Software Development - Transformational Case Studies

If you're looking for dramatic changes to your company's performance then you came to the right place.

Do you need to:

• Double your sales?
• Streamline your processes?
• Put your finger on the pulse of your business information?
• Increase efficiencies by orders of magnitude?

Photo: Denver Post

21st can do that for you in many different ways. Our custom database software design and software development applications are intuitive and outstanding in their user friendliness.

We have dramatically changed companies for years, and below are several examples of these transformational software systems. Contact us today to add your success story to the list.

Custom Software Development Case Studies on this Page:
Semiconductor and Pharmaceutical Imaging Software Systems
Financial Loss Control
Mortgage Flood Certifications
Manhattan GMAT
Little Planet Learning
Commercial Real Estate Appraisal, Financial
Real Estate Development
Medical Software - Medical Office Voice-Driven Automation
Educational Software Systems
Web Design / Custom Database Software Development

Semiconductor and Pharmaceutical Imaging Software Systems

Photo: Reuters

For 12 years 21st designed and built custom imaging software systems for the top semiconductor (Intel, AMD, Fairchild Semiconductor, Lucent Technologies, Applied Materials and more) and pharmaceutical (Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Dupont, Bristol Meyer/Squibb, Immunex, Smith/Kline Beecham, and others) companies in the world. More than 45 major versions of these imaging systems were built, and more than 3 major versions were delivered for several of these imaging systems across 5 years time.

Photo: Dragon Pharmaceuticals Manufacturing

These imaging software systems were built to support the analysts and engineers in their process optimization and data analysis efforts. Reports from the systems were created for top management. These client-server systems used many imaging technologies and tied directly into their electron scanning microscopes and XRay machines.

Financial Loss Control

Photo: San Francisco Chronicle

Phoenix Loss Control stepped in to manage the information and finances associated with a contractor breaking a telecommunication line. 80 - 100 people logged into their local area network daily to use the spreadsheets containing the data for all of their customer cases. The spreadsheets were massive and not the appropriate tool for the job. Not only that, the spreadsheets would crash, and their IT company would sometimes not be able to retrieve and restore a backup. This was catastrophic to Phoenix as well as their customers.

Enter 21st Century Technologies. We analyzed their data and case management needs and designed a system that easily allowed them to scale their system to hundreds or thousands of times their current size (which was happening fast). Field investigators could login to the system and take pictures and data with their cell phones in real-time so their efficiencies skyrocketed. We also swapped out their IT company to a real professional outfit that ensure backups and restores were always only minutes away.

Mortgage Flood Certifications

Image: Marvin Nauman/FEMA

AccuFlood determined if addresses of new mortgages lied within a federally mandated flood zone. If so then flood insurance was required of the property purchaser. They guaranteed a 24 hour turn-around on the flood certifications.

They attempted 3 times to build an automated system to process these addresses. The last company that failed was Booz Allen Hamilton. They hired 21st next, and long story short, the custom database software system was completed in 7 months. Average time to complete a flood certification was reduced to below 10 seconds. The ones that took longer were queued up in a custom layered ArcView geographical information system (GIS) application where analysts could make a visual determination within seconds. An algorithm allowed analysts to quickly make their determination by automatically zooming in on the address in question while showing all addresses in the area that had already been determined as being in a flood zone or not.

21st created a demo of the system for the Mortgage Bankers Association conference and AccuFlood subsequently got the business of the country's two largest mortgage companies. A few months later they were bought out by a major player and the owners retired millionaires in their 20's.

Medical Software - Medical Office Voice-Driven Automation

Photo: Lavalee | Brensinger Architects

When Healthcare Chain, a medical office consulting firm called to discuss the feasibility of a voice-driven database application we suggested a proof of concept software development application. It worked as desired so we proceeded with building a commercial-quality system. We built two major versions of the software.

The company was service-based, and once the 2nd version was deployed in several medical offices the doctors asked them why they kept coming in since the software was intuitive, worked great and they knew how to use it very effectively. It had reduced the time to take SOAP notes after a patient visit from 20 minutes down to less than 5. The Healthcare Chain board met to discuss this and voted to change to a product-based company with the software we wrote as the product. They offered the CTO position to Michael Cordova, our president who wrote the software, but he wasn't looking for a job. Instead, he assisted the customer in hiring a CTO to allow continued development of the software in-house.

Educational Software Systems

Manhattan GMAT

There were no online GMAT refresher courses available when Manhattan GMAT contacted 21st. They wanted a completely configurable online educational system that allowed them to create their own curriculums with both graphical and text questions. It would need to emulate the GMAT test accurately both in terms of aesthetics and timing. They also wanted sophisticated reporting that provided feedback to assist their students in passing the real GMAT exam.

21st designed and built this powerful online GMAT educational system to make it the first online GMAT system available in the world.

Little Planet Learning

Little Planet Learning had a unique knowledge transfer online educational system. It had been proven with many customers. It was a training software system where experts provided their key input to train hundreds and thousands of others without the experts time being required. When they got a US federal-level client the software was required to be Section 508 accessibility compliant. This law mandates that all systems created for the Federal government must be able to be used by people with various handicaps like loss of sight, loss of hearing, no mouse capability and no keyboard capability.

21st provided Little Planet with the Section 508 layer needed in the software. We dissected and rewrote all of the code in the system, wrapped it in Section 508 capabilities and provided the navigational assists that allowed full use of their educational software tools for handicapped visitors.

Web Design / Custom Database Software Development

Our president Michael Cordova is the author of WordPress Websites For Business: How Anyone Can Maximize Website Performance And Results. See the sidebar above.

Our Neighborhood Directory has been in business since 1989 and their website was in need of a fresh look and search engine recognition so they hired 21st to take care of it. The problem was that they needed to list hundreds of advertisers on the site and needed a reasonable way to manage all of them. The solution was to create a website using WordPress as the content management system and seamlessly integrate a custom database software application into it.

21st created a custom database software application to manage all of the advertiser data. The original data source was a spreadsheet which we imported into the database system. The database application allows simple editing of the data and allowed each advertiser to be listed in multiple categories. We next created 2 pages for the site - one lists all categories and the other contains every advertiser listing. Links from the category page to the respective listings in the detail page ensure maximum SEO value.

A critical feature of this website is the capability for visitors to search the directory listings. Normal WordPress search only searches the pages or posts in the WordPress database. Since the directory listings were in a different database, the normal search wouldn't work. We created a custom search capability that shows all listings with the searched word highlighted in yellow. Sometimes custom database software solves the problem rather nicely.

21st not only built Our Neighborhood Directory a highly SEO-optimized website, but they now have the capability to manage all website content themselves.

Commercial Real Estate Appraisal, Financial

Photo: rdcappraisals.com

Michael Ross of Ross and Associates, Inc., a commercial property appraiser knew that custom database software could help him, but he didn't know how. We created an application that allowed him to enter normalized, non-redundant data into a database software application, then export it into a spreadsheet for analysis and final reporting. Ross normally did about 45 appraisals a year. In the first year of operation this application allowed them to appraise 90+ properties with the same resources and the application paid for itself within one month.

Real Estate Development

Photo: Larry Holtz

Mission Viejo, Inc. is the original owner and developer of the area now known as incorporated Highlands Ranch, Colorado. They sold the land to developers with terms based on the volume of development. The faster a developer built homes, the better their terms of purchase.

The problem was managing the development information and creating realistic projections. It took over a month to create a 5 year projection report and the President had no confidence in its accuracy. The real estate information management system we built for them allowed them to run a 5 year projection at the click of a button. The system had checks and balance procedures with CFO approvals that guaranteed the integrity of the data.