Prodigital, a digital photography lab servicing the professional photography market.  Based in Essex, UK.

Situation

The company owners planned to expand their market share and were keen to discuss whether we could help them gain new clients and develop existing ones by streamlining their business processes and expanding their services.   

Action

Purple Crane visited the company and spent an afternoon discussing how the business worked.  Together we identified some possible ideas and areas for further investigation, key to which was the existing system for photographers to transfer digital images to the lab.  It was slow, error prone, and not simple to learn. 

The meeting was followed up by technical research and further discussions to clarify the issues and get feedback on proposed solutions.  We then presented a short report containing a set of proposals for action and an outline system design.

Result

The report suggested a 3 stage project whereby each phase would underpin subsequent work and increase the marketing potential of the company at that stage.   Following review of the report, and further feedback, Purple Crane were retained for the initial development - a system allowing simple and reliable delivery of images from photographers to the lab. 

We have successfully implemented the first stage which has now been rolled out to a number of the lab's customers.  So far the result has exceeded expectations and the client has already seen an increase in customer orders.  As the system is delivered to new customers we have included an ongoing process to monitor and review its use allowing the client to respond rapidly to feedback from their customers and to quickly take on board and implement suggestions for improvements or changes.

Following a successful analysis of the business impact of stage 1 we have been offered the opportunity to design and develop the second phase.

The final stage will enhance and expand upon the previous systems and will see a significant expansion of the areas of business in which the lab will be operating.

Technology

Microsoft .NET 2.0, .NET 3.0, .NET 3.5, C#, ASP.NET, Ajax, JavaScript, Web Services, MS BITS, MS LogParser.