We have had the opportunity to participate in a very wide range of projects, each of which has delivered value to customers. To help you understand the breadth and depth of work that we take on, here are a selection of projects that we have - or are - involved in:
A large Health and Safety consultancy approached us with a problem that they hoped we could fix. Their valued and skilled assessors were leaving them and they knew that the reason was down to the enormous overhead of collecting, collating and writing reports for their assessments. We were able to provide them with a customised solution that exactly fitted their way or working. It integrated with their CRM to avoid the need for entering information onsite, was able to work offline and even generated and emailed the final report for them. Cambridge Software continues to provide the customer with a support contract to give reassurance for such a mission critical tool.
We have strong links with the R&D and Startup communities in Cambridge. It was this that made us a first choice for a pioneering company working on mesh networking to contact us for some help. They had done well with their product and were in the enviable position of having to go to market with a product very soon. While their proof of concept was excellent, there were key user-facing components that were missing and they needed to expand their team quickly in order to meet customer fulfillment dates. Cambridge Software were able to second one member of their team and additionally provide some much valued technical oversight to ensure efficient delivery. As a result, the much needed user interfaces were spun up speedily which greatly enhanced the value of the product in the eyes of the end user.
We were honoured to have been approached by a leading brand in models and toys to assist them with some significant investment that they needed to make into a website. With a broad range of requirements including a CMS managed catalogue and order portal for customers, it also needed to tie in to their in-house systems. Our assigned consultants were able to deliver some valued "hand holding" throughout the procurement process. This included ensuring the tender specification and scope was collated, verified and written in a meaningful way for the bidders. The process of ensuring the right partners were selected to deliver on the project was aided by representation at the presentations and interviews and that the decision making team had all of the facts when choosing who to work with. Making a choice of a web developer partner is critical and thanks to Cambridge Software the company were guided through the process with all questions answered.
Sometimes we're lucky enough to get involved in a venture from very early days. This was the case with a local broadband and network connectivity provider that was pioneering an app-driven connectivity solution. They needed some technical expertise to deliver the vision of their app, at least to the proof of concept stage before doing some real world user testing. Our team were able to step through the requirements and to deliver a functional app for a tight budget that served as a great basis for end-user testing. It was trialled at a number of regional events where it received significant use which clearly demonstrated a good quality product, even at an early stage. We were then called in to consult on the technical angle of the go-to-market strategy. Working with marketing and finance specialists our team was able to present a forward looking but managed evolution of the product in line with their customer profile and with an agile delivery approach.
Through the excitement and hard work that often characterises a new business startup idea, mistakes can be made and problems can happen. This new business was working on a solution to help staffing within the health care industry and was going through a problematic time in getting their concept into a workable solution. Our involvement through our virtual CTO service gave the company the expertise that they needed to make decisions. They were able to call upon us to validate or inform the technical decisions that they were making as well as to have us oversee scrum and other aspects of project delivery.
One of the more challenging aspects that Cambridge Software deals with is with entrepreneurs and visionaries. Their zeal and wide range of ideas is often overwhelming! So it was with this really exciting project that aimed to provide an end-to-end service for innovators and researchers through opportunities for networking, collaboration, publishing and monetisation. Through our initial consultations we were able to produce a prioritised feature and delivery plan that would deliver the most value for the service's intended users with the tight monetary constraints that the build had. From there, an agile delivery ensured that the product continued to evolve and that user feedback was accommodated. We're proud that the seeds of our involvement in this project has led the company to win further rounds of venture funding and to become one of the top companies for innovation collaboration today.
Having considered many off the shelf point of sale systems, this business innovation centre approached Cambridge Software to see if we could offer a solution for a tracking Point of Sale system. It needed to integrate with their existing systems and be capable in the future of being customised to allow them to sell different offerings. A flexible real time view of sales and a fast simple interface was needed to deliver value. The solution provided was a simple app that could operate on any networked device and that offered the team an interface that increased order processing speeds as well as giving the finance team instant view of transactions.
For many years this surveying company had been using a third party tool. It was - sort of - working for them but they were finding change requests weren't being accepted and the tool itself was getting slower and slower to use over time. After an initial discussion, Cambridge Software scoped out a foundation phase of work to produce a secure, reliable, integrated platform that allows them to oversee and administer their business. This foundation phase was delivered with expert software engineer guidance and support and is now in use by their company. The metrics and automated workflow that it provides has allowed them to improve the efficiency of their business by constant KPI analysis and augmented data flow. The phase has been such a success that additional phases are already being delivered with them and a further phase is planned. Cambridge Software's agile working methodology has been of great benefit to them as they have evolved the platform over time.