Services

Custom Web Development

Purplewire's web development team specializes in developing and maintaining highly interactive web sites for e-commerce, customer service, and business-to-business (B2B) communications. We often work in partnership with our client's marketing firm to ensure that the interactive aspects of the company's web presence are consistent with and complement the marketing objectives. In many cases our online customer service applications, in addition to helping the bottom line through cost savings, can also have a significant impact on top line sales due to increased customer satisfaction.

Purplewire has a large experience base and a proven "toolbox" on which to draw when developing interactive web applications. This often means that we can offer custom or customized solutions which are price-competitive with other vendor's "one-size-fits-all" off-the-shelf solutions. Our custom applications are tailored to fit our clients' business processes and preferences, and are often integrated with the clients' existing "back end" systems using standard or proprietary file formats and technologies such as XML, DBF, XLS, or ANSI X12 EDI. Secure data transfers between the Purplewire web application and the client's legacy applications can be accomplished using a variety of file transfer protocols and encryption technologies.

Our client base ranges from ambitious small companies through multi-national Fortune 100 corporations. Many industries are represented including health care administration, specialty retail, and financial services. A particular focus of our development business has been providing customer service and B2B communication and transactional tools for manufacturers, manufacturers' rep firms, and distributors.

Intranet and Extranet Solutions

Intranet Application: a web-based application that’s intended for, and available to, members of an organization (usually the staff of a company).

Extranet Application: a web-based application that’s intended for, and available to, a closed community of trading partners (such as a manufacturer, its dealers, subcontractors, suppliers, etc.)

Intranets and extranets can encourage collaboration, cooperation, and a sense of community. They can also provide significant cost savings compared to traditional communication methods, due to reduced paperwork and instant availability of critical information.

Purplewire has extensive experience developing and maintaining intranet and extranet applications. Examples include:

• Warranty Claims Submissions by dealers and distributors
• Warranty Registration
• Parts Ordering and Order Tracking System for dealers and distributors
• RFQ, Quote Generation, and Tracking Workflow System
• Sales Pipeline Management
• Document Library

If your business is considering an intranet or extranet, you may be wrestling with a tough question: should you develop and run it yourself, or outsource it? In general, we believe that most companies are better off outsourcing the development and operation of their complex intranet and extranet applications, for a number of reasons:

1. Maintaining the infrastructure for a complex, secure web-based application requires unique skills which are not readily available in many organizations, e.g. expertise in network technology, information security, web technology, and database administration.
2. The infrastructure can be expensive to buy and maintain. You will need web servers, database servers, backup devices, network hardware and network bandwidth. Maintaining the servers, keeping the server software up to date, monitoring the server access and security logs, and keeping your data backed up all require labor. We perform these services for many sites simultaneously, and can do it more efficiently than a non-specialist company through economies of scale and use of specialized administration tools.
3. Software maintenance and modifications can be done more efficiently when the application developer is also the maintainer.
4. Extranets present particular problems in network security: the increased visibility of your extranet facility can make your organization a target for hackers. If you maintain the servers in house, you will need to open a number of holes in your corporate firewall to accomodate the legitimate extranet traffic. These holes present potential vulnerabilities which need to be monitored to make sure they are not be exploited for unintended purposes.

Contact us to discuss your intranet or extranet needs!

E-business Architect

When playing the role of "e-business architect", our goal is to design and implement the technology strategy needed to support the business objectives of a startup enterprise. In some cases, the concept for the new business comes from our own in-house technology team, and in other cases it is brought to us by outside partners. In the early stage, we provide the technical and e-business expertise to design the system, assist in the development of the business plan, and produce a prototype to support marketing and fund-raising. We also design, and then implement, a production technology plan that addresses the development, infrastructure, maintenance, and security requirements consistent with the growth profile called for by the business plan.

In projects initiated by external companies, we may consider taking an equity position as full or partial compensation for our expertise and services.