within 8-weeks.
• New turnstiles to help control boarding and become the entry point for data collection on each rider.
• Advanced reporting capabilities accessible through SQL Server 2000 and SQL Server Reporting Services.