Technical Solutions
We SOLVE a variety of management challenges using our 30+ Years of experience specifying, building and implementing systems to ensure successful Results for Technology.
We drive Results for your business with the needed technology solutions. One of the primary reasons we named the company “End 2 End Results” is that businesses need to work “End 2 End” to scale. They need to work form the start (customer product/service) through the back office business process to the Delivery of products and service as well as Billing of the customers.
We SOLVE a variety of technology challenges and use our 30+ Years of experience building and implementing systems to ensure successful Results.
Our primary goals are to ENSURE successful Results of your project and/or systems helping drive Profits and Profitability
Technical Systems Assessments
Business needs change over time, however the Application and data systems tend not to be as flexible over those same timelines. They need to adapt, transform and be flexible as business needs change.
CHALLENGE
I don’t know if my systems can adapt or change? Another version, how will this new business process impact my systems and what changes are needed?
SOLUTION
Use our experienced consultants to evaluate the current systems and/or system impacts to deliver an assessment of the challenges and potential solutions that can be implemented successfully.
RESULT
A documented list of known and discovered challenges with potential solutions and approaches to resolve problems identified. We also drive this into a TEMPLATE for future assessments exercises so that best practices can be internalized by the project teams for new best practices.
The WHEN is easy – before or as the systems are needing major changes and/or upgrades to support new or growing business demands. You might also do one before starting a major development phase to get an outside view and ensure Best Practices are being used with the technologies being deployed.
- Existing Systems – Determines the extent it can Scale and Grow (or areas it will struggle)
- New Systems – the challenges of integrating them technically and in the business processes
- Based on the business goals, where are the gaps and challenges for the system
- Options for the system to be enhanced and/or re-architected meet the business needs.
- Optional Deliverables:
- Level of Effort estimates for the various enhancements and/or re-architectures.
- Pros/Cons of the changes done in-house, outsourced or some combination
- Detailed Requirements Level Business Process and Data Flow Diagrams
The assessment looks at “all facets” of the system. The focus areas are listed below but not limited to these areas:
Data Architecture Many times the heart of scaling and flexibility challenges.
Data Access Security Hidden problems in this area can cause non-trivial setbacks.
Network Architecture and Network Security
Application Functionality (current and proposed or envisioned)
Technologies Deployed in the current solution
SasS and/or On-Premise Deployment considerations
Interfaces to 3rd Party and Internal Systems
SLA and Redundancy current vs the proposed or envisioned system
Optional: Review of any skills gaps that may exist with current staff
The timeline for an assessment depends on the depth of the analysis requested and the complexity of the system(s) being assessed. In most cases, if staff is available to work the evaluation team, a set of days to several weeks would be typical. These can be offered on a fixed bid or T&M basis depending on the project approach
Assessment Summary
We will help ensure the right design, architecture and planning is in place to ensure successful Results. Assessments can be value investments before projects start to ensure systems and application be delivered on-time and on-budget. There have been “drastic” changes in technology (mostly for the better) over the last 20 years and we understand implementations and have worked with companies (Overstock.com, Excite@Home, MatchLogic, Boeing, Dell, eBay, Paccar, etc.) in different industries.
Sometimes teams “grind” on the architecture and design, which while important, sometimes turns into a “religious” debate about the best “method” or solution, when sometimes BOTH will work and other considerations such as time to market and long term support should be driving more of the conversations and decisions.
We have substantial experience evaluating the requirements for the technologies to solve the problem.
Scaling, Stability, and Performance Consulting
Our staff can help quickly correct scaling and stability issues and have done this for many companies over the last 25 years.
CHALLENGE
Systems, Applications or Reports don’t Perform to the business needs
SOLUTION
Smart adjustments in the short term and a longer term enhancement plan
RESULT
Short term relief of the scaling issues with a long term plan to enhance and scale the solutions to meet the business goals.
There are several key systems functionality areas that tend to struggle with Scaling in Cloud and/or On-Premises deployments listed in the order we find the most problems:
Our team can help in each of these areas. Most issue are found in the data architecture and/or data access and interface layers of the architecture. Sometimes these can be resolved quickly, other times a deeper analysis and re-architecture may be needed.
Many systems struggle to scale with data access and data flow between components in the application and systems architecture. The data architecture must be “scalable” and “redundant” for application and systems scaling and reliable performance. Sometimes this is due to the database itself, other times the interfaces and query paths being used to access the data. We have “deep” experience helping find the areas that are struggling in both Data Warehouse and Transactional (OLTP) type systems.
Many times, application performance can lag over time or due to “time of day” heavy usage. This type of performance impact is normally due to “bottlenecks” in the database, network and/or application server layers of the architecture. We have great expertise in working through the areas of architecture to determine where the impacts are happening and options to resolve them to enable positive Results
The final area for scalable system is the must be “available” for all users and components at all times and be able to recover from hardware, software and network outages and issues. Our team has extensive experience evaluating and implementing fault-tolerant system architectures to ensure the systems are ready for Growth. We will also work with your DevOps team(s) to ensure success.
Typically, we get engaged when reports are either slow or in need of more “integrated” data. Dashboards especially are dependent on “trusted” data that is well structured. Many times this is not case especially in high growth companies and/or large stove-piped organizations.
We can not only help with the performance issues but also in resolving the both the “integrated” data and definitions of that data so reports, dashboards and application KPIs are reliable and timely.
Performance & Scaling Summary
Our team can help “quickly” resolve short term scaling and redundancy issues with a view of the long-term enhancements to ensure predicable scaling as the business and usage grows.
Database & Application Consulting
CHALLENGE
The System is running slow or not in a predictable performance level
SOLUTION
Engage our team to help your staff make short and long term adjustments
RESULT
Short Term relief on performance issues with a longer term plan for enhancements, stability and redundancy of the system.
Data is the Keystone of any system. If data is not right or accessible the application has no chance of performing. Similar, a bad or outdated application design can make the system hard to maintain and enhance.
The importance of data that is correctly modeled, understood and used with the proper business rules will help the applications. The applications can be streamlined with good data layers. We find they go hand in hand for most scaling and performance issues. Also, if the data is not correct, the application and business usage will never be successful.
Typically, these are T&M engagements but if there is a known set of tasks and goals, we can provide a fixed bid. In some cases, after an initial engagement, we engage on a retainer basis availability.
We will evaluate the short term and long-term needs of the systems. We will then make short term recommendations (and help implement them) as well as long plan to ensure performance and scalability.
Our team has deep expertise in data organization, integration, cleansing and usage for multiple applications (as well as reporting systems). If the data architecture and design is correct, most application issues can be resolved quickly.
Performance of data queries and application modules is also important. We will evaluate that sub-system or set of database queries and make the recommendations (and help implement) the changes to gain the desired performance.
Rest assured, our team can help ensure a proper architecture and design that will perform for the desired system requirements. We have worked with many application languages, middle-ware and database systems from various vendors and know the pros and cons of each solution.
Business Intelligence, Reports, & Analytical Dashboards
PROBLEM
How do you know if your business is running efficiently
SOLUTION
A “trusted” and “timely” management dashboard based on known KPIs
RESULT
The management teams making the “right” decisions (vs guesses) based on known and trusted data.
Dashboards and reports are great IF and ONLY IF they provide “good data”. Many KPIs, Reports and Business Terms are known (but are they!!). If we were to ask the CFO, CMO and CEO the definition of revenue, customer, profit and even add ‘response rate’ in marketing, well we would get several different definitions as that is not Uncommon.
We are here to help not only solve the “big data” and “unstructured data” system problems but also to get to the bottom of any data definition discrepancies.
There are many types of data consumption, the primary ones are listed below that we have deep experience, but this is by no means a detailed list and vendor agnostic.
- Dashboards Browser and Mobile
- Reporting Systems Browser and Mobile
- Analytics Systems Drilldown and 2nd level match equations computations
- Big Data Systems With Structured and unstructured data sources.
- Unstructured Data Data this is mainly driven by non-row/column-based structures
- Data Security of the key Metrics (Revenue, Profits, Churn Rate, etc.)
Our team had developed systems using all the above in various projects and will help drive the solutions that works for your business and technology requirements.
We do not want to be in the business of creating all your reports and dashboards. We do want to be in the business of getting the right base of metrics, KPIs and layouts so that those can be enhanced maintained by day-to-day staff.
Finally, we also want to ensure that ONLY the authorized personal can see the metrics and reports they are supposed to see and not others that may be restricted.
We have extensive experience working with various business and executive users to ensure that a common set of terms and performance indicators are used throughout the company.
- Business Definition & Business Terms Analysis
- Indicator Validation and Documentation
We can almost guarantee that the term “sales, revenue, profit, etc.” are not used the same across all parts of the organization. We find this in “most” business we work with on BI systems. In many cases they are close, but what is in that “profit” calculation (sales, shipping, returns, etc.) and just what “response rate” are we talking about (opens, clicks, purchases, etc.).
We will work with your management team to ensure these metrics are well defined, understood and the formulas documented for everyone in the organization.
A documented list of terms, KPIs and formulas that make up those metrics. We will also define the data to be used for those metrics and where possible identify the source data needed or that should be used for those formulas.
