This is a representative sampling of software development projects we have done:

Consumer Panelist Database

Client Overview:
Church & Dwight (formerly Carter Wallace) is a large manufacturer of personal care products. 

Client Need:
Personal care products, such a deodorants and depilatories, undergo extensive consumer testing before a final formulation is released. Church & Dwight develops several new formulations a month and tests each multiple times on panels consisting of 12 to 50 participants.

Church & Dwight maintains a list of potential test subjects (panelists), along with detailed information on each, such as age, use of personal products, pets in household, etc. When a test panel is put together the best panelists for the product are selected based on these criteria.

The Solution:
Prior to the development of our software, Church & Dwight kept track of tests and panelists using pencil and paper and an Excel spreadsheet that was slow and unwieldy. We developed an Access database that greatly simplified this task. Additionally, our system computes and prints the checks that the panelists are given as payment for their services. 

Supplier Performance Measurement System

Client Overview:
An international manufacturer of pharmaceutical and customer care products, based in New York and New Jersey. 

Client Need:
The company needed to measure performance by its vendors, in terms of deliveries and quality of product. Any software created to achieve the objective had to be FDA approved.

The Solution:
We developed the Supplier Performance Measurement System in Microsoft Access. The system captures on-line data from purchase orders and deliveries, and determines several metrics about each of five thousand suppliers. The metrics are compared to customer-developed criteria, to enable ranking and determining the level of acceptability of each supplier. 

Sales Quota Information System

Client Overview:
An international manufacturer of floor coverings. 

Client Need:
The client requested help in keeping track of quota targets and fulfillment for their 250 salesmen and managers.

The Solution:
Our Access system captured sales data from around the world. Reports and queries by region, manager and salesman, over selected date ranges, were available through a simple-to-use series of menus. 

Energy Reduction Billing System

Client Overview:
An energy consulting and management services company in central New Jersey. One of their major products was design and implementation of energy reduction plans for commercial organizations. 

Client Need:
The company reduced energy costs for its customers by replacing lighting systems with more efficient ones. Costs of construction were covered by rebates from the State for decreased energy use. Data collected by on-site sensors provide real-time information indicating which lights were on and for what periods. At each site, thousands of readings are collated each month, assigned values, and stored in a database.

The results are used to produce invoices, both for the customer and for the electricity provider. The invoicing procedure had been a manual operation. Not only was the process prone to errors, but amounts were difficult to validate and the accuracy of the results was uncertain.

The Solution:
We were called in to streamline and systemize the billing procedure. We built an Access database, converted historical data and created forms, modules and reports, and produced invoices efficiently and accurately. We transformed the invoice information that was sent monthly to the electricity provider from stacks of paper to a few floppy disks and then to an electronic transfer.

Budget Entry and Reporting System

Client Overview:
The Board of Education for one of Connecticut's largest cities. 

Client Need:
The operating budget for the entire system was being maintained on a mainframe computer, via a system that we designed and built in the 1980's. The mainframe was being decommissioned and the budget process had to be deployed on a PC network.

The Solution:
We designed and implemented a two-tier Access system to handle the data processing and reporting for the budget, which currently totals more than $150,000,000. It was important to maintain the format of the existing reports, copies of which are distributed each year. We streamlined the process, added easy accessibility to data, reduced the menu to just a few selections, and added capabilities for separately recording and tracking money from grants. After an initial installation and brief training session, updates and questions are now handled remotely from our office in central New Jersey.

Faculty and Staff Attendance System

Client Overview:
The Board of Education for one of Connecticut's largest cities. 

Client Need:
During the 1980's, we had developed a mainframe system to track attendance, vacations and sick-time for faculty and staff. The planned decommission of the mainframe required a system be developed for another platform.

The Solution:
Once again, the obvious solution was a PC-based, two-tier Access system, which we rapidly developed and deployed. Data is resident on a network, while the software is installed on each user's PC. This architecture allows for rapid software response and access to shared data.

Summer School and Bilingual Student Systems

Client Overview:
The Board of Education for one of Connecticut's largest cities. 

Client Need:
The Board of Education needed systems to track students in the Summer School program, as well as bilingual and English as a Second Language (ESL) students during the school year. Summer school students had to be selected based on test criteria, and letters sent and followed up.

The Solution:
Since the Summer School and Bilingual programs were independent, with different staff and data storage requirements, two separate systems were built, tailored to the needs of the respective users. The Summer School system assigned students to classrooms, based on such criteria as sex and race, to make each class as diverse as possible. It also kept track of attendance and test scores and produced statistical reports at the end of the session.

The Bilingual system identified Bilingual and ESL students and gathered metrics, including test scores and classes attended, from several external files. The end product is Connecticut's ED-230 report.

Space Planning - Cable Management

Client Overview:
A major international shipper. 

Client Need:
The client needed to keep track of telephone and network connections for a few thousand employees. Approximately 40% of the staff changes location each year which meant tracking telephone extensions, outside lines, modem and network connections, as well as the types of telephone systems in use. Work orders needed to be printed and tracked.

The Solution:
The client had begun an Access system to help keep track of changes. He periodically added functions as required. He was relatively inexperienced in system design, however, and realized he needed help. We redesigned the tables, improved and added more functions. Finally, we added a web front end so the system could be easily accessed from any computer equipped with browser software.