Problem: How to keep an edge in a highly competitive energy market? How to differentiate from average and conformity?

Solution:

Senior developers from Volia are part of the development team for a system that allows leaders in the energy business to maintain an edge in their sector.

The system provides for the gathering, processing and secure distribution of information including expert and strategic insights to the global oil and gas industry. This information covers the complete path of products and services from concept to market.

The following areas are covered:

• Oil & Gas Information & Analytical Tools
• Energy Strategy Services
• Energy Company Research and Transaction Research
• Commodities, Pricing & Cost
• Country & Industry Forecasting
• Engineering & Construction

With such information decision makers are getting a clear and complete picture before deciding their course.

To help them formulate timely and successful short-term and long-term business strategies and plans, there is a Strategic Planning module that has all the needed decision making support tools.

Among other things, those tools help them to understand the driving forces affecting the upstream industry, price dynamics, and emerging trends and technologies.

Other modules include:

• Exploration & Production - the evaluation of undeveloped and exploratory areas to estimate the potential of new opportunities. Match choices of investment to strategic objective. Managing risks and rewards requires the right information and tools.
• Engineering & Construction - Design, build and maintain plants and facilities that are efficient, safe and in compliance with the world’s most predominant engineering and design standards, building codes, specifications, and product/supplier information.
• Midstream & Downstream - Predicting demand and delivering oil & gas profitably to end-markets are two ongoing challenges.
• EHS (Environmental, Health & Safety) & Sustainability - combining of software, data and expertise into a comprehensive suite of sustainability management solutions to help decision makers assess and respond to emerging issues, meet their company's global compliance obligations and convert business risk to opportunity.

In the end, the system helps to achieve the difference between average and excellence operations, conformity and innovation, standing still or leapfrogging over the competition.

Challenge: How not to lose market position to the competitors in a rapidly changing business environment? Solution: Senior developers from Volia, as part of a system development team, help leaders in the automotive business to maintain their leading position in the market. The system delivers accurate forecasts, market information, competitive analysis and strategic tools for automotive OEMs, their suppliers and financial stakeholders. It covers the following areas:

• OEMs (Original Equipment Manufacturers)
• Suppliers
• Financial & Industry Analysts
• Government

For OEMs – the system provides them with the insight and intelligence information to make better business decisions. It covers over 130 auto makers across 90 countries. For light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles. It can help your organization make better planning decisions, avoid risk, increase your market share, and run your product development and manufacturing smoothly and efficiently:

• Corporate Development & Strategy
• Product Planning
• R&D
• Regulatory & EHS
• Supply Chain & Procurement
• Engineering
• Manufacturing

For Suppliers – intelligence info and tools to: target opportunities, formulate new product business cases, forecast financials and volumes, assess competitors and technologies, design effectively, and manufacture more efficiently:

• Finance, Corporate Development & Strategy
• Sales & Marketing
• R&D, Product Planning
• Engineering
• Manufacturing
• Supply Chain / Procurement
• Regulatory / EHS

For Financial & Industry Analysts - the system monitors and forecasts the health and well-being of the entire OEM automotive industry value chain enabling clients to make more secure investment decisions:

• Corporate Lending
• Private Equity
• Market & Industry Analysis
• Financial Turnaround

For Government - the system formulates responsible automotive policy that protects citizens, grows your future tax revenues, and attracts industry economic activity and employment for your region:

• Economic Development
• Legislative & Regulatory Policy
• Taxation & Revenue

Problem: In order for any business in Utilities to keep their leadership position, or at least not to fall behind, they need to have all the latest information and expertise regarding their industry.

Solution:

Volia developers bring senior level skills to the software development teams that create sets of tools that provide information solutions for all aspects of decision making:

• Strategic planners - for long-term business strategies and investment decisions and Market Analysts supply, demand and price drivers.
• Energy end-users - for procurement or generating investment decisions
• Policymakers - for understanding how policies will impact markets and economies
• Engineering and operations managers - for the latest technical, performance, and safety information
• Financial investors - for market opportunities and asset valuations
• Compliance officers - for regulatory and environmental obligations. It can be used in the following areas and roles:
• Market analysis tools- Knowledge base is being constantly updated by a research team of more than 200 industry experts, covering power and utilities issues, from conventional to renewable, in every geographic region.
• Strategic planners in the energy industry- for more than a quarter-century the system has delivered in-depth analysis of market fundamentals and a thorough examination of the strategic issues that impact the power and utilities industry.
• Solutions and data for government allows one to stay on top of policy developments and requirements within the electric power industry at both local and national levels with in-depth knowledge and outlooks of power market fundamentals.
• There are cost estimation and minimization tools, market intelligence, technical standards, product information, and inventory optimization tools required for successful capital investment and efficient engineering and operations.
• For decades, the EHS and sustainability professionals have been serving organizations of all kinds and sizes worldwide. We were pioneers in the development of many sustainability information management solutions and continue to lead the way today with new innovations.

Problem: What happens when a company (e.g., a financial institution) must support frequent communication with millions of customers? Writing individual letters to every customer would be prohibitive in terms of time and cost. Sending the same letter to everyone would be akin to spamming.

Solution: Volia has experience building complex systems based on business rules defined by users via GUI. Metadata defines the user interface and client configured integration points with other systems.

Volia also brings expertise with specific technologies driving the generation of PDF and HTML documents.

Working closely with our client, we built a Content Management System (CMS) and a CRM system fully integrated with the document generation technology. Through the CRM, a marketing specialist may select the target audience for communication from millions of customers, based on hundreds of parameters, just in few minutes. Next the CMS system, based on hundreds of data elements associated with each customer and the business rules and parameters configured inside the CMS feed the content delivery tools to generate and deliver highly personalized messages to each and every customer.

Companies using the system can target literally every single customer with personalized messages and at the same time keep regular communication with all of the millions of their clients without increase to the marketing staff.

Problem: Everything that a strategic decision maker in a chemical industry business needs to know, in one set of tools

Solution:

Senior level Volia developers define the quality and pace of development in several software development teams that create sets of tools to provide information solutions for all aspects of decision making in the chemistry industry businesses:

Global chemical data, benchmarking, forecasts, analyses along with pricing, standards, engineering, supply chain management and sustainability solutions.

Critical information and insight to effectively plan, design, operate, comply and sustain:

• Strategic planning from portfolio analysis to measuring the impact of economy fluctuations.
• Supply management for materials pricing, selection, inventory optimization, and compliance.
• Information and tools to support Engineering, Design and Construction.
• Environmental health, safety and sustainability solutions.

Problem: With paper based work flow everything moved slowly; sometimes important things were being forgotten.

Solution:

Our client is an industry leader in the transportation of pipeline components.

Pipeline services offered to the customer are:

• Logistics coordination
• Offloading
• Railcar logistics
• Stockpiling
• Stringing
• Heavy Haul

As all the workflow was paper based, every event took an excessive amount of time to be processed and responded to. Slow reaction time required a bigger stockpile to fulfill requests that came faster than documents could be manually processed.

Some pipe-joints with defects were not discovered for a long time. Some components were even lost at times due to human error or document loss.

There was also no way to track anything defective back through all the operations to the supplier.

In order to ensure a smooth logistical flow of pipeline parts through each step of the shipping process from roadway to railway Volia developed a custom inventory system. It allowed the company to track delivery from beginning to end.

In addition it allowed them to reduce the amount of paperwork tremendously.

Our system consists of a web-enabled solution which provides:

• an interface to the back end database and various reports
• a mobile application used by workers in the field to register items by scanning barcodes on the them via Android-based scanners which enabled them to report defects and document loading/unloading operations

This approach allowed them to:

• Reduce the number of mistakes to zero, using barcodes
• Streamline documentation of the operations with the product
• Instantly react to requests with accurate and timely information about stock at each point of storage, and about defects detected.
• Trace any item back to the supplier.

Problem: A business needed their system to temporarily change its content during marketing campaigns but the software lacked any support for that feature.

Solution:

Our Volia team has developed a visual administrative tool that allows one to define which content should be replaced and with what; and assigns a schedule for that replacement.

All this was done on the user interface level, without touching the business logic of the core system.

The development involved a lot of sophisticated java script and jQuery development, plus server side logic for storing and managing alternative content.

As a result the client received a new important function in their system, that could not otherwise be modernized, and a solution to a business problem they did not know how to resolve.

Problem: Every teacher wants to learn and apply new things. How can they know if it makes the situation better or worse?

Solution:

Based on the best-selling book about performance of teachers, Volia developed a mobile application, adapted for both: iPhones and iPads.

This application provides high-yield instructional practice that outdoes all other high-yield instructional practices. Appropriate for both the novice and master teacher, the application operates during the school day or conference periods over multiple sessions to ensure improved implementation of new practices. The application training provides teachers with the practical skills to significantly increase instructional rigor and relevance and serves as the foundation on which the continuous improvement of campus performance is built.

Now every teacher can track whether or not a new practice they've implemented has improved teaching efficiency, how much and in what aspects.

Problem: There are many teachers with great ideas and experience of how to teach students better. However there is no efficient technology to spread this experience and to help with implementation.

Solution:

Volia team developed a web system and a mobile application that allow a campus to collect objective data on the quality and frequency of teacher pedagogy in order to identify the practices that make the greatest positive impact on student performance for that particular campus.

The classroom observation and coaching power tool designed by Principals for Principals and PLCs. Use the system to:

• Coach Staff
• Build Expertise
• Focus Staff Development

Improve Campus Performance Features:

• Web-based with apps
• Unlimited users
• Over 40 observation elements
• Over 20 customized reports, including: Fundamental 5, ELPS, Rigor/Relevance, and Coaching reports
• Views from whole district to classroom

Individualized Implementation Options:

• Self-managed
• Day training
• Advanced practices support

The mobile version is an App tool that allows the user to conduct a classroom observation using an iPad, iPhone or Android device even when a cellular or Wi-Fi connection is unavailable. It transfers all observations conducted, when an Internet connection becomes available.

This technology enables one to efficiently spread great teaching experience not only throughout a campus, but also across a district and beyond. It also allows monitoring the progress of teachers and students in the process of implementing best practices.

Problem: Helping children with severe speech impediments and other developmental disabilities to communicate easier with those who can help them, as well as with peers.

Solution:

Volia has developed a mobile application for iOS and Android devices to help children with speech impediments, and other developmental disabilities, to use an automated pre-recorded voice to communicate with peers, parents and other people. Most of these children have the ability to learn and use technology to assist them.

The price for specialized devices for many people is prohibitive. So our solution was developed as an affordable alternative. The application was designed in cooperation with an expert at assisting disabled children. The goal was to create technology that would be very easy to learn and to use, and that would bring real help to children who have these challenges. The application allows the user to tap on an image of an item, action term, or phrase to verbalize the corresponding audio equivalent. The application comes preloaded with a default library of categories that makes it easy to navigate as well as terms and actions that are ready to use. It also allows one to create additional categories and terms, load images, record custom voice notes, create chains of terms and actions for frequently used phrases.

Redesign of a website for a company which provides pre-construction and construction services.

Problem: When clients search for a construction service provider for a modern building, they expect that provider to look modern. What if their web site is too old and looks so?

Solution:

The website provides customers remote access to on-going and completed projects for various areas, which range from $2 to $100 Million. Primarily they are in the Religious, Education, Office, and Retail markets. Other markets include Community, Healthcare, Historical Preservation and Special Use. There is an internal portal which enables the user to manage different kinds of documentations:

• Specifications
• Drawings
• 3D drawings
• RFP-HVAC/Elec. Design
• Etc.

The internal portal also allows management of these sections:

• Services
• Portfolio
• Awards
• News
• Careers

Volia did a redesign of the site and implemented it on the production server. Now a modern company that does modern construction, does look that way - and on the web too!

An on-court tennis scoring system that transmits players' scores live over the internet.

Problem: My daughter is at a tennis match, I'm at home. Can I track her score?

Solution:

Volia developed a system that does just that.

Coaches, parents and fans have the ability to view players' scores in real time at change overs on computers from the comfort of home or while they’re on the move via their cellular device. The current score can be viewed on a score board on a court's side. Users don't need to wait to see the score posted later in the day or get a phone call or text. Just follow the matches in progress with live updates or notifications to their cell phone.

There is a possibility from the web site to see entire teams match scores in the palm of your hand and know the score on each court, plus the team score.

This mobile application also features a function to input results of matches in live mode, to display them and even to hear by synthesized speech.

Problem: A new cool smart watch device could bring great value. However they aren’t designed for large data transfer volumes.

Solution:

Our client is a recognized world leader in the sports industry, providing professional and recreational athletes access to thousands and thousands of digital assets and innovative hardware across platforms, including a sports watch.

Volia helped develop a mobile solution that provides communication between iOS or Android smart phones and sports watches via Bluetooth Low Energy (BLTE) protocol. This allows relevant data to be transferred into a smartwatch, synchronize user accounts, and display statistical information along with other important data.

To work for an extended period of time on a single charge, the smart watch uses the energy saving BLTE protocol. The problem is that the protocol is not designed to transmit the large data volumes required by the smart watch solution.

Upon completion of development, testing revealed the solution only operated satisfactorily with small amounts of data. When we tried to move the larger volume required it was unacceptably slow.

The Volia team had to think "outside the box", implementing a number of innovative techniques, In the end the solution met all expectations.

A Volia team developed ten RFID applications for use by the US government and businesses.

Problem: What if your assets are getting moved around all the time, and at any moment you need to know where they are? How else can RFID help in real life?

Solution:

Using of RFID technologies ten products were developed: * Asset Management * All Hazard Response Network (Emergency, Evacuation & Shelter Management)

RFID asset tracking answers the question, “Where is that…?”

Benefits are recognized across many departments:

• Accounting & Finance: enables true cost control and audit-proof inventory. Improves asset accounting with customized and ad hoc reports of asset locations, trends, status, and history.
• IT: supports life cycle management and scale more efficiently.
• Facilities & Security: protects critical information on devices (a hard drive removal monitoring).
• Operations: Quickly locates critical equipment and does a real-time physical asset inventory. To deliver on that mission, our All Hazard Response Network delivers services, technology and partnerships that:
• Organize evacuees and coordinate responders during disasters
• Identify, locate, and move evacuees, pets, equipment, and assets
• Manage shelters
• Reunite loved ones with their families

All systems have web components and mobile component which allow access to critical data in nearly any location; making for extremely flexible usage.