Projects
Here are summaries of some of the projects I've done (not a complete list).
I've been developing software professionally since 1980. In that time I've
developed applications for a number of different companies and in a variety of
industries.
Home Builder System Integration
Developed a highly customized Microsoft Dynamics CRM solution as part of a team
of developers using the Microsoft .NET development platform. The application
was for the purpose of order entry, fulfillment, and customer service for
residential home system integration products and services.
Construction Insurance Bonds
Developed an application as part of a team of developers for the purpose of
entering, pricing, and maintaining construction insurance bonds. Data and
relationships related to bonds, premiums, contractors, developers, principals,
projects, and owners were managed by the application. The system was designed
to integrate to a mainframe accounting system. This was a browser-based
thin-client application. Branch office locations in various cities across the
United States accessed the system remotely over high-speed network
connections.
Home Mortgage
Developed a CRM Mortgage browser-based thin-client solution as part of a team
of developers using the Microsoft .NET development platform. This involved both
custom C# ASP.NET development and Microsoft CRM integration.
Healthcare
Developed a system for processing medical claims. The system had screens for
entering medical claims, pre-authorizing medical services to be rendered,
maintaining data on facilities, physicians, health plans, plan members,
diagnosis and procedure codes, and procedure fee schedules. It included a
seamlessly integrated table-driven reporting system (using Seagate Crystal
Reports automation objects). The entire system, including reporting, was
designed in a 3-tier architecture for maximum scalability. Data that was
analyzed frequently for decision support purposes was automatically loaded on a
daily basis into a separate data mart database (using star-schema table
designs). This allowed large amounts of data to be queried in seconds.
Developed a compensation system for physicians along with another programmer as
part of a four-man team that also included a tester and a report developer. The
application involved mechanisms for pooling, allocating, weighting, and
adjusting charge and payment transactions to calculate compensation amounts.
Transaction were pooled and accumulated by various criteria: Procedure (CPT)
Codes, Modifiers, Sites, Sort Keys, Payers, etc. The application also handled
capitated payments and fee-for-service transactions.
Data Warehouse / Data Mart
Developed a Windows .NET desktop ETL (Extract, Transform, & Load)
application for importing, validating, and maintaining a data mart of medical
billing data. The application included the ability to control a number of
back-end DTS packages through ''user-friendly" user interfaces. In addition,
the application allowed the user to maintain tables used for transforming and
validating the data. Current status of the ETL process was displayed.
Integrated reports showing errors due to bad data, etc. were also available.
I've also created data mart databases for medical claims data and for wholesale
distribution data. For wholesale distribution, the data mart needed to compare
sales to independent distributors with "sell-through" data reported by
these distributors. Since the independent distributor was in effect our
"customer", the "sell-through" data provided valuable insight into our
"customers" sales to his customers.
Handheld Data Collection
Developed a handheld Pocket PC / WinCE application for a genetics lab for
recording mouse litter birth and wean data. In this way, handheld data capture
functionality was added to an existing third party application that previously
lacked this capability. Data is saved on the handheld device in XML format.
These XML files are then synchronized through Microsoft ActiveSync to a desktop
workstation. A Windows desktop application was created to synchronize from the
desktop to an existing MS SQL Server database.
Food Production
Created an application for a bagel bakery chain to assist with calculating
economic order quantities of various types of dough. The application tracked a
history of usage which it then took into consideration along with pending
orders in suggesting future order quantities.
Order / Sales Entry, Billing, Receivables, Payables, Purchase Orders, General
Ledger, Financial Reporting, Sales Analysis
I've done a number of projects involving order entry, billing, inventory
control, accounts receivable, sales analysis, accounts payable, general ledger,
purchase orders or payroll. These were done for a variety of different types of
businesses, with varying needs as to the type of data that needed to be
captured and processed.
Some projects involved creating a new application to handle Sales Entry / Order
Entry. Some of these applications were designed to "stand alone", without
interfacing to other accounting applications. Other applications were done in a
way that integrated with an existing accounting application.
Some projects involved modifying the source code for an existing "off-the-shelf"
integrated accounting application to tailor the application to the needs of the
company. This included modifications such as collecting additional data and
carrying it through various update processes, and adding new functionality by
modifying existing screens or adding new ones.
Other projects involved exporting sales transaction data on a regular basis from
an existing accounting application to a new custom database. This was to
provide special Sales Analysis or Salesperson Summary reporting not available
in the accounting application.
Time & Expense Billing
Created an application for entering time and expense items to be billed to
customers. The application allowed for categorizing various time / expense
items, establishing standard rates for various services, and produced summary
reports that could then be used to provide customers with documentation of
services performed.
Price Quotes
Created an application to assist a supplier with locating the best prices
available from a large number of vendors to satisfy a given customer order. The
application automatically faxed requests for price quotes to vendors through
WinFax Pro software (made by
Symantec) to facilitate the process of filling customer orders.
Retail / Rental / Point-of-Sale
Developed a Video Rental Store application. The application managed 42 video
rental store locations for a chain of stores in San Diego. Each store captured
rental transactions and member information at point-of-sale workstations. Data
was sent and received via modem to a central office computer network comprised
of three large computer systems. The load was balanced across the three
computers by having each of the three computers house the data for 10 - 15
stores in the 42-store chain. A customer could be a "member" at one store
location with a prepaid movie rental plan, check out a movie at a second
location, and return it to a third location, yet the application correctly
updated data in the appropriate computer system even if the three stores
involved happened to span all three central computers. A transaction was
"queued" for updating the moment it was entered by the sales clerk in the
store.
This system had many features, including movie reservations, inter-store
transfers, ability for a sales clerk to access inventory in other stores,
statistics on sales clerk productivity, a system for taking store inventory and
immediately reporting discrepancies, tracking of each individual copy of a
movie, rental patterns in different geographic areas to assist with projecting
future order needs, ability to track rental revenue by title, store, area,
etc., ad-hoc reporting down to a detail transaction level, and many, many more
features. The decision support capabilities of the system enabled the company
to maximize turnover of the product. The operational capabilities of the system
enabled them to excel in providing customer service.
Insurance
Made various enhancements to an application designed for an insurance carrier
in the Los Angeles area. Improvements were made in the areas of calculating
agent commissions and chargebacks, "re-insurance" calculations and reporting,
and others.
Mail Order
Modified the order entry software of a men's clothing catalog company to check
for "bad risk" orders. This involved checking billing or shipping addresses
against a "bad risk" file provided by an outside vendor. The matching made use
of a "soundex" algorithm. (This is an algorithm that makes it possible to match
up similar-sounding names or streets, and thereby allow for alternate
spellings. For example, "Smith", "Smyth", and "Smythe" could be matched with a
soundex algorithm.) The algorithm had to be coded by hand on this particular
assignment. (In many environments soundex is available as a built-in function.)
Budgetary Accounting
Developed the "Encumbrance Accounting" portion of an accounting system for
municipalities. (Other team members developed other portions of the accounting
system.) This allowed users to enter initial budgeted amounts for each of their
accounts. Throughout the year, updates to the general ledger kept track of how
much budgeted money in each account had been "spent" and what was still
available. (This application was eventually purchased by several cities in San
Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino counties. I later did additional custom
programming on this software for a city in the Riverside area to improve the
accounts payable reporting and to make other enhancements.)
Sales Presentation / Marketing
Created a number of applications for assisting insurance sales persons in
making a presentation of their product to prospective clients. Products
involved a combination of insurance and investments that could be tailored to
an individual client's needs. The calculations required to make the projections
for the client were too complex and tedious to be done manually in a timely
fashion. The software allowed the sales person to enter client profile data and
data related to investment amounts and schedule and have the resulting
projections instantly displayed. The calculations made use of insurance rate
table information for age, sex, and other factors. The projections could be
displayed on the screen or printed out in a 3 - 5 page proposal style.
Serial Communications
I've done a number of projects involving serial communications. Some of these
were: Interfacing a bar code reader in a point-of-sale environment. Creating
software for capturing and storing digitizer output. (This was a large Calcomp
digitizer. It was used with a set of blueprints in construction estimating. The
output contained measurements, computed area, and counts of construction
materials.) Communication with a cash register to retrieve the day's
transactions (which it stored internally). Communication with an optical mark
reader being used to grade test papers to retrieve its data.
Event Ticket Sales
Created many new screens, reports, etc. for an Event Ticket Sales application.
The application kept track of sold / available seats, displayed and printed
seat maps, kept data on season ticket sales, printed tickets, etc. Many
modifications were made to facilitate the process of selling tickets and to
enhance customer service.
Payroll Direct Deposit
Programming was done to automate the process of payroll direct deposit.
Security of the data and reliability of this mission critical process were
large considerations. Data was transmitted to the bank via modem. The program
had to wait for verification of the data, receive batch totals, and present
this and other batch status information to a user. The application included the
ability to search through and display payroll data to enable a user to do
research when investigating reported discrepancies, etc. The system transmitted
payroll data for several thousand employees.
Human Resources
Developed various screens, reports, form letters, and exports of data to
spreadsheet software in a Human Resource Database application. This was to keep
up with ever-changing government regulatory changes related to HCFA, OSHA, EEO,
etc. In addition, reports and spreadsheet interfaces were developed to assist
with the process of wage rate review, performance reviews, and tracking of
employee licenses and education.
Data Conversion, Import / Export
I've done a number of small applications for converting or "transforming" data
or importing / exporting data. Sometimes these were designed to run unattended
and check for new incoming data at predetermined intervals. These include
moving data between database and text files, moving from one database to
another, moving data from one operating system to another (such as between UNIX
and Windows), converting from one format of text / binary file to another,
converting between multiple record type formats and single record type formats,
compressing / decompressing data with "zip" files, conversion between EBCDIC
and ASCII, and many other odds & ends.
Privacy Considerations
Created interfaces from / to a customized Human Resource database application
to an application designed for Random Drug Testing compliance. Modified the
Human Resource database to assist with tracking employees participating in
rehabilitation. Confidentiality of data was a large consideration in developing
the interface that allowed data to be moved between applications. For example,
identifying information such as employee name or social security number could
not be moved through the interface, nor be attached to testing samples. Yet,
certain information updated in the Drug Testing application had to find its way
back to the correct employee in the Human Resource application.
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