Enterprise Solution

“The company had outgrown its legacy PO system and the management had a need for greater controls and reporting. Tracking budgets and controlling purchasing was extremely time-consuming on our legacy system. As the company had grown, we were unable to effectively support our distributed workforce.

For store managers and staff, getting requisitions approved in time to meet the needs of the business was very hit or miss. In order to get the job done on time people often resorted to working outside of the system. Vendors often filled orders without a PO which resulted in not getting paid in a timely manner. Accounting staff struggled to stay on top of budgets and were caught in a cycle of answering inquiries on the status by stores as well as vendors for status of payment. Clearly several control weaknesses existed in the current system and the resulting business practices.

Synergetic worked with all of the parties involved and developed a short-term fix and long-term solution. Synergetic's two-phased solution process exactly met the needs of our organization. The work done on our legacy system alleviated some of the pain associated with the application and helped our users hang in there with us while we developed a long term solution that met the needs of our entire organization.”

IT Transformation

The Client:

“The advertising department at Macy's West relies on a number of specialized applications to manage complex mission critical workflows. We have our own IT department to support these applications and our Mac user base. The rapid growth of our organization and changes within the department required the development of several new systems. Our legacy applications were developed using technologies that were increasingly difficult to scale and maintain.”

The Challenge:

“We urgently needed a replacement to our ad estimate application which is responsible for calculating costs for proposed ads during the planning phase. We wanted to take advantage of the latest open-source technologies to develop a web-based replacement but lacked the expertise. We needed outside help to get the job done but ultimately we wanted to develop and maintain our systems in-house.”

The Solution:

“We partnered with Synergetic to provide training and development assistance. Synergetic provided advanced technical training on web application development using an object-oriented, MVC framework in PHP. We learned in-depth database architecture using PostgreSQL. Finally, we learned all the necessary supporting technologies, from server configuration to security.

Synergetic created a smooth transition from the classroom to development. Synergetic took a comprehensive approach going beyond the technical to encompass areas such as project management, engaging stakeholders, defining specifications, prototyping, source code management, documentation, and QA.”

The Results:

“Working together we completed the application in time for the upcoming advertising season. We now have a superb development framework upon which we have developed several more applications. Thanks to Synergetic our capacity to manage the full software lifecycle of our business applications has been significantly increased. Synergetic's partnership successfully transformed our group into a top-notch web application development shop.”

Business Intelligence Solution

The Challenge:

“Macy's West has an annual advertising budget of over $250M that covers a territory of more than 250 stores. Numerous analysts track and report on the advertising department's marketing, financial and media activities from multiple data sources. Synergetic was brought in to assist with improving the quality, efficiency and accuracy of our reporting systems.”

The Solution:

“First, Synergetic conducted thorough interviews with VPs, directors, managers, analysts, IT, and other staff. They proposed developing a central data warehouse to consolidate data from six disparate systems. Synergetic worked hand in hand with the advertising department to build the database, making sure that all of our needs were met and that it was user-friendly. Training and building of the system were heavily intertwined. Synergetic provided thoughtful and detailed training on how to use the database and on how the reporting system worked.

In addition, Synergetic built upon our strengths and proficiency in Excel by creating customized training programs in the following technologies: query building, advanced reporting in Access, and automation using scripting in Excel, Access and terminal emulator applications. These new skills improved reporting accuracy and saved lost time spent on formatting and data entry.”

The Results:

“We are now able to produce reports with appropriate granularity for planning, testing and reporting of varied marketing campaigns. By having all our data in one system and the skills to mine it, we are able to deliver quality information more efficiently and effectively to upper management. This has greatly improved our reporting.

Synergetic provided great personalized training that worked with our hectic schedules. They made sure that we understood the fundamentals of how tables, queries and macros worked before undertaking a given project. They taught to our learning styles using clear explanations, drawings and examples. After receiving the hands on training from Synergetic, we were able to become teachers and mentors to our colleagues. And that speaks volumes to the success of our collaboration with Synergetic.”

Scalable Solution

“Synergetic Consulting initially assisted us with a pilot project to develop Equipment Express, a completely new kind of business banking product. Through the next two years, Synergetic was instrumental in developing this pilot project into a full-fledged department delivering hundreds of millions of dollars in equipment financing annually to hundreds of thousands of customers.

Early phases of the project involved extensive market research. Synergetic developed a database to track data across differing marketing and sales campaign strategies. The database provides contact management as well as a suite of reports allowing us to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of each campaign. Synergetic worked closely with outside telemarketing companies to capture and import data gathered from customers. Synergetic coordinated with Dun and Bradstreet to develop a model for targeting customers from a nationwide list of small businesses.

Once the initial phases of the project were complete, Synergetic upgraded our systems to handle large volumes of data allowing us to launch large campaigns targeting hundreds of thousands of prospects. Synergetic built a high performance database server running Microsoft SQL Server. The system meets the strict security standards of Wells Fargo Bank. Today, Wells Fargo offers the Equipment Express product to small businesses nationwide. Our product offers the flexibility of an unsecured business line of credit with the interest rates of a secured loan. The product's tremendous success is built on systems developed by Synergetic Consulting.”

Boutique Solution

The Client:

“Real Property Advisors is a boutique consulting firm that serves commercial property owners, investors, developers and users. Real Property Advisors distinguishes itself by providing rigorous research and analysis, comprehensive reports that communicate effectively and value-added execution of customized business plans.”

The Challenge:

“Real Property Advisors needed a system to track and document the entire front-end work flow of the real estate process including: 1) a site in search of a user, 2) a user in search of a site and 3) multiple parties involved in the process, such as architects and lawyers. We reviewed existing CRM products, both generic and real estate specific. While there were many back-end accounting applications, none provided the functionality to replicate the real estate process in a meaningful manner.”

The Solution:

“Real Property Advisors contacted Microsoft which referred Synergetic Consulting as a high-level developer and Microsoft Certified Partner. We retained Synergetic to create a proprietary solution. Prior to writing a single line of code, Synergetic conducted thorough interviews to understand our objectives and work flow; and it reviewed and assessed our current database application. After which, we worked collaboratively to design a user-friendly system that functions smoothly to support our many different clients and our diverse tasks.

The system's core keeps mutually exclusive data in three primary categories: People, Companies and Properties. Then, we create and rank relationships through user-defined categories that we can easily devise on our own without knowing how to write code. A contact management layer permits us to record and track past and future events, document versions, and stages within the real estate process. For example, multiple lease proposals can be tracked to assist the lease negotiation process.

The real power of our application centers on a sophisticated search system that allows us to filter data, relationships and events into meaningful subsets of information that relate to a specific project or assignment. Once established, we can modify each subset of data en masse as well as drive our reports. For example, with a few clicks we can creatively search companies by geographic and/or functional criteria, assign prospective tenant, buyer, contractor or other relationships to a specific property, and generate reports for our own internal control or for our clients. Once the initial subset is established, we need only to focus on the changes and updates.”

The Results:

“Our industry is multi-disciplined and dynamic. Our application replicates this industry process and solves our firm's needs unlike any other available product. The architecture monitors our actual day-to-day business procedures in real time. We are able to maintain a complete audit trail of our activities, monitor our progress and stay fully accountable to our clients. Moreover, we now accomplish these tasks without staff assistants that most of our colleagues need to stay organized. As a small firm, these savings in personnel are very important.

The flexible design allows new features and reports to be added quickly and at a marginal expense. By implementing features in a modular fashion and on an as-needed basis, Synergetic saves us time and money.

Synergetic has faithfully supported us with outstanding service at competitive rates for more than 10 years, and often on short notice. As a net result, our clients and colleagues praise our research capacity and cite our reports as the most illustrative and elegant in the industry.”