Bits Orchestra

The Harold Grinspoon Foundation (HGF) creates opportunities to connect with Judaism and the Jewish community at key life moments. In addition to flagship programs that are active across North America and around the world, the HGF invests in Jewish life at home in Western Massachusetts.

Business has set up multiple goals for this project: Update the website look and feel, add interesting and interactive functional features in order to attract more potential users - children 8-12 years old. Improve site performance to allow up to 50K of users and up to 5K simultaneous user sessions during load peak periods. Integrate the application with external ERP platform Microsoft Dynamics NAV and custom API built on top of it. Improve editors/admins experience with management of content and data entities in Kentico admin through custom modules. Another goal from the business was accessibility improvements.

Key challenge was to develop a high performing website with quick response time during load peak time. Another quite interesting challenge was to make the page look and act differently depending on site mode: parent vs. child mode, that could be switched on any page in site header. Also the site awards users with different badges for different types of activity based on quite complex logic.

Using Kentico MVC approach with Web Farm setup allowed us to build a website with a good performance meeting client's performance benchmark, meanwhile full control over the HTML output provides SEO benefits, clean and light markup, faster page load and improved overall site interaction. In addition caching features bring benefits to site performance allowing us to cache whatever we could cache on multiple layers of the system. Also we really like to use custom modules, as they allow us to build whatever data structure we need and provides clean, intuitive and consistent with the entire Admin section user interface.

See live site at pjourway.org

The purpose of the project was to refresh the site look and make it modern as well as add responsiveness to target mobile users, fix existing issues as well as improve user and editors experience and site performance.

Established in 1977, Digitron Semiconductors is a broad-line, high mix/low volume supplier of high-reliability discrete products to military, aerospace, industrial, and commercial markets. 

One of the biggest challenges of the project was implementing dynamic product families that would allow client to manage fields, their appearance on the site with appropriate units and abbreviations, manage filter options and finally add and configure new product types. All of the above required us to invent a simple in use mechanism that would allow client to change the appearance of product related pages without code interaction, but configured through Kentico admin UI. Being data heavy application site performance was another challenge we had to solve. And last but not least was quite tricky search that would search not products only, but related products according to certain algorithms.

For the dynamic product types we've built Kentico Custom Module to provide product type editing capabilities: here site editors are able to create or edit product types, add or remove fields, specify what fields are used for filtering on a public page, specify field units, fields' visibility and order in the products listing grid. On another side of things we had to implement dynamic page templates that would present data according to products' custom module  configuration, build filters and product listing grid on the fly. From performance stand point we had to apply best optimization practice in terms of content optimization and Kentico configuration as well as caching. Regarding search we've customized indexing algorithms and add custom content in order to link related parts and ensure relevance level. 

See live site at  digitroncorp.com

Workspace planning never was a simple task. Especially when we talk about budget estimation. Our client had a dream to change that once and forever. We were lucky enough to help them make their dream come true. With the tool we’ve built, clients get an easy way to visualize what an office will look like starting from a floor plan and ending with decorations. But the real magic comes into play when switching from view to the numbers - the tool allows clients’ sales manager to quote workspace planning budget in a couple of minutes and prepare an offer with all the details and pricing right in front of their clients and deliver it via email.

Aside from the vital functionality, the application provides incredible user experience. User journey is intuitive and obvious on every stage meanwhile allowing users to experiment with options to find a best fit for them.

The tool allowed clients to speed up sales significantly and decrease deal closing cycles.

Philladelphia Commercial web site was build for Shaw Industries Group, Inc., one of the world's largest carpet manufacturers with more than $6 billion in annual revenue and approximately 22,000 employees worldwide. It is headquartered in Dalton, Georgia, and is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway.

The main intention of the project was to update look and fill of the site and improvement of overall site performance by shifting to Kentico MVC platform. Business wanted to make site look modern and target any possible screen factor providing their users with awesome experience despite the device they are using. Additionally, being content heavy, old site demonstrated lack in performance.

Most of the challenges were related to the fact that a lot of features available in Portal Engine are not present in Kentico MVC and implementation of them. In most cases those were some web parts and widgets those client got used to.

Kentico MVC provides much better control over page's HTML output allowing to build much cleaner and lighter markup meanwhile does not set any limitations for UI developers allowing them to build literally whatever they need. As long as Kentico MVC is built on newer and modern framework (compering to previous versions) it shows much better performance out of the box providing really fast public pages as well as administration section.

Despite the fact Kentico MVC misses widgets and web parts it gives developers mechanism to build their custom widgets with no limits allowing to implement any required functionality.

With site release we were able to increase number of new users for 17%, users in general for 11%, sessions - 18%, doubled page views and decrease bounce rate from 42% to 1.03%. 

Here you can find live site philadelphiacommercial.com

For large organizations with multiple branches, chains or franchise content production and content marketing introduces huge expenses. In order to cut off some of those expenses we suggested a solution that worked quite well for the client - content syndication.

The solution allows clients to produce content centrally and share it with their franchisees. Additionally they get all the updates to the syndicated content automatically unless they decide to manage their content (either all or certain content items). 

Franchisees can see all the syndicated content they use on their site, remove from their site particular content as well as add new content from the central repository. However they are free to create completely new content that will remain unique for their site only.

Making changes to the content by a separate franchisee will just warn a user that the content item will be unlinked from the central repository and they will need to keep maintaining it.  

System allows to control content accessibility, so two different franchisees might have access to a different content if necessary. Also it is possible to control access level for content: some content has to be inherited by franchisee with no option to modify, meanwhile other content might be adjusted, some content is mandatory to inherit, but other is optional.

This solution provided our client with a really flexible mechanism for producing and controlling content and allowed to reduce content management efforts significantly and cut off expenses as there is no need for each franchisee to produce, manage and keep in sync all their content, but inherit professional content developed centrally. Also it allowed clients to save on people training and education in terms of content management platform. 

On another hand franchisees got professional content with some level of control over it, a flexible system for content management with an ability to manage what and how users see on their sites at affordable cost.

Simple but really handy mobile-first calculator web application was built to allow end users to estimate the cost of a mortgage according to their financial situation and term, or estimate their refinancing options and apply for it. Application notifies the responsible manager as well as stores requests into the client's internal system, so it could be processed right away.

New and extremely efficient user interface allowed us to keep all the key information important to decision making on a single screen providing end users with exceptional user experience.

Additionally this tool provides useful features for loan officers allowing them to quote mortgage or refinancing for their client on a fly in a couple of clicks as well as store and review client information and a history.

So the application allowed to process clients’ inquiries faster as well as keep all necessary data in a single place with outstanding user experience and navigation capabilities.

As a result, application allowed the client to increase sales and engage with more new clients.

The Eurobank Cyprus website is the part of bank digital transformation program. Customer wanted to redesign the old site, offering a new fresh and modern look to its visitors with better user experience. Most importantly however, the Customer wishes to utilize a mature CMS product that has the capabilities of advanced content management with multi-media support, dynamic navigation, efficient page loading, and faster time to market of business requested changes, providing the CMS users with a user-friendly experience.  Furthermore, client wanted to use the CMS based on trusted technologies such as .NET, IIS and MS SQL Server that can run on a highly secure load balanced infrastructure. 

We site provides bank clients with all necessary information as well as financial online tools such as loan calculator, currency converter and IBAN calculator.

Here is the live site www.eurobank.com.cy

PJ Library UA site has been developed for The Harold Grinspoon Foundation and it is a part of international Pj Library program.
The mission of this site is engagement of Jewish kids in Ukraine with basic Jewish values, in particular reading books, which unites kids and parents in Jewish families. Web site offers visitors to sign up on behalf of their kids for the program and receive books for free. Application processes user data and generates mailing lists. Site integrates with carrier system, which eliminates human errors on the user registration step and automates the process of mailing and delivery to the subscribers. Also application provides the variety of reports and analytical data

Features: Subscriptions, Newsletters, Reporting, Content Management, Carrier system integration, scheduled tasks

You can find live site at pjlibrary.ua

Fit Factory is a full-service health club that provides luxury studio experiences at an affordable price.

Business goal was to ensure that the website provides a clear representation of their brand. Additionally, client wanted to simplify the consumer journey and make it easy to navigate.

In order to achieve goal business set for the project we've done complete redesign of web site with a strong focus on user experience making it really easy to navigate any information user might be interested in.

Aside of end user experiense, we improved the way content editors and marketers interact with the site.

Additionally extensive integration with client's internal systems has been implemented.

As a result Fit Factory Clubs got above 1,000 additional memberships sold through the site in a couple of month after this massive rework.

Here you can find live fitfactoryclubs.com

Transition to Trades is an approved Career Skills Program (CSP) developed by Hiller Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electrical and U.S. Army Garrison, Fort Campbell. Transition to Trades, launched on July 5, 2016, allows transitioning service members the opportunity to attend Total Tech trade school (a subsidiary of Hiller, LLC) to learn valuable technical career skills while remaining active duty in the U.S. Military.

Transitioning process provides servmen with a lot of opportunities, such as learn, train, work in field, apply for job and so on. But any action taken by servman should be tracked diligently. This has been done with help of Excel, however that was a huge burden for our client, as it required making changes in multiple places as well as ensure data consintency and manual validation.

After converting client's framework into a web application we were able to significantly speed up the process and allow program managers to process more work in less time. The process was partially automated, which allowed to eliminate all redundant actions. Also application ensures user input validation and builds relations.

Additionaly application automatically compiles a ToDo list for program managers out of entered data to avoid missing of necessary actions.

The aplication was implement with high level of abstraction allowing application extension with very least development and testing efforts, which makes the app extremally flexible.

The application was build with modern, secure and reliable tech stack - .NET Core and Angular 5. 

The tool was built for in-field sales managers to enable them to get a best price for a client on a fly as well as capture orders and send it to back office for processing. The complexity of the business process was around combining different medical components - there are strict dependencies and a lot of components are not compatible. The application solved that problem by analyzing what’s already in cart and suggesting compatible components to be added. Another challenge was around price calculation: as it was already mentioned there were a lot of inter-dependencies between components and single component would have different cost when combined with other components. That was probably the longest and most complex price calculation pipeline we worked with. However it was quite a great client’s pricing strategy that gave them strong competitive advantage. Our calculator helper sales reps to provide their clients with precise prices and detailed price breakdown.

Our client was able to increase their sales because of the quick turnaround and competitive pricing model.

Features: price calculator, shopping cart, orders, PDF generator, email notifications

The main idea behind this project was to substitute usage of multiple Excel spreadsheets, which was not the easiest thing to manage, and build a simple tracking tool with centralized data storage. Primary objectives were to motivate professional grows, provide technicians with a clear career map and possibility to track their progress as they move on, build a tool that is simple and intuitive in usage, accessible from any location and personal device, provide technicians with learning materials, possibility for mentors to set a goal for mentee and track their progress towards it, promote technicians to a next professional level and eliminate manual routine.

The process of tracking career progress might look simple at first glance, but there are a lot of business logic and rules around score evaluation, dependencies between activities - some action items are not allowed before others are completed. Our team came out with a multi level nested (recursive) data structure and data driven UI that adjusts based on data. The beauty of this solution is that it allowed us to implement generic code that handles CRUD operations on any level of data structure and such code is really simple in maintenance and requires minor efforts whenever we need to introduce some changes.

With this application we were able to completely eliminate the mess with hundreds of spreadsheets for ongoing enrollments as well thousands of historical records being stored all together within the application with a possibility to locate any of them in a couple of clicks.

Last, but not least, this application reduced time and efforts of supervisors needed to handle the process for above than 40% by introducing automated notifications and simple data access.

E-commerce site built on Kentico CMS for courses and webinars purchasing, online test and certification allows potential students to register online, browse catalog of courses and/or webinars, select the products of interest and add them to a cart, checkout and pay online. In case of webinar purchase user will be suggested to pass a test and gain a certificate online. Extra security has been implemented in order to prevent webinars sharing, which was impossible with the old system.
With this application client automated purchases, payments and webinar tests and certification, as well as introduced appropriate level of digital product protection.
Features: e-commerce product catalog and checkout, online payments, custom modules, webinar sharing protection, classes schedule calendar, content management, courses rating and users feedback, scheduled tasks

School Portal - recently added section that introduces LMS into main site: enables management of learning program, classes and schedule, student assignments, their grades, electronic document signature, etc.
School Portal is built with .NET Core Web API, Entity Framework, MS SQL and ReactJS (Typescript).

Here you can see live site: totaltechschool.com

The purpose of this project was to provide Hiller Plumbing, Heating, Cooling & Electrical with a tool that would improve the quality of new employees and ability to find knowledge gaps and fill them in. Primary objectives were to build a tool for quick testing of candidates, automatically evaluate the results, highlight gaps, provide materials to improve expert level, automate and optimize the process of testing and results evaluation,

The intention of the tool was to be used by multiple companies. That fact introduced a couple of challenges such as new website had to work for multiple points of views and users, matching their workflow and covering needs, we had to architect the SaaS application and isolate data of each subscriber.

Usage of the latest technologies, such as .NET Core and React, allowed the application to be implemented fast with an enterprise grade back end and lightweight front end that works perfectly on any device and screen factor.

The outcome of the project was as aesthetically clean front end, an easy to navigate site with intuitive flow with obvious functions, fast and stable application.

Also the application reduced the amount of time needed for test results evaluation for almost 100% as this process has been automated.

160 companies subscribed for the app and 100 group and individual tests were taken in the first month after application launch.