The Client

Committed to member service and the public interest, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and its predecessors have been serving the accounting profession since 1887. Currently serving 328,000 members, the AICPA has arranged for several leading providers of products and services for the office and home to provide AICPA members with special discounts. These programs take advantage of the Institute's considerable group buying power to provide discounts that would otherwise be unavailable to individual members. Other member benefits include continuing education resources, insurance, on-line demand information and funding for lobbyist to protect and advocate for member issues and concerns.

The Business Challenge

McFadyen Solutions was chosen to construct a new portal web site for AICPA entitled CPAweb.org. The goal of CPAweb.org was to provide a central access point for shared services between the AICPA and 50 state CPA societies plus the District of Columbia. CPAweb.org was envisioned as a joint ownership venture of the AICPA and participating state CPA societies. A primary purpose of CPA.org would be to improve the products and services available to the profession, maintain a national database of members, and eliminate redundancies to reduce aggregate operating costs. A major objective of the site was to provide access to online educational materials and products.

The Return on Investment

CPAweb.org went live, on time and on budget. Users enjoy a password-protected entry centralized services that include National and State CPE Catalogs and a searchable National member database. The CPE Catalog is a national catalog listing seminars offered by each state society, users have the ability to search by vendor, location, category, and date.

eLearning Functionality

CPA.org provides access to various AICPA online educational products. Courses such as Cost Reporting by Non-Profit Organizations and Cost Allocation can be taken for CPE (Continuing Professional Education) credits. Members have anytime access to transcripts information via the CPE Transcript Wizard. The CPE Transcript Wizard is a mechanism for users to view, record, and generate reports of their CPE histories. Completed courses that are taken from a user's home state are reflected automatically in the transcript and users can add on courses taken from other sources.

The Technology

• Worked with Unix administrators to setup environment on Dynamo servers
• Deployment of CPAweb.org using Dynamo Personalization Server and Dynamo Commerce Server on a Sun E4500 servers
• Set-up of Dynamo connection modules
• Designed system of back-up for profile data
• Completion of system configuration, with detailed documentation deliverable
• Scripting to start, stop and bind Dynamo servers to individual processors
• Support and administration of Dynamo system during testing
• Organization of web server root directories to cleanse old and used files
• Process to delete left over instances