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Lack of Data Integration Causes Loss of Profit for Home Shopping and E-commerce Retailer

Big Data for Optimized Marketing

Solution: Analytics, Business Intelligence, Data Lake Consulting

Industry: Retail & Distribution

Project: Big Data for Optimized Marketing
Client: Digital Retailer

Our client is a digital retailer that offers exciting brands and unique products to consumers nationwide with the television network. They deliver shopping entertainment to millions of homes while also offering shopping experiences via digital, mobile, and social channels.

Challenge: Having Many Disparate Systems was Creating Lag and Inefficiency in Crucial Business Decisions

Our client's business, being both on network television while also having a digital presence, had many different sources of critical yet disparate of customer information – keeping merchandising and marketing information separate.

Marketing was collecting customer information from sources including Clickstream, email marketing platforms, and their e-commerce site. Merchandising was also collecting their own customer data from sales made, offer acceptance, and product pricing. Having these disparate systems of collecting data, they were unable to use their data to answer questions like: "Are we creating the type of content customers will pay for?" and "What is the measurable impact on sales as a result of marketing?"

Additionally, the client's current infrastructure was not able to handle the volume of data being collected and was not able to share or combine this data with either outside sources or their own internal systems.

Solution: Data Lake Blends Disparate Sources of Data for Meaningful Decision Making

Dunn Solution's analytics experts were selected to leverage Microsoft Azure's cloud-based data lake technology to combine all sources and types of data into one environment that is able to handle the varying volumes of data received.

The data sources combined in the cloud-based data lake include an on-premise data warehouse as well as vendor files from CheetahMail and Adobe Site Catalyst. The data is captured by Informatica as well as the Azure Data Factory and then stored in an Azure SQL Data Warehouse and Azure BLOB storage, for both structured and unstructured data. These cloud-based tools deliver a very scalable solution for the varying amounts of data received without having to scale up or down in their own infrastructure.

Once this crucial data is captured and stored our client is able to create vibrant visualizations to find the answers they need. They accomplish this leveraging Microsoft PowerBI to create dashboards and reports.

Result: Integrated Sources of Data Lead to Optimized Marketing and Increased Profit

Our client is now able to track, measure, and adjust all marketing efforts to create the most profitable campaign. They are able to combine customer information, target campaigns towards its consumers, create an intelligent marketing mix based on real-time data, and better allocate their marketing expenditures and focuses.

This leads to realized ROI and increased bottom for our client, as well as a cohesive and scalable data environment.

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Open Innovation Portal and Development of a Compound Toolbox for the Pharma Research Community

Open Innovation Portal

Solution: Portals, Client Portals, Digital Customer Platforms

Industry: Pharmaceutical

Project: Open Innovation Portal
Client: Pharmaceutical Research Organization

A Pharmaceutical Research Organization has a commitment to working together with academic and industrial partners, government, and non-profit organizations to improve the health of patients everywhere.

Challenge: Portal to Facilitate Innovative Research

To better enable collaboration with these contributors, the pharmaceutical research organization approved the creation of an open innovation portal, where it would be easy to provide their potent, selective, well characterized tool compounds or probes for the public to conduct preclinical research.  

Dunn Solutions Selected to Develop Portal on Liferay Platform

The pharmaceutical research organization looked to Dunn Solutions, a trusted Platinum Liferay Service Partner, to help design and develop their portal on Liferay's enterprise open source platform. Requirements included having the user interface reflect the organization's distinct branding; the user experience to be easy and efficient; a self-service admin capability to add new compound inventory; and account management capabilities for the users.

Solution: Users Easily Search, Review and Order Compounds

Most of the requirements were able to be fulfilled using Liferay's out-of-the-box capabilities. Users search for compounds of interest and review their attributes. A molfile of the compound containing chemical structures and associated data is available for download. If a user is interested in ordering a compound, they add it to their shopping cart, and continue browsing, or checkout. Compound orders require a Material Transfer Agreement (MTA) that is programmed to be pre-populated with compound order information, and the user can print, sign, scan and upload the agreement to their account. Once the MTA is approved by the company administrator, the compound is assigned for fulfillment and shipped. The status of approval and shipping is shared via email and can be tracked in the user's portal account.

Result: Open Innovation Portal Enables Research Collaboration

The Open Innovation Portal provides an easy-to-use compound search and order system for its research community. The inventory can be easily managed by the company admins and orders can be easily tracked and managed by users. This organization will continue to develop the Open Innovation Portal to incorporate new concepts that will enable mutually beneficial collaborations.

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How a Retailer Increased Return on Investment by Reallocating Marketing Spend

Budget Reallocation & ROI Maximization

Solution: Predictive Analytics, Marketing Mix Modeling

Industry: Retail & Distribution, Consumer Goods

Project: Budget Reallocation & ROI Maximization
Client: Sporting Goods Retailer

Dunn Solutions worked with a major sporting goods retailer that wanted to better quantify and track incremental sales being generated by its marketing for its activity trackers and active wear.  The retailer was currently spending over 6.6MM to market its activity trackers across a wide range of channels.  Management wanted to know if incremental revenue exceeded its marketing spend and what its positive return on investment (ROI) would be.

Additionally, the client wanted to understand if its current marketing mix and level of spend were optimal, or if ROI could be improved by reallocating its budget.  Dunn Solutions' data scientists were there to help answer these questions.

Challenge: Marketing Spend Optimization

To properly measure incrementality (marketing effectiveness), Dunn Solutions needed to create a machine learning model.  Dunn Solutions requested three years of sales and marketing data for three different geographies on a weekly basis in order to fully execute accurate modeling.  Dunn Solutions looked at all of the retailer's current and historical marketing activities including TV ads, radio ads, magazine inserts, paid search, coupons and temporary price reductions. 

Dunn Solutions' data scientists examined marketing data (TV GRps, mailer impressions, in store flyer impressions, PPC impressions), baseline information (seasonality, cycle, trend, price, distribution) and geo-demographic data to be able to develop its model.

Solution: Econometric Model Delivers Answers

Dunn Solutions developed an econometric model that incorporated all the marketing metrics as well as market factors, such as seasonality, industry trends, and competitive activity. Dunn Solutions was able to divide "base" sales from incremental sales due to marketing.

Next Dunn Solutions' data scientists calculated the percentage contribution of each marketing activity on incremental sales and the current Return on Investment (ROI) by marketing channel. Efficiency curves for each marketing vehicle were extracted and used to determine the optimal spend and as inputs to Dunn Solutions' proprietary optimizer. Several planned scenarios were simulated on behalf of the client to identify the optimal budget reallocation needed to maximize its ROI.

Result: ROI Increase

The results of Dunn Solutions' marketing mix model were packaged and provided to the client.  The client used these results to reallocate its next marketing budget based on spend levels Dunn Solutions recommended.  13 months later after implementing Dunn Solutions' recommendations, ROI had increased from $1.68 to $2.11, a 25.6% improvement for the retailer.

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How a Retailer Decreased Email Opt-Out Rates and Saved $2.5MM

E-mail Opt-Out Rate Minimization

Solution: Analytics, Predictive Analytics, Customer Churn, Machine Learning

Industry: Retail & Distribution, Consumer Goods

Project: E-mail Opt-Out Rate Minimization
Client: Major Fashion Retailer

When Dunn Solutions met its current client, a major fashion retailer with multiple locations and brands under it's control, it was concerned with the high e-mail opt out rates it had been experiencing. 

One way they collected e-mails was through its loyalty card program.  The client had a program for its existing customers that sent them special offers and discounts for those who signed up.  The client used this database of e-mails to cross-sell in various ways to its existing customers.  Their 1.3 million e-mail subscribers were receiving multiple e-mails from its various brands.  If the customer shopped at one of its brands, it would receive e-mails from all of them.  The problem was that instead of driving more revenue with its e-mail blasts, people we're choosing to opt-out from receiving future communications from the company.

Challenge: High Attrition Rate, Low Acquisition Rate

Over the last 3 years, 2.97% of subscribers had opted out of further communication, over half of them in the last year. The number of new acquisitions was far too low to make up for the customers churning, and losses in revenue translated to a staggering $15.9MM ($8.5MM last year alone).

Dunn Solutions collected data on 50,000 customers randomly chosen from the pool of 1.3MM subscribers. The client captured all interaction variables such as e-mail frequency, time of email, open rate, click-through rate, as well as customer-specific variables such as time since last purchase, average transaction rating, number of coupons redeemed, time in loyalty program, and original acquisition channel.  In addition, the timestamp of the customers who opted out of email communication was recorded.

Solution: Individual Churn Score Created

Dunn Solutions developed and validated an econometric model that incorporated all customer metrics and assigned each customer a risk score. For each customer with a high-risk score, the model identified and ranked the reason.  Now the client knew who was about to leave as well as why.

Finally, customers assigned to priority groups based on their risk score and historical spend.  First priority was given to High-Value / High-Risk Customers.  The client addressed Priority A and Priority B customers (see model) with targeted corrective measures based on their specific reasons for the high risk score.  This gave the client the data and information it needed to be more proactive in its customer retention and to focus its e-mail offers on the right customers.

Result: Opt-out Rate Decrease

11 months later Dunn Solutions learned that by implementing the plan they developed, e-mail opt-out rates had decreased 15.9%, which equated to $2.5MM in savings for the client.

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Cloud Data Lake Significantly Improves Reporting Performance for Real Time Events Data

Big Data Solution Boosts Performance of Video Commerce Platform

Solution: Analytics, Data Warehousing, Business Intelligence

Industry: Professional Services, Software & Technology

Project: Big Data Solution Boosts Performance of Video Commerce Platform
Client: Industry Leader in Video Commerce

For many retailers and brands who are feeling the pressure to compete in an overly crowded online marketplace, videos have become one of the most powerful ways to differentiate themselves and connect with their consumers.  The challenge for many companies is not being able to effectively turn their video content into sales.  One company is leading the way to solve this challenge.

The company considers itself the most comprehensive shoppable video platform which empowers brands and retailers to source, merchandise and publish Video Commerce Experiences at scale.

Challenge: Platform Infrastructure Not Able to Support Large Quantities of Data

When Dunn Solutions met its client, their cloud based platform was not able to populate their reporting dashboards for their larger customers, some of whom were major retailers.  Their infrastructure did not support analysis on the big data being generated.  The company was using a PHP application to get real time data and feed it to their MySQL database.  This was a complex process because of the many transformations taking place within their PHP code which prevented it from operating in real time. 

Because of the volume of data their analytics dashboard could not return results for more than a month's worth of data for many of their enterprise level customers.

Solution: From Complex PHP Code and MySQL to AWS Services and Snowflake

Dunn Solutions re-architected the solution by capturing events data through AWS Kinesis and AWS Kinesis Firehose.  Using Kinesis Firehose, Dunn Solutions transformed the JSON events data in real time and staged it in an AWS S3 bucket. The next step was to create an ingestion process within Snowflake to get the data from the S3 bucket in real time.  Finally, AWS Lambda Functions were used to process the real time data within a Snowflake data lake and populate their resulting analytics tables.

Moving away from complex PHP code to using AWS services and Snowflake yielded a significant improvement in our client's platform infrastructure.  It made it easier for them to maintain the process as well.  Dunn Solutions also developed a real time dimensional model which was easy to query and resulted in both our client and their customers understanding their data better.

Result: Critical Performance Improvements Support Business Growth

The client is now able to populate their dashboards for their largest customers within less than a second – which was not possible before.  They are now able to provide their customers with accurate and up to the minute data which is critical to retaining and growing their business.

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End-to-End E-Commerce Development for Oilfield Services Company

SAP Commerce Cloud Implementation

Solution: E-Commerce, Digital Customer Platforms, B2B E-Commerce

Industry: Energy & Utilities, Professional Services

Project: SAP Commerce Cloud Implementation
Client: Fortune 500 Oilfield Services Company

Dunn Solutions' client is a multi-national Fortune 500 company that sells products to oilfield and gas companies.  As the world's largest oilfield services company, they were seeking the best way to increase sales while reducing their costs.

Challenge: Fortune 500 Oil Services Company's First B2B E-Commerce Platform

For many of their customers, parts purchases were made while they were "in the field" over the phone. Many of the parts being sold are complex and require a multi-step configuration process to order. This process could take over an hour to configure and then a few more hours to enter into their ERP.  Many of these parts would be ordered on a regularly scheduled basis.  Some product sales would occur at a higher frequency rate but at lower revenue levels.  The transaction time to process these orders manually could create a bottleneck with customer service and treasury personnel within the company.

Overall their current sales process proved not only to be time consuming for their customers but for their sales people as well.  The answer wasn't to add more sales people.  Continuing to add to their direct sales team would be prohibitively expensive.

The solution to address these challenges was clear, they needed a B2B e-commerce mobile responsive website that would be able to service their customers' needs while streamlining their sales operation.  This would lessen their need to hire more sales people and reduce transaction processing times.  It would also automate re-ordering which could help lock in more customers.  This would reduce their churn and increase sales.

They also required that their e-commerce platform be able to integrate with their SAP and legacy systems.  SAP Commerce Cloud (Hybris) was a perfect fit for their needs.

Solution: Dunn Solutions Selected to Deliver E-Commerce Solution

Dunn Solutions' client did not have the SAP Commerce Cloud experience to implement the solution themselves; therefore, Dunn Solutions was the preferred choice given its B2B e-commerce and SAP Commerce Cloud experience.  Dunn Solution was selected to develop the e-commerce platform leveraging SAP Commerce Cloud.

Dunn Solutions developed the e-commerce platform to include key B2B features that would help the oilfield services company achieve its goals.  These features included: Configure-Price-Quote (CPQ), individualized company pricing, and integrated self-service management.

The e-commerce platform was also built to allow their marketing team to use the robust content management system that comes with SAP Commerce Cloud that would allow them to make changes to their products, pricing, and promotions without needing help from IT.

Result: Fully Featured B2B E-commerce Implementation Delivered

Dunn Solutions delivered a robust, responsively designed e-commerce site that allows the oilfield services company the ability to better serve its varying levels of customers.  The e-commerce platform enables self-service for high frequency product sales which in turn reduces transaction costs for the organization and frees up their sales and customer service teams to be focused on serving its higher-level strategic customers.

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Liferay Self-Service Web Portal Improves Customer Experience for Global Security Company

Self-Service Portal Development

Solution: Portals, Client Portals, Digital Customer Platforms

Industry: Transportation & Logisitics

Project: Self-Service Portal Development
Client: Global Security and Protection Company

 The client is a Fortune 1000 global security and protection company. 

Challenge: Difficult to Use Self-Service Portal

The client wanted to have a self-service customer portal that would be easier to manage than its current site and be able to provide its customers with a better overall user experience.  The portal was not built to provide its customers with a single sign on to all of the client's proprietary self-service applications and tools that they offered.

Solution: Single Sign On Solution Developed

Dunn Solutions was selected to build a responsive self-service customer portal deployed on Liferay that would be easy to use and manage.  Dunn Solutions' team of Liferay certified developers, UI/UX designers and support personnel were needed for this project. Existing customer facing systems were integrated into the portal using API's or iFrames. Using OKTA, a single sign on solution was developed that would enable a user to access all of the client's applications from one spot within the portal. The main navigation menu was built to be role based, allowing customers to set permissions for what its users can see.

Result: New Self-Service Portal Improves Customer Experience

The self-service web portal now allows users to access its many different available applications from a single sign on which has greatly improved user experience and customer satisfaction. The client is able to make content and design changes through Liferay's content management system with ease. The completion of the client's U.S. based portal now has led to deploying globally to its many other country based sites.  Ongoing support from Dunn Solutions is also being provided.

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Fortune 500 manufacturing client wants computer vision software to read smart signs

Machine Vision License Plate Recognition

Solution: Analytics, Machine Learning

Industry: Manufacturing, Software & Technology, Transportation & Logisitics

Project: Machine Vision License Plate Recognition
Client: Fortune 500 Manufacturer

Dunn Solutions is supporting a Fortune 500 manufacturer with a multi-year research and development initiative. 

Challenge: Machine Vision Solution Needed for Smart Sign Manufacturing

The challenge for the manufacturer is to enhance their core strength in the material design of signs with computer vision to deliver an integrated solution that will read, understand, and automate workflow around various signs.  Signs that could only be identified and processed by humans, such as license plates and pavement markers, can now be encoded and handled using computer software.

Our client was looking for a partner with skills in machine learning and scalable, cloud based, solution and chose Dunn Solutions to partner with in developing and researching new digital products to offer a complete solution to their customers.

Solution: Focus on Smart License Plates

The challenge with license plates is to drive up the accuracy of reading and decoding them as compared to a human or an existing transportation tracking system.  License plates typically contain gaps in between the characters and those gaps are nearly invisible to the human eye.  Those gaps are however visible to an infra-red camera.  Knowing this, our client was able to create specially encoded smart license plates that would be highly detectable through computer vision and would also provide useful data about the vehicle, such as state/province registration, in addition to the plate numbers.

Dunn Solutions architected and delivered a computer vision pipeline using a combination of machine learning algorithms and highly scalable public cloud tools to read the smart license plates, collect detectable data from them and transmit that data to a web based front end user interface.  As part of the implementation, Dunn Solutions configured an industrial grade machine vision camera, which utilized an external light source which allows for "floating" plate images to be detected and captured once a vehicle crosses a preset line configured in the camera.  Once the vehicle crosses the  "invisible line", the camera generates image files which are transmitted to the first stage of the machine learning pipeline. This approach was proven effective over a variety of vehicle speeds and different lighting conditions.

Deep learning modules for plate detection, optical character recognition (OCR) and DSS mark detection were developed and tested as next steps in the pipeline.  Technologies leveraged include Amazon Web Services (AWS), Tensor Flow, OpenCV and proprietary algorithms to better automatically review content information on the fly.  A website which will showcase the data collected from the smart license plates on a front end user dashboard was also developed.

Result: Machine Vision Completes the Solution

The smart license plate solution was successfully tested internally and a pilot project is in progress for further testing. As our client extends their offering beyond physical components to complete digital solutions Dunn Solutions will continue to create additional value for their customers and users.

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Retailer Migrates its E-Commerce Site to BigCommerce to Optimize Backend Integrations, and Improve Shopping Experience

E-Commerce Site Migration and Redesign

Solution: E-Commerce, Digital Customer Platforms, B2B E-Commerce

Project: E-Commerce Site Migration and Redesign
Client: Wurth Wood

Wurth Wood Group, a retail supplier of high quality wood working products and services, is headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina with twelve locations across the southeast.  The Wurth Wood website provides an on-line shopping experience for individuals and trade customers looking to purchase and have delivered various wood, cabinet, abrasive, hardware, fasteners, and lighting products.

Challenge: Existing E-Commerce Site Requires Upgrades

The company's e-commerce site integrates with their ERP solution to deliver information from the business to the shopper. The backend integration with their ERP however was not processing in real time and was not fully optimized which reduced the speed and performance of the site.  Shoppers could not see real time pricing or product updates because of this.  Making other content changes on the site proved to be cumbersome as well.  Shoppers were not able to filter products by brand name which was a limitation in the site's functionality. 

These factors diminished the overall shopping experience and prompted Wurth Wood to make a change to their e-commerce site.

Solution: Dunn Solutions Team Implements Migration and Redesign to New Platform

Wurth Wood made the decision to move their current site to a new e-commerce platform, BigCommerce, rather than starting from scratch. As a certified BigCommerce partner, Dunn Solutions was the ideal choice to implement the migration and redesign of their site to address their current challenges.

The Dunn Solutions team migrated all of Wurth Wood's existing products, users and content to the BigCommerce platform and built a middleware to connect BigCommerce to their existing ERP and to optimize that integration.  Dunn Solutions utilized BigCommerce's enhanced product filtering functionality to improve Wurth Wood's product search capabilities and developed a responsive, new design that would improve the site's shopping experience.  In addition, a custom document library was created for internal sales and marketing people to use to add and manage marketing and sales content.

Result: New Backend and Frontend Enhancements Improve Customer Experience

By optimizing the integration with BigCommerce and Wurth Wood's ERP, the new e-commerce site is able to show real-time pricing and product updates.  Site speed and performance have greatly improved.  Shoppers are now able to search products by brand name among a variety of other product filters.  The site's backend control panel is easier to use to edit sales and marketing content. 

Using BigCommerce's in-store analytics dashboard has provided Wurth Wood with valuable user data for metrics such as cart abandonment and most frequently viewed products. 

These site enhancements have improved the site's overall shopping experience for their customers and have yielded Wurth Wood with greater actionable insights to increase sales.

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Dunn Solutions Delivers Visibility into Production Data from New Manufacturing Execution System (MES)

Manufacturing Business Analytics Solution

Solution: Analytics, Data Integration Services, Business Intelligence

Industry: Manufacturing

Project: Manufacturing Business Analytics Solution
Client: Food Manufacturer

Our customer is an award-winning, premier manufacturer and packer of natural and processed bulk, shredded, and sliced cheeses. They produce and pack their goods in eight state-of-the-art facilities in the Midwest, Utah and New York.

Challenge: Production Technology Offers Limited Reporting Capabilities

The company recently implemented a new Manufacturing Execution System (MES) that tracks production data, yield and performance. While the system very effectively manages the production process, it offers limited reporting capabilities and insight into the tremendous amount of information it captures. The Company needed a way to achieve real-time, in depth reporting without impacting the performance of its MES. It also required a way to report on production information in its headquarters and across its seven other facilities.

Solution: Infrastructure Needed to Deliver Reporting Requirements

Dunn Solutions was selected to deliver a scalable reporting infrastructure for implementation across the organization's eight facilities. The MES sits on a SQL Server and because of the large amount of data it generates, reporting is slow and tends to impact the performance of the MES. An extract, transform, load (ETL) delivered targeted data from the MES to a data mart on a separate server for efficient report delivery without straining the performance of the MES.

Once the data mart was complete, two dashboards were then built to monitor production by plant, line, shift and type of cheese. The dashboards refresh every five minutes and deliver visualizations of production data including performance (actual vs. target) with detailed downtime information; availability; and yield (waste produced during process). In addition, a number of the standard reports available through the MES were duplicated using the reporting technology for faster delivery.

Result: Dashboards Replace Piles of Paper Reports

The new reporting solution features a level of visibility and ease of access the company did not have prior to this project. The dashboards' easy-to-understand visualizations available on demand have replaced large stacks of printed reports that required time to produce and time consuming analysis. The dashboards now immediately deliver important data to floor, plant and corporate management who can monitor the production lines on an ongoing basis and act accordingly in order to keep production running smoothly and the plants operating at full profitability.

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Global Retail Displays Manufacturer Utilizes Dunn Solutions Outsourced Development Center (ODC) to Support Growing Demands on Internal IT Team

Global Delivery Model to Re-platform Application

Solution: Analytics, Data Integration Services, Business Intelligence

Industry: Manufacturing

Project: Global Delivery Model to Re-platform Application
Client: Retail Displays Manufacturer

Our client manufactures and maintains point-of-purchase product displays such as floor stands and wall systems, shelving, and other store fixtures for major retail chains and consumer products manufacturers worldwide. Their IT department develops and maintains over twenty diverse internal applications. Many applications are used for ordering fixtures, while others are used to store and manage business data that the ERP system cannot handle. In addition, other console applications take data in a certain format from one application and insert it into another, while other web applications are used to provide unified order data regardless of the source system.

Challenge: Significant Backlog of Application Troubleshooting Tickets Slows Progress of High Priority Application Improvement Projects

Due to the significant growth and success of the company there was a significant backlog of problem tickets relating to all these applications, mostly minor fixes and some dating back several years, and the rate of incoming tickets was outpacing the number of those being addressed and completed. In addition, there were several application improvement projects underway that were a high priority. The applications require continuous development to remain aligned with the organization's current, and frequently changing, business rules. The internal IT team didn't have sufficient resources to meet the demands of the growing ticket backlog and the work on the application projects; they needed help in order to catch up and deliver much needed process improvements.

Solution: Dunn Solutions Cost Effectively Augments Internal IT Team

The company selected Dunn Solutions to supply a team of .Net, C# and Oracle database developers, utilizing a combination of onshore and offshore resources, to cost effectively augment their internal IT team for several months. The work was divided between Dunn's offshore and on-shore team members. Dunn Solutions' off-shore team tackled the problem ticket backlog and handled moving applications from an old web server to a new web server, which included some application rewriting. In addition, they converted websites to full web applications and cleaned up and standardized build and deployment processes. The company's internal team and Dunn's onshore team worked on the various application improvement projects that delivered important process improvements to end users.

Result: Dunn Solutions' Support Helps RTC Improve Processes and Enables Internal IT Team to Work More Efficiently on Future Projects

Dunn Solutions' ODC team provided an economic and expedient solution to a burdensome problem ticket backlog and the demand of meeting high priority project requirements. The completed projects have helped the company achieve improved process efficiency, and best practices were implemented to promote code reuse and make similar future projects less time consuming and less taxing on the internal team's resources.

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Liferay Portal Developed to Consolidate Multi-System Business Intelligence Resources and Reports

Consolidated Analytics Portal

Solution: Analytics, Portals, Digital Customer Platforms

Industry: Healthcare & Medical

Project: Consolidated Analytics Portal
Client: Healthcare Provider

Our client is one of the largest multi-institutional health care delivery systems in the nation. It serves people and communities in 21 states from coast to coast with 86 hospitals, 128 continuing care facilities and home health and hospice programs that provide nearly 2.8 million visits annually.

Challenge: Hospital Needs a Unified View of BI Reports for Executives

Our client's executive team use many different tools for business intelligence reporting (including BusinessObjects (BO) 4, BO 3, Tableau, Clickview, and custom applications) which required them to log into each of these disparate systems to reach the information they needed. This process of logging into many different systems in order to make effective business decisions on a day-to-day basis was very inefficient for the team of executives. Our client needed to find a way to consolidate access to these business intelligence systems to help the team make business decisions in a more efficient manner.

Solution: Dunn Solutions Develops Fully Integrated Internal Analytics Portal

Dunn Solutions was selected to develop an Analytics Portal that would consolidate all aggregate BI systems, access, and reports into one unified view. The overall solution was built using Liferay open-source technology and incorporated custom developed connectors using each BI systems API's. Our team built in the capability to allow the hospital's BI team to add any new BI systems in the future with these connectors as well. This Analytics Portal allows single sign-on access for all of the executive team so that they may access all BI reports they need in one location and without signing into every system. Additional functionality that was developed in this portal includes: ability to flag reports as favorites, Administrator ability to generate audit reports across all systems, Administrator ability to adjust permissions based on user role, generate consistent report view regardless of BI system, browse and search across the many BI systems at once, and execute on-demand data refresh - to name a few. The Analytics Portal was complete with a "Contact Us" and "About" page so that executives can receive help in their portal instance from their internal BI team if needed.

Result: Consolidated Analytics Portal Enables Executive Team to Make Decisions More Efficiently

Dunn Solutions was able to deliver a consolidated Analytics Portal to give the executive team a unified view and single sign on access to all BI systems in order to more efficiently make business decisions. The hospital's BI and executive teams have found the implementation of their consolidated Analytics Portal so useful and efficient they have decided to expand the portal to include other departments throughout the hospital, utilizing their highly scalable Liferay platform.

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Ecommerce Portal Developed with Digital Custom Ring Designer

Self Service Custom Ring Designer

Solution: E-Commerce, B2C E-Commerce

Industry: Retail & Distribution, Consumer Goods

Project: Self Service Custom Ring Designer
Client: Taköhl Design

Taköhl Design is a thriving jewelry design company located in the heart of Chicago's growing Randolph Street Market district. Though the company principal Tammy Köhl does some custom jewelry collections for entities such as the Museum of Contemporary Art, the heart of the company is its patented Treasure Ring® collection.

Challenge: Need for Ecommerce and a Revitalized Marketplace Presence

The company developed great offline ways to sell their entire Treasure Ring® experience including ring samples being sent to retailers and a "Treasure Ring® Gift Box" concept that extends the experience of buying a Treasure Ring® through time and space, into the homes and hearts of the customers. However, the fun and interactive potential of the company's Treasure Ring® brand was not being fully realized in an online experience and had an overly manual ordering process that presented a large challenge from costly errors.

Solution: Dunn Solutions Develops Ecommerce site with Digital Custom Ring Designer

Dunn Solutions created an ecommerce platform to revitalize Taköhl Designs presence in the marketplace by  adding an element of fun and excitement to the site. This was achieved by giving the customer the power to "create" their own Treasure Ring® on any device they choose being desktop, tablet, or mobile. Our team created a personlized experience by allowing customers to be able to select each element of the ring's design including personalized message engraving, gem stone selection, and metal choice given a wide variety of options. The customer may then share their creation directly from the platform for a more simple and personal experience, while aslo marketing Taköhl Jewelers products. Additionally, our team developed an online ordering system that improves and optimizes the orders that are recieved from both the consumer direct and retailer channels, reducing costly errors and allowing Taköhl to focus on growing sales and increasing marketing efforts. Dunn solutions was also able to achieve the element of fun and excitement for Taköhl Jewelers by redesigning the company's print and online materials with a more clean, modern look & feel with a greater focus on the products.

Result: Improved Brand Image & Digital Experience, Increased Sales

Working with Taköhl, Dunn Solutions Group delivered an attractive, effective ecommerce solution that included a fully customizable digital experience for customers along with outstanding marketing materials that supports the Taköhl brand and drives sales through the newly optimized ordering experience. This work serves as a powerful, 24x7 base of operations that improves operational efficiency and changes the way the Taköhl brand is perceived by customers and retailers.

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COVID-19 Employee Tracing System

How to Bring an Employee COVID-19 Tracing Process Online

Solution: Analytics, Dashboards and Reports, Business Intelligence

Project: How to Bring an Employee COVID-19 Tracing Process Online
Client: State Agency

The client operates & maintains the regional sewers and wastewater treatment for the Greater Minneapolis/St. Paul region.  To ensure the safety of its employees and the community at-large during the COVID-19 pandemic, the client created an internal process to track and trace potential employee exposure to the virus to limit potential spread.

Challenge: COVID-19 employee tracing process requires automation to improve reporting and responsiveness

The client initially developed a COVID-19 process that involved each manager to fill out a paper form when someone on their team notified them of a potential virus infection or exposure through contact.  That information was then inputted into an excel file and uploaded to their database for tracking and reporting purposes. The challenge within this process was that the data collection effort was slow and inefficient. Without rapid data capture in place, managers and employees across the organization did not get the information they needed to quickly ensure that any potential spread of the virus was mitigated.

Solution: Dunn Solutions brings COVID-19 data collection process online with Liferay

To improve its COVID-19 tracing process, Dunn Solutions was selected based on its long-standing relationship with the client and its extensive experience building digital solutions on it's Liferay platform.  Dunn Solutions built a COVID-19 employee form online using Liferay that would be filled out by MCES managers when an employee notified them of potential virus infection or exposure.  That data would then automatically be saved to the client's database and enable managers to produce reports rapidly with the latest COVID-19 employee information.  Permission settings were also set up for managers to only see forms submitted in their department to maintain the privacy and security of employee health information.

Result: Continuing to Improve Contact Tracing System with Future E-Mail Notifications

By bringing client's COVID-19 forms online, the data collection and contact tracing process became streamlined with rapid reporting. This allowed its managers to make more informed decisions and mitigate any potential risk for virus transmission.

In the future, the client plans to automate email notifications that are connected to the COVID-19 form submissions in order to improve its contact tracing system between managers in the organization.