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Projects and Results
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Alan Labouseur and 3NF Consulting have been helping organizations improve their
data handling since 1989, enhancing their facility for giving data context, and
turning it into information they can use.
Past clients include
large companies
such as GE and Viacom as well as
specialized firms
like Dick Clark Corporate Productions. In the
public sector
we've consulted to the New York State Office of Mental Health and the Westchester County Department of
Child Welfare.
Internationally,
we've helped the Global Association of Risk Professionals (GARP)
deal with their data issues in the US and Europe, and provided strategic counseling and implementation
services to BioPharma Greenhouse, a biotech and pharmaceutical corporation operating in the US and the
People's Republic of China.
Here are a few examples from some of our many clients. They highlight specific projects for these clients,
but only hint at the full range of our accomplishments over the years.
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New York State Office of Mental Health
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Project: The NYS OMH had no way to manage administrative patient data in their
Hudson River Psychiatric Center. In addition to the problems of inaccuracies and lost files, there
was annual risk of failing state-mandated audits, which would result in loss of state funding for
the entire facility.
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Results: 3NF worked with the MIS director and staff to create a comprehensive data
model strong enough to meet the records management needs of both the local institution and New York
State in general. We implemented the data model in Oracle and developed applications to manage the data,
focusing on an intuitive design for data entry accuracy, robust querying capability for information
construction, and ease of operation so that people would actually make use of it.
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"Great interface, excellent database design, on time support and
deployment are the things Alan Labouseur delivered in the project he did
for HRPC. As a manager of a small IT department, it was necessary to
outsource the programming aspect; especially since we wanted to do
something that required a very high degree of skill, i.e. incorporate
multiple department needs into a facility wide database design. When we
found Alan, we not only got the best database design, but an elegant and
easily used interface as well. In addition to the excellent application he
developed for us, Alan was a resource of knowledge and support in
networking problems and other proprietary software, sometimes created in
obscure (old) languages. He never said 'can't be done', he would always
come up with a solution."
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Anne Matheus, Director of Management Information Systems
New York State Office of Mental Health
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Direct Response Marketing
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Project: Armed with years and years of customer data, DRM wanted
to run effective mail campaigns for its clients. Unfortunately this data was neither
uniform nor well organized. Market segmentation was difficult and purchase history
analysis impossible. List management was out of the question.
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Results: Calling on years of experience and a full bag of data tricks,
3NF normalized all the data and built a fully queryable data model. We also developed
techniques for cleansing the data to increase data quality. After building a full-featured
end user query system -- usable by "normal" staffers with no knowledge of SQL or any
database techniques -- DRM was able to mine the data for the valuable customer information
needed to power its highly effective mail campaigns.
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"With a brilliant mind and many years of "hands on" experience, Alan sees the
solution to the most difficult challenges almost immediately. He
enthusiastically manages projects to deliver elegant solutions as promised.
He is utterly dependable, completely straight forward and very personable --
everyone enjoys working with him. You can rely on Alan to get the job done,
on-time and on-budget."
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Joanna Belbey, President
Direct Response Marketing
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Co-Ed Uniform Company
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Project: The Co-Ed Uniform Company is one of the busiest clothing
stores in the northeast. Their year over year growth out-paced the capabilities
of their legacy computer system in the mid 1990's. With the goal of growing their business
in an efficient, profitable, and sustainable manner, they called 3NF.
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Results: 3NF worked with the owners and staff to learn the
unique ins and outs of the retail uniform business. After looking at several off-the-shelf
inventory and purchase order systems we concluded that their special needs would be best
served with a custom solution. After developing a data model and implementing it in SQL Server,
we wrote front end applications to streamline all back office functions. These were not limited to
inventory and purchase order management, but also included accounts payable invoicing and
payment tracking, school uniform templates, vendor management, and on-line interfaces
to UPS and FedEx.
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"My company needed to organize and streamline our internal operations. 3NF
Consulting did just that and more! They made daily operations easy to
control and organize. Alan worked closely with me and made suggestions I
did not think of. I was completely satisfied with his work. I highly
recommend 3NF Consulting!"
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Gary Hersh, President
Co-Ed Uniform Company
Elmwood Park, NJ
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GE Capital
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Project: In order to increase the throughput of large-scale commercial
real estate deals, GE Capital wanted to develop a software tool to evaluate potential
portfolios and guide end users through several stages of risk mitigation before
submitting the deal to management in the approval process.
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Results: Working on, and eventually leading the development team,
we incorporated leading-edge Artificial Intelligence techniques with object-oriented
design and development to produce several working prototypes and one release of the product.
The product contained intellectual property that was eventually patented by GE, and was
prominently featured in GE's annual report that year. (Though we never got to meet Jack Welch.)
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"Several Commercial Real Estate projects have benefited
greatly from Alan's IT consulting expertise, most prominently
in the areas of database design and software development.
Over the years he has played many important roles for GE,
both as a technician and as a leader. We look forward to
working with 3NF Consulting again."
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Boris Melomedov, Project Manager
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New York Institute of Finance
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Project: The Institute was languishing with an outdated mini-computer system
incapable of handling their growing business. Student registration was slow and inaccurate,
there was no accounting integration, and the marketing department was using pencils and paper
to track trends.
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Results: After designing and implementing a completely new network infrastructure, we
wrote a registration system to handle student enrollments, a query management system to facilitate
data mining, and a customer relationship system for their sales force. All of these were
tightly integrated with their new accounting software. In subsequent years, NYIF asked us to design
their PC lab, bring them into the Internet, and help lay out their IT strategy for the 21st century.
Most recently we developed their marketing content management system to facilitate centralized
content creation and editing, and output to print and web-based marketing channels.
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"During the 8 years that 3NF worked with us at the New York Institute of
Finance, they moved our company from a severely dated system to a fully
modernized networked architecture. The proprietary relational database built
by Alan significantly improved our target marketing capabilities. 3NF also
automated our registration system so that it tied to our web site as well as
our accounting system, which improved our CRM while maximizing our financial
efficiency and accuracy. Alan always showed a strong interest in the details of
how our business worked, which is why he was able to deliver so many successful
projects over the years. A natural teacher, he consistently shared his
expertise and experience with our staff."
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Randi Kopp, VP Global Marketing
New York Institute of Finance
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GOT School, Inc.
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Project: My client wanted to provide state-by-state educational guidelines to K-12 teachers
on their web site. They were able to acquire the text of most educational standards in a hierarchical format.
This hierarchical data proved impossible to use, as it was not queryable in a structured
manner. Adding to the difficulty was the fact that different states used different terms for the
same data elements. (One state's "history" is another state's "social studies", and so on.)
GOT School needed the educational standards in a relational format so their users could easily query
the data in a useful and consistent manner. They asked the original source to provide the data in a
relational format and were told that it would take a year of work to accomplish such a task. They
didn't have that much time, as an important annual trade show was only a few months away.
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Results: I developed a new relational data model to manage and represent all
educational requirements for grades K-12 in 49 of the 50 states. (Iowa has no
documented educational standards.) After implementing this data model in SQL-Server
and PostgreSQL (for their web site), I developed a parsing program to read through
the existing standards, state by state, grade by grade, subject by subject,
normalize the varying terms, and write the standards into the new relational data model.
Once in my new data model, the searchable standards were
used as the engine of their "resources for teachers" web site. This project was completed in
three months, one quarter of the time estimated by the standards vendor. As a result,
GOT School was able to demonstrate this system at a trade show and gain market share ahead of
their competition.
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"I have worked with Alan Labouseur on a number of enterprise
implementations including the building of a retail order input and
marketing system, a company wide database and server rollout, and a
web site database deployment. Every project with Alan has proved his
engineering excellence and professional skills more than the one
before. I look forward to working with him again as I have found his
problem solving skills and attitude very hard to match."
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Jason Atwood, Chief Information Officer
GOT School, Inc.
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Global Association of Risk Professionals
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Project: GARP retained 3NF Consulting for six months during which
they were building their European membership database-driven web site. We provided
strategy and planning advice as well as review of their vendors' implementation
plans. While we did not manage the implementation of the database or web site,
we provided guidance and help to GARP's vendors, contributing some technology,
and steering them around pitfalls.
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Results: Their site was implemented in a timely and professional. It
provides international membership management and services scheduling to this day.
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"It's always great to get advice from an expert you can trust. I've
known Alan for quite some time and have come to value his guidance
in all areas of IT. He's fun to work with and I look forward to
doing so again."
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Adam Davids, Chief Executive Officer
Global Association of Risk Professionals
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