Customer: Ablesoft Solutions, Inc. Project: ASI Project Management System Type: Windows Application

We began ASI with a home grown project management system that met our basic needs to track opportunities and projects. However, we were not taking full advantage of the opportunities and information we had. Our quote formats were inconsistent, and content and quality depended on who authored the quote. Project financial data from our accounting system, critical to project monitoring, was not readily available. Our web-based project profiles and news releases were not convenient to update and therefor, were often out of date. Finally, we had an extensive customer and project history, but were not utilizing that history to maintain customer relationships.

For quoting, we created and applied a selection of stock feature descriptions for use in our quotes and integrated quote results into a Microsoft Word template, giving us consistently professional quotes regardless of who the author was. To add project financial data, we created a QuickBooks import routine that updates our projects with invoice and payment information, giving us integrated project and financial information. For our website, we integrated the system with our production website, allowing the instant automation of project profile updates and ASI news releases. Finally, to improve our relationships with our customers, we added a monitoring component that assigned each customer a rep and established contact frequency and monitoring.

The results have been terrific (if we don't say so, ourselves). Our quotes are of a consistently high quality and are quick and easy to produce, regardless of the author. Our project monitoring now includes critical accounting information, necessary to capture budget trends in a timely manner. Our website is now quickly and easily updated with project and news information, keeping our site current and relevant. Finally, our customer relationships have improved, landing us more business, since scheduled client contacts have been integrated with our staff's weekly status reports. These changes have been a wonderful improvement in the way we do business, for us, as well as for our customers. Tools: Microsoft Visual Basic.NET; Microsoft SQL Server; Microsoft ASP.NET; Microsoft Word; Microsoft Excel; Intuit QuickBooks.

Noel Bruns, President- ASI "Warning: This is an internal project and as president of ASI, anything I say is subject to bias. Having said that, this project has made me a true believer in how intelligent business systems and automation can make a dramatic improvements in how you do business. These upgrades have benefitted nearly every aspect of our business - from marketing (automated website updates), to quotes (canned language and Word exports), to project monitoring (invoice/payment imports), and customer follow-ups (regular customer contacts). They have not just improved our business processes, they have improved who we are as a company."