SCALE is designed as a broad framework for the workflow administration within an enterprise. SCALE is a software platform that allows you to design, develop and deploy your processes in real time.

Current software in this space tends to design applications that either focus on the breadth of processes handled or the depth of a single process. By doing this they do neither very well. Further, customization of any of these software tend to be expensive and its maintenance cumbersome. SCALE avoids this situation by building in some key elements that allow administration of processes to be managed painlessly yet without having to compromise on breadth or depth. These elements are discussed briefly below.

Currently, most applications are predefined and developed before delivery. Software is delivered as "off-the-shelf" with limited opportunity to customize to an institution's specific needs or "custom-developed", where a team (external or internal) gathers requirements and builds to specification. The drawback of both these efforts tends to be either the delivered systems' inability to quickly adapt to changing needs or the inevitable ”it does what I want but not what I need” issues that occur when people who work in a process have to explain it to technologists who have no frame of reference to it.

SCALE addresses this by providing the tools to develop applications directly to those users who are evolving and managing the processes. It allows them to create users, define roles, build forms and reports, and assign them to others in the process. And it does all this in "real-time". So as soon as someone creates a form or a report and assigns it to somebody else, they are able to see it. Should a change need to be made, the creator of the process can make the change or create a new process and deploy it instantaneously. While this sounds incredulous to most who have worked in technology for any number of years, DLS feels a SCALE demonstration is enough to remove any doubt. SCALE achieves this with the user not having to interact with any "code" or to define "data-structures".

All information systems are designed for efficiency. However, efficiency in software interfaces depends on its designer's definition of it. Current systems subscribe to a common interface. All processes in a system are accessed by series of commands or menus depending on the tasks a user intends to achieve. The more complex a process or more the numbers of process a system needs to manage, the more complex the common interface becomes. The average user has to navigate though multiple menus and sub-menus to achieve a given task and system administrators have to painstakingly define access rights on per user or user group basis. (The part about system administrators is critical. Regular managers don't bother with access controls. They just fill out the forms. It's the system managers who sets all the accesses. In SCALE, these two steps become one!)

SCALE addresses this by using a contextual interface. Each user is provided only with the forms he/she needs to provide data in and the reports they need to review. As their responsibilities change, so do their forms and reports. Thus "breadth" or "depth" of systems become irrelevant considerations since no matter how big or involved the system gets, users will never need to interact with more than they absolutely need to. Therefore, a user can now focus more on process and less on knowing how to "work" the processes in the system. DLS believes that user participation ultimately qualifies the system's efficiency and a contextual interface is the best way to achieve that.

Current systems do not allow users to develop forms and reports to manage their own processes within the system. Alternatively, if incorporated, these applications add another layer to an already cumbersome system forcing its users to find simple alternatives elsewhere on the Internet or desktop applications. However, privacy and data security mandates these days require managers to keep as much of control over student and employee information as feasible.

SCALE provides for this by allowing users to share data with other users authorized to see that data in. By allowing a teacher to customize his/her grade-book and share selected data with other teachers, students the need for data to ever leave the system is eliminated.

Current systems put all data into a repositories such as a relational databases. As the database grows in records managed, and complexity of inter-tabular links increases as application changes evolve, the system as a whole slows down. Data also forms into 'silos' and inter-operability gets limited. Further, the database requires diligent maintenance by a database managers and developers to ensure efficient data handling and optimization. Besides cost considerations, which, though in itself significant, ultimately makes the delivered system slower and more complex to the institution to manage amidst more pressing issues within its own mandates.

SCALE manages data differently. It "packages" every process with its respective data, rules and user references and stores it as an independent unit within the system. It avoids the “silo” approach and instead adopts a cellular one. This approach provides many benefits, the greatest among them being data security and improved application performance.

SCALE requires no client software other than a standard Internet browser.