Jaxara developed a custom online locality-based search utility which integrated with both eBay’s Auction API and Microsoft’s Solution Provider Partner Network.

About ASCII

Formed In 1984, The ASCII Group is currently the second largest private company in the Washington DC Area. ASCII’s mission then and now is the same: to harness the power of the solution provider to benefit the business consumer of IT products and services. The technology and times have changed. Now the independently owned computer solutions integrator is the backbone of the IT industry.

According to the US Department of Commerce, in the last ten years, the largest driver of growth of the US economy has been the IT industry. The services and specialized software that the solution integrators provide are the LARGEST component of that part of our economy's growth. The hardware manufacturers largely assemble components and the major software companies only provide part of the final solution.

ASCII harnesses the power of these independent resellers to form the World’s Largest Group of Independent Computer Resellers.


Problem

ASCII maintains a database of over 30,000 certified technology solution providers, most of whom are ASCII Members. In order to efficiently use this abundance of valuable data, ASCII needed to develop a tool which would allow businesses and consumers to search for technology professionals and companies with specific expertise in specific combinations of platforms and technologies. This tool needed to be able to integrate with many high profile web sites such as eBay and the Microsoft Partners Site.

Solution

Since an important requirement of the ITLocator was that it be able to seamlessly integrate with many different platforms, Web Services were the obvious choice for the implementation..

Using a Service Oriented Architecture the ITLocator was integrated with the Microsoft’s Partner website and as a result gained seamless access to considerably more data greatly extending the power of the solution. The ITLocator was also integrated with eBay’s Auction API. As a result, eBay users could effortlessly search the well qualified products and services within the ITLocator database through an eBay interface. The ITLocator is now actually powering the IT services branch of eBay!.

Conclusion

ITLocator has become the de facto standard for enabling businesses and consumers to search for and locate qualified IT service providers and product specialists. To date ITLocator services hundreds of thousands of users and has assisted many IT services firms and resellers to develop their businesses beyond expectation.

Through the use of our patented software development methodology, Plyometrix™ we were able to deliver this solution on time and on budget and meet the needs of our client and their very powerful partners.

About DEMATHA

DeMatha Catholic High School was established in 1946 by the Order of the Most Holy Trinity. DeMatha's accreditation is through the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and the Maryland State Department of Education. Privately owned by the Trinitarian Order, DeMatha is a four-year academic high school located three miles south of the University of Maryland.

Chosen in 1984 and 1991 as a "National School of Excellence" by the U. S. Department of Education, DeMatha offers a comprehensive curriculum to serve the talents and interests of its 900 students. Courses are taught at a rate commensurate with its students' abilities and interests. The program of studies is complemented by a wide range of co-curricular activities highlighted by the athletic and music programs which have received regional and national recognition.

Recently, DeMatha was named the #2 High School Athletic Program in the USA by Sports Illustrated Magazine and a Top 20 High School in the Washington DC Metropolitan Area by the Washingtonian Magazine.

Problem

Since the early 20th century, DeMatha has accepted applications for admission in paper hardcopy format only. Presently, DeMatha receives hundreds or even thousands of applications each year to this prestigious institution and their overworked staff struggles to handle them all manually.

Further, DeMatha’s many nationally ranked athletics team, bands, academic clubs and departments all must update their web content on DeMatha.com quite frequently. DeMatha does not have an IT staff to handle these numerous requests in a timely fashion and it used to take weeks for such updates to occur.

Lastly, DeMatha maintains a Student Information System (SIS) which was used to plan class schedules, maintain sensitive student information such as social security numbers and track official grades for transcripts.

Solution

In order to solve the problem of manually processing DeMatha’s high volume of paper admission applications, Jaxara developed a custom admissions system. The system offers a publicly accessible online interface through which prospective students can apply and register for admission to the school. The system also provides a comprehensive administration area where admissions personnel can search through the prospective students, insert transcripts, insert recommendations, create and execute reports and much more.

Secondly, in order to solve the problem of overwhelming website updates, Jaxara developed a custom Content Management System (CMS) with Group/Role based permissions. This CMS provides a web based WYSIWYG editor that could be used by anyone regardless of technical skill level. The entire system was built around Group/Role based permissions, so only members of the ‘Football’ group, for example, could edit the football section of the website and so on. This allowed non-faculty members to assist in keeping extracurricular activity pages up to date so that coaches and moderators did not have to.

Finally, we built custom middleware which utilized SOAP/XML web services and served as an intermediary between the systems supporting the accepted students registering to attend DeMatha, the public web site and the Student Information System housed behind DeMatha’s firewall on their local network. This middleware allowed us to update the Student Information System seamlessly as new students registered without compromising the sensitive data that it stored.

Conclusion

By utilizing Jaxara and its patented software development methodology, Plyometrix™ , DeMatha's project was completed on budget and on time. DeMatha currently realizes the ability to accept ten times the number of prospective student applications in one tenth of the time.

DeMatha continues to be a client of Jaxara to this day and has plans for many new projects for Jaxara to undertake.

Jaxara developed a custom online shipment initiation tool which allows GTS clients to place bookings online and GTS employees to automatically initiate shipments.

About GTS

As GTS is fond of saying, "The world is our neighborhood". It must indeed be so for GTS to have successfully managed the tens of thousands of international HHG shipments in and out of the U.S.A. by air and sea since 1990. In doing so, GTS has become a strong partner for its large client list and a benchmark for quality to the shipping and logistics industry.


Problem

GTS staff had become overwhelmed with the large number of orders being placed by its ever growing client base. Meeting the challenge of keeping up was becoming more and more difficult where its competitors had already implemented computer based systems to assist in process automation. GTS needed to incorporate technology to regain their competitive advantage.

Solution

GTS contracted Jaxara to build a custom shipment initiation automation system that mirrored GTS proprietary business processes. Jaxara expertly analyzed and modeled the GTS business process and before long had architected the entire software solution based on that understanding. Jaxara then set about implementing the design and after conducting a well managed project delivered the solution on time and under budget.

Conclusion

As soon as the new system was placed into production, GTS staff reported that the easy-to-use and ergonomic Jaxara solution provided "a world of difference" for them in their ability to keep up with the ever growing work load. GTS management metrics have indicated a 50% increase in overall operational efficiency since the Jaxara solution was deployed.

GTS continues on unimpeded as one of the premier freight forwarding companies in the Mid Atlantic Region.

Jaxara developed a specialized logistics management system for Intelligistics, a company who partners with project freight forwarders and enables them to electronically communicate with their warehouse partners providing 100% transparency into shipments for their customers.

About Intelligistics

Intelligistics is a technology firm based in Baltimore who formed in 1991. They partner with project freight forwarding companies and add value by enabling them to offer their customers the ability to see the status of their project freight from the time it is purchased to the point where the freight reaches its intended foreign port. The value that they bring is through the power of the software they provide.



Problem

Intelligistics wanted to redevelop the proprietary software that they had previously offered their customers so that it could leverage newer more flexible technologies. They also wanted to drastically change the design of the original product to integrate all of the features they and their customers had long sought. The main factor that had prevented them from moving forward with this mission critical project was the extremely high price tag that most vendors where quoting.

Solution

By leveraging its patented software development methodology, Plyometrix™, Jaxara was able to offer the complete solution to Intelligistics for a fraction of the cost that other vendors had offered them. Jaxara began by performing a complete analysis of the business processes involved with project freight shipping and then began a thorough analysis of the original software offering. Before long, the business flow was completely modeled and the new software designs were completed. Through the use of Jaxara Plyometrix’s Interface Driven Development methodology (jXP IDD™) all of the screens for new application were running as mockups before implementation even began. By the end of the design phase, the client was 100% clear about how the new product would flow because they could see and navigate Jaxara’s Live Screens Mocks (ISM™). When the project went to implementation, Intelligistics was delighted by the high degree of communication that they experienced from their Jaxara Collaboration Manager. The Collaboration Manager held daily meetings with Intelligistics to make sure they were at all times fully aware of the progress being made during the development teams previous work day. During these daily status calls the Collaboration Manager also carefully reviewed all project issues being tracked and was sure to record and integrate all of the client’s feedback into the project specifications. Right on schedule, the implementation phase ended and the testing and tuning phase began. Within a short time the project achieved a production release and Intelligistics’ new product was ready for deployment.

Conclusion

Jaxara completed Intelligistics’ project on time and under budget and the new product line has been a great success for their company.
Intelligistics continues on as one of the leaders in their space and remain one of Jaxara’s clients to this day.