Paper Invoices Replacement

The Challenge

Our client has to process thousands of invoices a year and for many of their smaller vendors, the invoices are processed by hand with paper copies emailed or mailed in. At times, the invoices do not match the given Purchase Order and that results in delays in payment and extra time and money needed to process each invoice.

The Solution

Blue Lizard provided a web-based application that imported all of the data from the Purchase Order and allowed for changes between the vendor and the buyer that were approved before the invoice was generated. The application communicated back to their main system so that the data stayed in sync.

Real Benefits

The application is new for 2018, so statistics are not available, but the anticipated savings in the first year are expected to be over $100,000 with only 20% of the vendors on board in the initial trial.

Event Planning Application

The Challenge

Our client manages events for large corporate events and needs a way to track the attendees, no-shows and walk-ins to an event. If they have pre-registered, then their information is verified when they sign in. If they have not pre-registered, then the process is time consuming with all of the paper forms. Setting up the events and attendees was done using an outdated web-based application that had significant restrictions with performance and functionality.

The Solution

Blue Lizard developed a web-based system and a mobile component that allowed the meetings to be set up easily by having ready-made templates. The web-based system for setting up the clients and events gave them the functionality that they needed and returned records in seconds instead of close to a minute with their old system.

The mobile application used iPads to enter event information from the event handler as well as having the ability to check-in attendees and handle walk-in attendees.

A dashboard was also developed that allowed management to view all of the live events and see the attendee counts be updated in real-time as the events unfold so that decisions can be made in the field in real-time as well.

Real Benefits

The web-based application was 90% faster than the previous version allowing the users to be more productive when setting up individual meetings. The web-based application allowed for the attendees to be checked in more than 50% faster and allowed walk-ins to be handled much more efficiently. Post-meeting reports and paperwork was eliminated due to everything being housed in within the application. The overall result was that the staffing requirements for large events were decreased by 25% due to the increased efficiency of the mobile application.

Big Data Dashboard Reporting

The Challenge

Our client works with hospitals all over the United States collecting data on the use of diabetes strips. Thousands of data points are collected every day at each of the 700+ hospitals they serve. Data at each hospital is reported so that staff and management know the extent of performance of the devices. There is no way to know the performance of the devices on a national level.

The Solution

Blue Lizard has worked with the client on the individual hospital level, but worked closely with their IT department to gather the data on a national level. A system was set up whereby the data from each hospital was sent via secure FTP to a centralized location. This data was then loaded into a SQL Server database via SSIS. The data was then pre-processed overnight to provide for a reporting dashboard that highlighted performance statistics on the devices.

Real Benefits

The data collection and processing allowed for the client to have near real-time performance statistics on their devices enabling them to make decisions on a regional basis for quality control and training initiatives.

e-Commerce Data Feed

The Challenge

Our client was putting together an e-Commerce website and needed to handle over 50,000 SKUs in a way that allowed the user to be able to search on construction products, get detailed information on them and then purchase. The data to feed into the website was housed in a series of spreadsheets that made data upkeep difficult and time consuming.

The Solution

Blue Lizard developed a web-based interface that allowed for all of the data to be stored in a SQL Server database that was accessible from any location via the web interface. The spreadsheets were converted to a normalized database structure and the web application allowed for easy data entry and edits for any necessary changes. Data on new products and markets were imported using SSIS for the XML files.

Real Benefits

The web-based application decreased the data errors associated with the spreadsheets for all fields on a product description. The application reduced processing times for new products by over 60%.

Glucose Monitoring Reports

The Challenge

Our client supplies the majority of hospitals in the United States with Glucose meters. Nurses administering testing have to be certified and Point of Care managers need to assure that the glucose tests are accurate. Managers at larger hospitals like Stanford, Baylor and Duke may have 3000 nurses using glucose meters 7 days a week 24 hours a day.

Our client needed to provide custom tracking and reporting for Point of Care Managers. The reports needed to indicate how their meters were performing and bring attention to any inadequacies in the system. Any way to save time would be warmly received by managers as the current method of monitoring was time consuming and repetitive.

The Solution

Blue Lizard designed a system to generate reports quickly and more easily by integrating existing technologies. The reports indicate percentages of valid tests verses invalid tests and further indicate any problem areas by nurse or by meter. Results are automatically assimilated into a quick and easy to understand graphical trend report for managers.

Real Benefits

Reports confirmed accurate quality assurance information on glucose tests taken and identified common problems in the system. Managers were able to respond to common problems by improved training after monitoring historical data trends.

Point of Care Managers were able to track nurse certifications easier and maintain continuous compliance with JCAHO and CAP.

Managers quickly realized time and labor savings resulting from the automation of formerly time consuming tasks. The reports saved the staff two weeks of work every month.

Property Appraisal Reporting

The Challenge

When a business, bank or government entity needs to evaluate the value of property they will go to a professional commercial appraiser. One of the main tools that are available to real estate and appraisal companies is the public tax information for all land, building and residential property. County government updates tax information weekly and allows free access to the public. Hester & Company needs to track the tax information and other public information that has been gathered from site visits and compile that information (with property history, descriptions and pictures) into a series of reports to determine real estate value.

The Solution

Blue Lizard developed a desktop application with fast and flexible search capabilities to enable appraisers to save custom groups of properties for comparisons. The system allows multiple photos to be saved with information for a single piece of property and generates final reports automatically.

Property tax information is public domain. Wake County makes all property tax information available for download. The County updates this information weekly. Blue Lizard developed a scheduler in SQL Server to automatically download the tax file weekly. After the file is downloaded, Blue Lizard runs a series of calculations that enables Hester & Company to produce a completed appraisal which is then emailed and includes the number of properties that had information updated and added to the system.

Real Benefits

The new system allows appraisers to produce accurate appraisals in a standard format quickly and easily giving Hester & Company a competitive edge over other appraisal companies.

Patient Tracking System

The Challenge

Mann ENT needed to track patient medical records for multiple doctors in an Ear, Nose & Throat clinic.

Mann ENT needed the ability to track patient symptoms and prescriptions and match this information with the correct medical code and diagnosis for insurance billing.

The Solution

Blue Lizard developed, dbCharts, a custom desktop application to display patient information in an easy to read format. The application included the creation of an on-line form that allows patients to enter their personal information. This saved significant time that had been spent recording initial patient information. Each patient now has visit information stored in a database and has a Microsoft Word document backup.

Real Benefits

The new system enables easy, fast and accurate data entry for nurses as the doctor is making an observation and diagnosis. Real time office visit observation and diagnosis is now possible. Transcription time was significantly reduced by 75%. This decreased the number of transcription contracted service hours therefore reducing operational expenses.

Phone Cost Analysis

The Challenge

Reporting on phone records for NCDOT was distributed via 2 large boxes of printouts and a large text file that replicated the paper reports. Data supplied was divided into multiple reports within the same data file. The data contained different headers, page headers, and columns and data elements with no obvious pattern.

The Solution

Blue Lizard created a one-button solution that involved multiple xml files that represented triggers in the patterns for the multiple data in the reports. The data was split into 3 separate tables that extracted the data into fields that could be analyzed. Data was then stored in a spreadsheet and database for analysis.

Real Benefits

Client could now analyze the data for phone system abuses and track escalating costs. The previous paper reports (or text files that replicated the paper reports) were unsuited to this analysis.

Cash Management Analysis

The Challenge

NCDOT needs to track the receivables and payables on hundreds of large-scale construction projects. These projects are subject to construction delays, which can greatly impact payment schedules. Since the total value of ongoing projects is in the hundreds of millions, cash management has significant implications.

The Solution

Blue Lizard created a linear regression predictive model was implemented using Microsoft Excel to allow NCDOT to manage cash flow.

Data on construction projects was imported into Excel and from that information; an estimated payment schedule was created for all projects based on data from the previous three years. Based on past data and the estimated payment schedule, cash flow is predicted.

Real Benefits

Cash flow predictions are much more accurate using a predictive model. The payment schedule creation was reduced from 30 plus hours per month down to less than 5 minutes total time.