Olin is a global manufacturer and distributor of chemical products. Their individual plant engineering staff was reporting daily production statuses via spreadsheets to a centralized spot and having information in this fashion was very time-intensive to process. They had an internal software development team, but that team was overwhelmed with higher priority items on other fronts. They were therefore looking for an outsourced development team to help meet this important need.

Houston Computer Consulting had available capacity and the necessary experience to tackle this project and adhere to Olin’s internal security and custom-programming requirements. We developed a database as well as a front-end user interface that not only simplified the process of reporting these daily statuses from the field, but gave them the ability to also automatically tie in daily production totals from their internal systems to help streamline the process. The internal liaison at Olin handled all initial end user training and also fields most end user support questions themselves. But every once in a while a technical problem emerges that requires additional familiarity with this system to help troubleshoot. Houston Computer Consulting therefore remains ready to assist at a moment’s notice with such support requests.

Olin achieved multiple goals by outsourcing this project that are continuing to benefit them to this day. Not only did they achieve access to excellent, top-notch software developers, but found a vendor willing to work within their existing IT infrastructure to come up with a solution they could host themselves and be comfortable owning. Converting from a manual process to an automated one saved countless hours collating this data and facilitated additional automation tie-ins without stressing their internal software development team or waiting forever for a custom solution. Houston Computer Consulting remains available to help with any support or further enhancement needs whenever they may arise.