CONSULTANCY, DEVELOPMENT, SUPPORT & MAINTENANCE

Nutrimetics is a major cosmetics sales division of Tupperware, the international direct sales company.

The company runs custom software specifically written for the direct sales industry.

XLR consultants have extensive experience of this type of business, provided database access modules and supply, support and maintain the company’s client-side software access systems.

CONSULTANCY SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

When MM Group, (Now Teleperformance) acquired a fulfilment company competitor, they inherited a majorly bespoke system. As the skill base they had did not match that needed for the acquired company, XLR were retained to support and develop the application.

A number of additions have been made to the system, which now enables a wide array of stock and client management capabilities.

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LOTUS NOTES SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

Renold’s Chain is a world leader in the manufacturer of specialised chain of all sizes, for all uses.  The client has a very strong engineering culture, but they realised that too much expensive engineers time was being taken up developing their own Lotus Notes applications internally. The engineers were drifting away from their core “fee earning” engineering roles, into non-fee earning software development roles.

XLR provided and project managed development resource offshore, enabling a far greater return for the investment and enabling engineers to return to their core function.

LOTUS NOTES SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

The XLR team undertook a Lotus Notes project for this major airport, via its system supplier. By developing the system offshore, the supplier and client benefited from vastly reduced development costs, with greatly improved time-scales.

CONSULTANCY RESOURCE

Ardent have utilised XLR resource for a number of their client’s systems, where additional consultancy was required.

CONSULTANCY RESOURCE

Informix have utilised XLR resource for a number of their client’s systems, where additional consultancy was required.

CONSULTANCY RESOURCE

The XLR team have provided consultancy to IBM’s U2 division who have utilised XLR resource for a number of their client’s systems, where additional consultancy was required and not available in-house.

DISASTER RECOVERY, CONSULTANCY, SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

This very specialised chemical transport business had a deeply bespoke accounts and order system, formerly written by a long dissolved software company.

When the client’s new IT Manager took up his post, he was immediately confronted with a major systems failure, due to poor prior database & server management.

It was critical the company maintained operations, which involved the shipping of hazardous chemicals both nationally and internationally.

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CONSULTANCY, SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

The client is a specialised mini-department store, set in the beautiful Scottish countryside. Despite their remote location, they have built a thriving retail business, which developed a strong mail order division. Faced with the loss of the developer of the mail order system, the client was concerned about their ability to maintain the mail order system, which still required considerable onward development.

XLR took over the system maintenance, providing support via dial-in connection. Once the existing system was stabilised, XLR undertook the required development to enable much faster stock management information.

WEB DEVELOPMENT, EMAIL SERVER SET-UP, SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

This £50m turnover retail group wanted a web presence and e-commerce platform. Due to the changing nature of its products and the complexity of product types, (colours, sizes etc), they found it would not easily fit in an “off-the-shelf” e-commerce package. After looking at systems costing high six figure sums, they came to XLR.

A bespoke e-commerce system was developed for the on-line shop, with a back-end link enabling easy input and extraction of data from other corporate systems.

CONSULTANCY, SUPPORT & MAINTENANCE

A billion dollar division of a US top 100 company, needed to move a critical project management system off a redundant database technology running on redundant hardware. This meant swapping operating system, hardware platform and database all in one go. XLR successfully undertook the project, causing minimum disruption. The updated system can now interface with the client’s other systems, providing operational savings.

CONSULTANCY SUPPORT & EMAIL SERVER SET-UP

The client required a secure email facility for client systems. A cost effective Linux based email server solution was provided by XLR for a fraction of the cost of that quoted by others.

The system has none of the complexity of Microsoft Exchange Server, yet handles all the email needs of the client, with little or no maintenance needed.

CONSULTANCY, PROJECT MANAGEMENT & DEVELOPMENT

The explosion of internet betting offered tremendous opportunities, but required large scale development and heavy duty web-based applications, running in multiple countries, with synchronised data, capable of taking massive loads at prime time sporting events, such as The Grand National. A daunting task.

This PLC client proposed a listing on the UK AIM market. XLR undertook the development, which required database and web systems development and network installation logistics in the UK, Belize and Gibraltar.

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CONSULTANCY SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

When the developer of the client’s critical Port Management System went out of business, midway through the development cycle, they needed urgent cover to ensure stability and onward development and support.

XLR undertook a review of the product, helped to get the application stable and provide on-going support, consultancy and development resource to finish the project and complete further additional projects.

CONSULTANCY SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

Faced with a critical application written in a language rapidly becoming obsolete, the institute faced some hard choices.

The system was providing training & support to small banks around the world, often in emerging and third world countries. The Institute could not let their clients down.

XLR were able to rewrite portions of the application, to enable it to be run on a more modern database. Further modules were then added.

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CONSULTANCY & SUPPORT

A charity dealing with cancer patients and their families. Needing guidance on the choice of IT systems, they turned to XLR who chose and installed the systems for them.

A Pro Bono project.

CONSULTANCY SUPPORT & NETWORK AND EMAIL SERVER SET-UP

When legislation required a major upgrading of a criminal law firm’s IT systems, they asked for tenders from a number of suppliers. Unfortunately, the highly technical specification caused consternation. Were they getting value for money? Did they need everything that was being quoted for? Would it do the job? Did they know what they were getting? These were all questions they found themselves unable to answer.

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SUPPORT & MAINTENANCE

The company operated a complex direct marketing/commissions application, provided by an American software company, with no local representation. This system was critical to their operation. As such, they were at risk of potential system failure.

XLR’s staff have a great deal of experience in this niche market and so were able to maintain the system, ensuring 24/7 operation and the peace of mind that help was local, not 8000 miles away.

When further development was needed for the system, XLR were able to provide the rare technical skills to undertake this project.

SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

The client felt they did not warrant their own IT Manager or department, but the complexity of their business process meant they had a need for these skills.

XLR provide this back-up resource as and when required, enabling high availability of their network, without the associated expense of in-house IT staff.

SUPPORT & MIGRATION

When the client took over another business, they inherited an unfamiliar database system for which they did not have any in-house expertise. IBM referred the client to XLR, who undertook a review of the system and its stability and developed modules to enable export to the client’s main database system, thus saving the firm from having to make a major investment in new systems.

SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

Faced with their existing developer retiring, XLR stepped into the breach, providing maintenance support for this critical bespoke application. The application runs a real-time database with links to a network of office nationwide. The application was redeveloped to be cloud based, enabling the client to better utilise part time homeworker staff.

SUPPORT & DEVELOPMENT

The client developed specialised software for the Motor Factor trade. XLR supply, support and maintain the company’s client-side software access systems, enabling them to interface their system to a myriad of third party systems.

APPLICATION DEVELOPMENT

XLR took over the development and maintenance of this custom written ordering system adding considerable functionality to cater for their client requirements.

The Fulfilment company’s clients each required their own bespoke interface to enable orders to be placed remotely, updating the central order system. Our team ensured that the data received was validated by relevant fields, correctly updated the ordering system and issued an order confirmation back to their client.

SUPPORT, MAINTENANCE & DEVELOPMENT

Although at the forefront of technology in the Aerospace industry, the clients back-office systems were based on an old green-screen character based system.  XLR provide support & maintenance for the company’s client-side access software systems. This legacy system had been heavily customised and the company were reluctant to replace it, due to the critical nature of the interface.

XLR provided ongoing support & development to enable the client to slowly switch to a new system, without downtime.

WEB DATABASE DIRECTORY DEVELOPMENT

The client required a web-based directory and capabilities catalogue of alternative practitioners. The web site enabled on-line registration, updates and multiple category look-ups for clients to find their nearest practitioner.

Full enquirer details were captured and logged in a lead chasing system for both the directory publisher and the practitioner.

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SYSTEM MIGRATION

XLR provided consultancy resource and systems for a server and database migration. With a heavily utilised database, the project had to be carefully timed, allowing only minimum downtime. The existing operating system and databased had both been “end-of-lifed” and were no longer supported. However, the heavily bespoke system was very customised to the company operations. As they handled consumer response from newspaper cuttings and also TV show responses, they had little opportunity for downtime.

XLR successfully managed the project with no perceptible notice to staff, except the vastly increased speed of the new system.

MEMBERSHIP LOGIN AND TRACKING

The client needed a fully comprehensive  membership management system, to help run their busy Gym. The system has a full “Swipe In” service that records their visits. The system can report on “time since last visit” to chase up members who may have not visited for a while. A series of “chaser” emails and calls could be scheduled, to cajole a lapsed member back to the gym.

This extra service meant the clientèle felt their fitness needs were being managed much better than occurred with other gyms, resulting in a much higher than industry average retention. The system also tracked fitness and weight loss progress for members as well as helping with recruitment of new members.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT

The client uses the on-demand telephony provided by XLRNT Com as well as the XLRNT resource management package to enable them to take calls and place bookings for restaurants, therapists, and many others.

The booking system can find the next unallocated free time for a single resource, say a person) or multiple resources, (say a person, consulting room, special equipment required for the appointment etc).

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ON-DEMAND TELEPHONY

This client uses the XLRNT and xlrgroup.net infrastructure to enable remote home workers to network into a single environment to create a 24/7 telephone answering service for many companies. The philosophy is that callers always prefer to speak to a human operator.

The operators are able to field calls from 100’s of companies and put tasks into the back end task management system as well as sending out emails and text messages to the relevant staff of those companies. By utilising a cloud based VOIP delivery system, agents can be located anywhere in the world, offering cost effective 24/7 coverage across all time zones.

DOCUMENT MANAGEMENT

This client needed to import over 100,000 documents monthly into the XLRNT document management system and required searches into over 3 million documents within seconds. This client also uses the task management system to process hundreds of manual approvals per day. XLR designed and built a system to enable operators to visually view client signature’s on coupons and ensure the information extracted from the coupon matched what was on the coupon.