|
|||
 |
|
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||
Starting immediately, IdeaBlade will be offering a free
Tech Tips email subscription. Subscribers will
periodically receive short emails packed with useful
knowledge to help them with their .NET
development.
Don't worry, we won't be filling up your inbox with
SPAM. Likewise, our goal is not to just "state the
obvious". You can get that information anywhere.
These tips are developed by IdeaBlade's
senior architects and subject matter experts, and
often include code samples in both C# and VB.NET.
Not
convinced? Click
here to see a sample tip on span queries.
|
||||
|
||||
|
||
|
Anyone can offer a newsgroup. And you can always
try to find help on a discussion board. And while
some companies may offer email support and possibly
phone support ... is that
the safety net you feel comfortable with for your
mission critical .NET application?
IdeaBlade is all about accelerating the development
and deployment of your .NET applications. Our
primary
goal is to ensure your applications are
feature-complete, yet still delivered on time and
under
budget. To that end,
IdeaBlade offers an unmatched portfolio of support
and services to help your
enterprise be successful.
Our comprehensive support and service options
include:
|
||
|
|
||
Atlanta Kitchen & Bath Makeovers, Inc. (www.akbminc.com) is a design/build construction company
specializing in high-end kitchen and bath renovations
for upscale clients in the Atlanta area and is one of
Ideablade’s new customers. AKBM is undergoing
tremendous growth and experiencing the usual
operational pressures of small businesses as they try
to keep up with rapid growth while not sacrificing the
quality and service which was the driving factor in
their success to date. Typical of many small
businesses, AKBM’s operational systems consisted of
a patchwork of applications, including QuickBooks,
Excel
and Outlook. This solution resulted in large
expenditures of time and effort, and was a critical
roadblock to operational efficiency and future growth.
To maintain profitability, it is critical for AKBM to
accurately document and price the many services
and materials required of a project. This information
must then be summarized and presented as a
proposal. Once the proposal is accepted, the ability
to use this same information to create and manage
purchase orders to subcontractors and suppliers is
necessary to reduce duplicating information and
increasing operational efficiency. As project bills are
paid, accurate job cost tracking is especially
important to manage the profitability of the project.
AKBM looked at many different solutions available in
the marketplace for construction management,
including several well-known solutions employed by a
significant number of large construction firms. All of
them were lacking in capability from using
out-of-date technology and the inability to be
customized to
the unique business processes of AKBM. Based on
this analysis, AKBM made the decision to
custom-build a construction management solution,
encompassing the areas of contact management,
estimating and order management, payment
processing and scheduling.
Having a previous career in enterprise software
development, AKBM’s president well understood the
challenges of building such a system using limited
resources and facing critical time pressures to put
this new capability in place. AKBM recognized that
the only way to be successful in this endeavor was
to leverage next-generation software component
technology to reduce the amount of software code
that had to be developed. Along the way, AKBM
found some terrific technology from IdeaBlade, which
would greatly reduce the amount of development
required by encapsulating the back-end database
processing. Not only did it accomplish this, but
perhaps more importantly it resulted in a system that
was built with virtually no errors and was operational
from
the first release.
The initial Phase 1 release was created in 2 weeks,
and included the capability to manage customers,
product and service offerings, and the estimating
capability. The Phase 2 release was created in
another 2 weeks and included order management and
invoicing. Having such great success with the initial
development, AKBM has plans to incorporate
additional capabilities into the software in the near
future, including a web-based customer portal which
will leverage the transactional capabilities developed
in the smart-client application.
"Developing this solution would not have been
possible
without the great technology and support we
received from the talented folks at Ideablade. Even
though we are a small company, the quality of
service they provided was exceptional and
instrumental to our success. In this new area of
email-only support that many companies are
providing, the ability to speak directly to IdeaBlade’s
engineers and receive immediate quality support was
critical so our development efforts weren’t delayed
and our deadlines could be met. In summary, we
couldn’t be happier with our new application and
would recommend anyone looking at developing new
applications take a strong look at the technology and
services of IdeaBlade."
Jeffrey Kennedy, President
Atlanta Kitchen & Bath Makeovers, Inc. |
||
|
|
|
|
Robert Otto
IdeaBlade
email:
rob@ideablade.com
|
|
||