IND, Your Source for Complete Technology Management

Case Studies

Below are just a few of the custom Web-based software solutions that we have been developing for companies of all sizes and industries since 1996.

Project: Business Process Automation of an Order Management and Invoicing System
Client: Success Advertising

Success Communications Group (formerly The Cherenson Group and Success Advertising) is one of the top ten advertising agencies in New Jersey (as measured by NJ Biz Magazine). Success had been using an Access database to track and record insertion order information along with a paper-based workflow system that was straining their resources, causing delayed and lost orders, and leading to a decline in profits.

IND developed a custom Web-based software application to provide a single digital repository for client, vendor, and insertion order information. Additionally, the new application included a workflow system to track an insertion order throughout its lifecycle, from inception to invoice. IND also created auditing and business intelligence (BI) tools, which provide management and owners with real-time access to leading metrics and financial reports crucial to decision making.

Within three months of its launch, the new application's ROI was so high that Success ask IND to develop an invoicing application that would allow invoices to be generated within the system (instead of creating invoices in separate AR/AP software.)

IND also engineered and implemented two co-located Web and database servers (with real-time Microsoft SQL Server database synchronization) to provide a redundant hosting platform for this business-critical application.

The Platform for Progress is a coalition of New Jersey businesses and organizations working in partnership with the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce. The coalition is dedicated to bringing solutions to long-term challenges that New Jersey faces in six key areas: Economic Development, Education, Environment, Government Reform, Health Care and Transportation.

IND produce the www.platformforprogress.com Web site, which features an interactive benchmark report that displays unbiased, fact-based information on where New Jersey ranks nationally in more than 60 key categories.

The coalition is highlighting the benchmark report in order to increase public awareness of the challenges, the roadblocks, and the positive outcome to be enjoyed by all New Jersey citizens through lower cost/higher quality health care, superior educational outcomes, a cleaner environment, improved transportation network, increased investment and a reputation to be proud of.

The Web site also includes an interactive statewide candidate survey, in which voters can select their district to view the positions of candidates on 15 different issue areas.

New Jersey Bride Magazine is the leading source for New Jersey wedding research and planning.

IND developed one of the first "Web 2.0" websites for NJ Bride, which included a custom management system for New Jersey Bride that featured 80 areas of search-engine optimized editorial content, an advertising banner management system, comparison shopping tool, directory search tool, and message board.

The Web site's comparison shopping tool (titled “My Notebook” on the site) allows users to create a virtual shopping list of wedding vendors in order to conduct a side by side comparison of their services.

The Web site also features a flexible search tool of the thousands of vendors in New Jersey Bride's 80 different wedding service categories. The search results can be grouped within a certain mile radius of a zip code or town in New Jersey.

Inverness Corporation is the leading worldwide manufacturer of high-quality earrings and ear-piercing systems.

IND developed a custom shopping cart with real-time credit card transactions, a Web-based content management solution for product data, and a database-driven store locator. Order information was also integrated with the client's existing back-office ERP system. Our front-end website solution included multi-lingual programming support for the Japanese Web site.

We also designed and implemented the back-end Web and database servers for the international family of Inverness Web sites.

A New Jersey-based legal services firm was loosing business. Their potential clients, the thousands of local governmental bodies throughout the US, only notified them of new business opportunities by posting Request for Proposal's (RFP) on their individual websites.

One of the employees of the legal services firm would manually check a small percentage of these government websites every week - but, due to the sheer number of websites, the legal services firm was loosing business because they weren't aware when some of these local governments had posted an RFP on their website.

IND built a custom application that solved their business need: a custom web-crawler, analyzer and notification tool. Every day, the software analyzes each webpage in its database to see if the page has been changed. Then, it looks for certain financial-services related keywords on the webpage which indicate that it is of interest to our client. Finally, the software builds an email containing all of the changed webpages and sends it to our client for review.

The new web crawler/analyzer software that IND developed resulted in a substantial increase in the number of RFP's to which they are exposed.

Outwater Hardware Corporation is recognized as one of the nation's industry leaders in specialty hardware products to 18,000 companies, in 50 states, and foreign countries.

Outwater needed to simplify their administrative content management process for their catalog of over 17,000 SKU's. They had been using two separate systems for their printed and website catalogs: their 900-page printed catalog was developed through desktop publishing software, and their website catalog was managed through a separate Access database.

The client had a vision of using a single system to manage the content for both their printed and online catalogs, without having to implement an expensive enterprise-level content management and publishing system.

IND engineered a custom solution for their website's e-commerce product catalog by integrating Adobe Acrobat pages that are created directly from their desktop publishing system, which greatly simplified the client's content update process and removed the need for two separate product management systems.

We also integrated customer and order data from the website with the client's existing back-office system.

Project: Web-based Payroll Stub Application
Client: Moretrench American Corporation

Moretrench American Corporation, a leader in construction geotechnical contracting, required a cheaper, quicker alternative to printing and mailing out weekly paycheck stubs (most of which were automatically deposited) to hundreds of employees, as well as statements for their employee stock ownership plan.

Moretrench engaged the IND software development team to design and implement a secure portal that would integrate with their employee Intranet Web site and back-end payroll system.

“IND's developers swiftly guided us through their process – and we've had excellent feedback about the new application from employees across the organization,” noted Moretrench's Craig Berry.

IND utilized its phased development methodology to first analyze the requirements and develop the technical specifications. During the analysis, IND held joint design sessions with the key stakeholders at Moretrench, and created a wireframe.

With the primary architectural pieces in place, IND was able to swiftly develop the application using an object-oriented approach. The application makes extensive use of AJAX technology in order to provide a streamlined experience for the application's users and administrators.

A title insurance agency needed a way to streamline the process through which it provided title insurance quotes it was providing to its clients.

The agency had been providing quotes over the phone or by e-mail, which caused unnecessary delays and was prone to human error.

IND implemented an automated self-service solution: a webpage that allows clients to generate their own title insurance quote. When the form on the webpage was completed and submitted by the client, it calls data from a Webservice that is provided by the title agency's provider, performs a number of calculations and then provides a custom quote to the client.

Project: Content Management System and Product Database
Client: Mercury Lighting Products

Mercury Lighting Products is one of the largest independent lighting manufacturers in the U.S.A. today.

With hundreds of products and dealers across the US, they also needed a new corporate website that allowed them to update content quickly.

IND implemented an object-oriented open-source content management system for Mercury that allows their sales team to keep their Website content up to date as well as optimized for search engines.

Project: Membership-Driven Website
Client: New Jersey Chamber of Commerce Education Foundation

The Business Coalition for Educational Excellence (BCEE) at the New Jersey Chamber of Commerce is committed to ensuring that all students achieve at high levels, become productive citizens, and are well-prepared to succeed in the workplace. The BCEE advocate for policies and implement programs that support the business agenda in education reform.

The BCEE needed to provide a way for tens of thousands of New Jersey students to track their progress throughout high school.

IND developed a secure Web-based course logging system for students to track their progress in the State Scholars recommended course curriculum throughout four years in high school. We also installed and manage dedicated Web and SQL servers.

Summit Medical Group has over 140 physicians in New Jersey, providing primary care, medical specialties and diagnostic services.

IND implemented a Web-based content management system for doctor, specialty, and event information for its corporate Website. IND also implemented a site-wide search of both dynamic and static content, with relative rankings of search results.