[Paul’s] product was on time, on budget, and highly flexible…[and] at each level his product got more polished and turned out to be exactly what we asked for. I would recommend Paul to anyone.

Ernie Lowell, IT
Sterling Machine Division

Success Stories

Foxwoods Casino
North Stonington, Connecticut

Situation: Foxwoods is the world’s largest casino with over 7,200 slot machines. In 2005, they were using a proprietary Time and Attendance Scheduling Control System (TASC) developed for them by an Australian software firm. Foxwoods was receiving no support and were in dire need of fixing several outstanding application issues. This system produces the data necessary to perform payroll billing for all 2,000+ employees of Foxwoods from the blackjack dealers to the food and beverage servers.

Examined, prioritized and fixed outstanding issues, implemented a more efficient report front end system, and created an interface between TASC and a job scheduling system called Vastech.

  • Developed a batch process that identifies employees that swipe out too early before their scheduled end time. This process eliminates paying people for time not worked and saves Foxwoods $60,000/year.
  • Rewrote the Holiday Pay Calculator, a program that calculates holiday pay using a complicated set of rules for all employees. Reduced the time it takes to run from 6 hours down to 15 minutes.
  • Created a custom report front end system to execute and view reports. Improved performance over existing reporting system by 125%.
  • Produced the interface program from the Vastech Scheduling application to the TASC system. Processed the input XML files and produced employee time sheets in the TASC system.
  • Among the outstanding issues fixed were: record locking problems, security issues, screen bugs, and database logic errors.

American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons
Rosemont, Illinois

Situation: National medical society was operating an older Progress application that tracked conference fees and seminar tickets for their Annual conference for over 15,000 domestic and international attendees. This required a complete business assessment of the current system which addressed the requirements for the end users, new bar code scanning equipment, and credit card transactions.

The most critical requirement involved the system’s credit card transactions. The current system validated credit cards in batch mode which took 24 hours to process. On-site registrants were immediately allowed to attend seminar events. However, unauthorized transactions amounted to $100,000, forcing the Academy to secure this lost revenue through alternate means. Additional system inefficiencies resulted in poor customer service to the medical professionals waiting to purchase their tickets.

Conducted business application analysis, implemented efficient systems, related tools, upgrades and processes

  • Served as the strategic IT advisor for the on-line system, by providing annual estimates for enhancements and for prioritizing and ranking the requirements defined by the Academy.
  • Evaluated three on-line credit card authorization systems for interfacing to the current on-line system. AAOS relied solely on my analysis to choose the optimal system.
  • Customized Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) to control SuperCharge (the selected credit card authorization system).
  • Configured Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) for SQL web application to work with newly upgraded Progress database.

Consistently produced cost savings by incorporating system improvements for each annual trade show

AAOS continues to request and receive annual support and upgrades to their annual Trade Show software package. PGA has become a key contact for all related IT decisions due to a strong, four-year track record of system analysis, rapid and robust improvements in customer service, dramatic cost savings and proven application stability.

Textron Fastening Systems, Camcar Division
Decorah, Iowa

Situation: Textron, one of the largest U.S. automotive fastener manufacturers, required a specific migration to a stable yet robust environment for a Final Inspection System to comply with stringent new government mandates. Through the Fastener Quality Act (FQA), the federal government required that all inspection records be kept on-line for a period of at least 5 years. As a result, Textron’s current system’s database became repeatedly corrupted due to the large number of records (five million) in a database designed to support 50% of that volume.

Generated $350K in annual savings, customized numerous applications, converted 5 million records

  • Installed PGA’s proprietary Sharp Menu System, completely redesigned a new FQA Final Inspection system, exceeded government and company goals by devising and implementing early alert systems, delivered significant division-wide time and budget efficiencies recouping $350K in annual expenditures.
  • Proposed and developed a series of inspection-related systems, including prioritized flagging of urgent testing criteria, and verification systems to notify Textron of incomplete, unpublished inspections approaching upcoming deadlines.
  • Created automated ‘delete to archive’ system to enable primary database to operate at optimal efficiency and visually display the necessary, mandated 5-year historical data for all parts and category evaluations.

Bank One
Columbus, Ohio

Situation: Bank One’s dynamic growth and increased financial service offerings resulted in a comprehensive initiative to ensure that all customer related credit costs were measured and tracked for a high visibility consumer auto loan and home equity lending application.

Helped generate annual savings of $2.5MM through development and design of an integrated database, new programming, system analysis and data conversion for the sophisticated CreditRevue application

  • Customized an automated vendor interface to capture all fees associated with collecting, rating, and processing Trans Union and Experian expenses to assess new applicant creditworthiness. Quantified and allocated costs per customer, which resulted in annual savings in excess of $2.5M.
  • Successfully completed 500-field data conversion project in two weeks, versus three-month allocated time frame, thereby producing significant cost and time savings.

North Central Data Cooperative
Mandan, North Dakota

Situation: North Dakota’s largest utility cooperative required extensive Progress training, plus periodic consulting engaging in code evaluation and standards, performance troubleshooting, and best practices. The eleven year association reflects complete satisfaction with outstanding and effective teaching methods.

Created industry-recognized curriculum and training materials

  • Produced a comprehensive set of Progress training courses which created new industry standards for excellence. Courses ranged from introduction to advanced, plus object-oriented and reporting.
  • Created a unique licensing agreement with Progress Software Corporation enabling their company wide trainers to use PGA material. This agreement came about due to consistent, superior feedback and demand from NCDC and other long-term clients.
  • Trained over 125 professionals, spanning over 12 different courses, 5 of which were developed by PGA.