Our client are a well-established software solutions company with over 3 decades of experience in providing subscription-based software to the recruitment industry. They continue to innovate and improve their software to meet their end customer expectations. The team has over 80 years of experience working with recruitment and software and has enabled their end customers to improve efficiency, increase competitiveness and gain greater profitability.

Outgrowing existing software

The company’s existing software offered to their customers worked well, however it presented several limitations. For example, the software was windows based which made the process of sharing the software for subscription customers complex and manual effort was required to add records and data to the software. To remain competitive and offer excellence to their end customers, they wanted to evolve and improve their software with a newer version with sophisticated features and functionality.

A complete recruitment software solution

The Ardent software development team built a web-based app hosted on the cloud with a visually effortless, user-friendly interface that is easy to use and navigate. The software offers our clients the full flexibility to offer their end customers customizability to fulfil their needs and requirements.

There are many standout features that our clients love and they include:

AG grid with instant search results

The software product built using leading technologies such as Angular features an AG grid for the user to get instant search results with searches based on location, keywords and more.

Easy document management

The end customer can easily upload and manage documents to suit their style and preference, with quick folder creation. The document uploaded can vary from CVs, payslips and any other relevant documents that may need to be kept on record.

Multi-search abilities

Users can use one or a combination of searches to narrow down the candidate data making it easier to find candidates that meet the criteria. For example, if the user is looking for a Civil Engineer in London, they can easily use the keyword ‘Civil Engineer’ with a location radius set to narrow down the search.

Email functionality

The software has built-in email features that allow the users to send emails directly from the software, whether that is contacting a candidate or a company.

Bookings and interviews

This calendar-based feature enables users to quickly access the availability of a candidate whether that is for an interview or availability to work specific jobs. This makes it easy for the user and the candidate to communicate availability.

SMS ability

The software features SMS ability, enabling users to send SMS to candidates directly from the app. This again makes the entire process easier and streamlined with the communication being centralized on the app to capture and record all relevant data and information.

Admin access

The end customer will have access to the admin portal as part of their subscription to the software. They will be able to fully customise

Working collaboratively to deliver excellence to end customers

Our client is thrilled with the result of the software which will enable them to offer additional functionality and features to their end customers with an app that is accessible on the web making it easier and more efficient. The Ardent team have been working with the client for several years and looks forward to continuing our work together to consistently maintain the app and make improvements when necessary.

If you are looking to build software tailored to your business or with rich features to offer your end customers flexibility, get in touch to find out how the experienced Ardent team can help.

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We have worked with our client in market research for a number of years on a wide variety of software and data engineering projects. The company is a well-established, global market research brand, well known for its big data science and research analytics, driving powerful, game-changing insights for their businesses. They have world-leading brands as clients, including the likes of Instagram, Hulu and Universal.

From building a data pipeline to mitigating chances of data dropout

We built our client a robust, secure and scalable data pipeline collating, processing, cleansing and enriching data from three disparate sources. These pipelines, dealing with a large volume of data on a daily basis required consistent monitoring as our client wanted to ensure that the data was consistent and there were no data dropouts or delays. As we have worked together on several projects, Ardent was the operational monitoring and support service provider of choice. Read the full story on robust, scalable data pipelines with AWS infrastructure.

Consistent, around-the-clock data monitoring

Our teams monitor the data pipeline to ensure that there is always consistency in data without any issues that could affect the data delivery. With a clear, organised error alerting system, any errors are dealt with quickly and efficiently. Should an error arise, there are set communication channels where the different levels or errors are communicated with various parties. If a failure does occur, the data is re-processed to ensure that there is no loss.

Peace of mind with reliable service

We ensure that our clients can rely on us to fulfil their business needs and help them face their business challenges. For this client, they can rest assured with peace of mind knowing that their data is being monitored 24/7 to ensure that their data is delivered as it should. This enables them to confidently offer data to their end clients and an ability to expand their services.

Learn more about Ardent being ISO 27001 certified.

Ardent 24/7, 365 day expert operational monitoring and support services

Have peace of mind knowing that we proactively monitor and improve the performance of your data infrastructure. Get in touch to find out more or to get started on improving your data performance.

The post Making data science efficient appeared first on Ardent.

Well-established market research company

Our client are a well-established market research company offering a number of services including market research insights on tv audience data. The company has been providing data to end customers to help them make well-informed decisions on marketing, business strategy and approaching their target audience. With almost 35 years of experience, they look to expand and grow their services and we are proud to help them on their journey to achieve that.

Collecting, processing and enriching a variety of data

We have worked with our client on a number of data projects, so when they needed robust, scalable pipelines built to deal with large volumes of data, Ardent was the data engineering provider of choice. Our client wanted to ingest data from several sources, collate it and enrich it for their data science teams to generate deeper insights that inform smarter decisions for their end customers.

Robust, scalable pipelines

Our engineers with their rich experience and expertise in delivering data engineering excellence for over a decade built robust, scalable data pipelines to deal with the large volumes of data being ingested. We built the data pipeline infrastructure to collate data from three main sources including; TV data from a leading provider of automatic content recognition (ACR) technologies and cross-screen metrics, mobile data from a global leader in mobile location data, POI data and corresponding compliance services as well as pixel data. Each source of data provides the data in various formats, which was cleansed, processed, validated and enriched by joining tables based on set queries with intelligent algorithms. This provides the client with a fuller picture of their data. 

One of the key technical challenges that our team overcame was dealing with large volumes of mobile data which varied between 100 GB to 300 GB per day. This data needed to be processed swiftly, therefore our teams were able to recommend and employ EMR (Elastic MapReduce) to significantly reduce the processing time so our client could access the data quickly.

High data accessibility and data accuracy  

Our client can access hourly reports based on their data, which is processed quickly and efficiently. This allows their data science teams to provide quick turnaround to their end client on data reports and insights, empowering them to provide excellent service to their clients. We continue to work with our client on managing their data pipelines with our operational monitoring and support service. Read the full success story on how we enable them to avoid data delays and data gaps.

If you are looking to create data pipelines or have existing data pipelines which require maintenance, need updating or better infrastructure, or are looking to build data secure, scalable and robust data pipelines then get in touch to find out how we can help.

The post Powerful insights driving growth for global brands appeared first on Ardent.

Global market research companies working with the biggest names in entertainment

Our client are a global market research company offering content security to their clients. They offer the service of finding any pre-release content leaks for movies, shows and entertainment across various platforms including the likes of Instagram, Twitter and Facebook. This ensures that the end client can mitigate any negative impact that any leaks may have and react accordingly.

Existing content security process was time-consuming

To provide content security service, our client’s team were manually searching the internet to uncover any leaks. This was labour intensive, time-consuming and repetitive process for the client’s team. As the process was carried out by the team, this also posed an issue with human error such as missing out on leaked content which could be detrimental to the end client.

Intelligent platform to automate content security

Our client required a platform which would enable them to automate their existing process to save time and resources, improve accuracy and reduce the risk of human error. Ardent delivered just that. Our highly skilled data engineering team built a platform using world-leading technologies such as AWS, Python, and Elasticsearch that would monitor and track data across various platforms such as Google, Vevo, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to find any content leaks.

Find out more about our technology partners.

Content scanner for the web to automate information security

The platform continuously monitors the web to find any leaked content. Once any related content is found, the platform captures all the details related to the content.  

This data is then fed into the front-end application feed for human action, where the content specialist can communicate with any relevant parties if a leak occurs and mitigate any negative impact.

Improved productivity and continuous innovation

The intelligent content security platform has helped our client significantly improve productivity and improve accuracy. Our team continues to work with the client to consistently innovate and upgrade the platform in line with evolving requirements and technologies.

Whether you are looking to mitigate the effect of pre-release leaks, want to track your brand presence online, or measure the impact of your marketing, Ardent can help. We can build data engineering solutions to meet your unique needs and requirements to better understand what is out there. Get in touch to find out more about how we can help.

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Our client’s company, founded in 2005 have been empowering businesses with targeted TV brand advertising for almost two decades. Their end clients range from marketing agencies to media owners looking to create target TV ads for their various audience segments. Our client collects a wide range of data TV data about audiences across cable, digital and more. They have a network of more than 90 cable networks, 200 MVPDs and 1,100 broadcast stations, so they deal with a large volume of data.   

Business challenge

Our client were collecting large volumes of data from a variety of sources which presented issues with performance, data accuracy and data cleanliness. They required a high-performance data solution that would effectively collate, process and clean their data for speedy querying for their data analytics and reporting purposes.

Sophisticated data indexing tool

Our highly skilled data engineers built a sophisticated indexing tool which essentially collated the data from third parties, cleaned it, ensured it passed the validation checks and processed it. The data was then fed into the client’s reporting tool for them to gain insights from clean, processed data. A user-friendly User Interface was created in line with the client’s brand to produce a number of data reports including panel summaries looking at metrics such as the number of TVs and households.

The data processing was carried out on an AWS-driven infrastructure, to automate the processing of the data for the client with serverless architecture without manual input. Based on our recommendations, for this project and the data at hand, AWS was the technology of choice. AWS technologies are exceptional when it comes to automating scaling and dealing with big data.

Our data engineering team faced some technical challenges for this project due to the scale and the type of data. However, our engineers have over a decade’s experience in delivering excellence through our data engineering solutions, so they were able to identify and resolve these challenges efficiently. These are the challenges they faced:

• Processing variety of data formats – They were able to overcome this by setting up cleansing rules within the architecture.
• Lack of consistency in data deliveries – As data came in from multiple sources, it came in at inconsistent timings. Our data engineers were able to set triggers to start the processing on an hourly basis.
• Repetitive data – There was a lot of repetitive data that was coming in from the third-party sources, they were able to avoid duplicate data by setting up rules to ‘ignore’ this data.
• Lengthy query time – We employed two databased systems, Aurora and Athena. Athena was used for time-consuming queries whereas Aurora was used for quicker queries to speed up the query process.

Efficient, automated data processing

We worked with our client on a project basis, we built and delivered the infrastructure with a year of post-project support to ensure that the solution was working well for the client. With the indexing tool, our client were able to improve efficiency with automated processing of the variety of data coming in from several sources. This enabled them to offer their end client a targeted way to approach their audience segments.

If you are looking for expert engineers to provide secure, scalable and robust data pipeline development service, get in touch to find out how the Ardent team can help.

The post Empowering brands to create targeted TV advertising appeared first on Ardent.

A well-established Norwegian group looking to streamline business processes

Sourcing talent from across the world

Our client are a well-established Norwegian group company and they are a key supplier within the oil, gas and land-based industries, delivering excellence in multidisciplinary engineering and consultancy services. They source professionals from across the world for various project-based work and need to ensure that those professionals are managed effectively from sourcing, providing work visas, tracking working hours, paying salaries whilst maintaining and adhering to government rules and regulations.

Our client had been building their applications over a number of years and this created a disjointed system, where their clients had to access three different applications simply to find the services they needed. Ardent was tasked with resolving this challenge that the company faced, with a brief to streamline their HR CRM, Content Management System (CMS) and recruitment and project management processes. They also wanted to improve their systems by adding enhanced functionality, such as Microsoft Outlook Email software, timesheet and invoice tracking.

An outdated system lacking in functionality

Need for a modern solution

Our client work with both consultants and clients to fill vacant positions using ‘Job Shop’, their own in-house developed online system. Their existing software worked by allowing candidates and consultants seeking employment to upload their CVs and register on both the existing website and ‘Job Shop’. Their clients, companies or sub-contractors looking for candidates could then source an appropriate consultant, who fitted the desired discipline and field of expertise. The candidate selected would then become a consultant on behalf of our client.

This system was outdated and lacked the advanced functionality that users were looking for. It was also an incredibly complex process, with users having to access three different applications to locate, source and manage candidates. Our client came to realise that their management software needed to be fully integrated with Microsoft Outlook Email software for improved communication. They also wanted to manage content on their website themselves.

User-friendly, accessible software to streamline business processes

3-in-1 software solution top fulfil all requirements

Our solution was to create an application that could accommodate all parties and enable them to quickly access the features and functionality that they needed. The application that we designed meant that the recruitment and project management processes could run seamlessly, with easy access for the candidate, the client, and the CRM administrator. We were also able to resolve their need for extra functionality by facilitating timesheet tracking, invoicing and billing requirements, the integration of the Microsoft Outlook Email software, and an inbuilt CMS.  

Project management software

We designed the in-application Project Management Software to manage all user requirements − from sourcing of suitable candidates to defining the business needs, sector requirements, disciplines, categories, agreed rates and hours. Once the candidate or the client has registered, they can access all features and functionalities required to support the resource, recruitment, and project processes.

CRM system

Clients can call individuals for an interview without leaving the CRM and both parties can track the status of the application. If successful, the candidate is attached to a project which has been created for the duration of the contract. Once the project is up and running, the CRM software tracks all timesheets, manage billing and invoicing, and facilitates easy communication between parties via Outlook email.

CMS system

Ardent’s inbuilt CMS solution allows the administrators to update news articles, upload blog entries, control content and renew images easily and efficiently with the in-built user-friendly CMS system.

Committed to delivering on time and on budget  

Going above and beyond

As the build neared the final stages, the arrival of new stakeholders required changes that could have pushed back the delivery date. However, we worked closely with the client’s team and were able to bring the new stakeholders up to speed with the features, functions and processes. They were able to clearly understand the project status and issued a request for changes that were outside the scope of the original brief. Our software engineers were able to accommodate their last-minute requests, working diligently to implement alterations without impacting the delivery date, and completed the project within the original timeframe.

A seamless, integrated, one-stop software solution

Supporting business growth

Ardent delivered exactly what our client needed, on time and within budget. We created a seamless solution with all added functionality required. As a result of a seamless, integrated software solution, our client has been able to make great savings on software and manpower costs and has invested in other key areas of their business.

Explore our software development services or get in touch to find out how we can bring your vision to life.

The post Bringing it all together, in one place appeared first on Ardent.

Well-established technology company

Building software for over two decades

Our long term client are a well-established technology company providing software products and services. They are a supplier of removals management software that has been supplied to over 280 companies in the UK for over two decades. The software offered serves a large variety of clients from small companies with a single user to multi-branch and multi-organisation companies.  

Need for structured project delivery

Unified teams and expert skills

The main business challenge that our clients faced was that the technical expertise came from various sources including freelancers and contractors. They required specific skillsets and a team that would work as a unit with their own in house developers with set structures for project delivery. As a technology company, they had an existing removal management software that was on the market. However, the software was only on the windows platform and needed cross-platform capabilities.

Highly skilled and experienced dedicated team

Working as a cohesive unit

Ardent’s highly-skilled engineers came on board as a dedicated team to provide the specific skillset required. With Ardent’s structured approach to project delivery, the teams integrated to work towards the common goal. Over the years, our teams have been working in collaboration to evolve the software in line with the latest technology trends and end-customer requirements. Our client’s software allows the end client to book removal appointments, records the surveyor notes to determine the requirements of the move and it also records the start and the end of the delivery. The software product consists of two different cross-platform apps, a web app and a mobile app to serve the different users.

The web app:

The web app is used by the removal companies and it allows them to send out proposals to end customers as well as book appointments for the surveyor and the delivery move time slots.

The mobile app:

The mobile app is used by the surveyor when they are surveying a property to determine the requirements of the move. The mobile app is packed with useful features such:

• Google map integration to allow the user to find the closest parking spots to the locations
• Automatic data syncing to make it available in real-time for other teams to access
• Artificial intelligence to estimate and calculate the volume of the items to be moved
• Pre-defined items that are common to save time when recording items for the move
• Photo capture and upload feature to enable the moving company to have evidence should there be any damage to the items.
• Record start and the end timing of the delivery functions
• Access jobs on the go as and when they are made available
• Carrying out HGV vehicle checks and recording the data
• Video sign off feature developed during COVID to eliminate physical contact that comes from taking signatures

Migrating and evolving software to keep up with end customer requirements

Ardents experienced and highly skilled engineers were able to help our client migrate their software to new technology platforms, allowing both the mobile and the web app to be cross-platform. We have worked for a number of years with our clients and have established mutual trust with the common goal of making the software a success. We offer advice and present new ideas for our client to have a product that is keeping up with the evolving technologies and the end-user requirements.

More on software development and our software development teams services.

The post Making your move, easier appeared first on Ardent.

A fast-paced market research company

Making voices heard for over 25 years

Our client are one of the fastest-growing, global online market research panels with over 8 million panellists across the globe. They reward respondents who participate in market research surveys and they use survey and poll responses to track and collate engagement on a variety of different topics such as movies, TV viewing, music and products being bought and used. 

Expanding reach through a mobile presence

Reaching the younger generations

Our client’s creative services had only been available on desktop devices and they were not benefitting from the growing mobile technology industry. The shift in respondent behaviour over mobile phone use began to impact their response rates, especially among young adults where they noticed a significant drop off in registered user activity. Our client needed a robust, agile mobile solution to uplift engagement with surveys and mini polls as they are crucial to the sustained growth of their business.

An innovative, user-friendly mobile app with a strong brand presence

Entertaining and easy-going user experience

Our client came to us to find an innovative solution allowing respondents to access their accounts through mobile devices. Ardent provided a valuable solution with a mobile experience allowing respondents to complete surveys and mini polls instantly via a mobile app. The company brand features a series of cartoon characters that were incorporated into the design to keep in line with our client’s creative brand, making the app more entertaining. The app allowed respondents to update their profiles, complete mini polls and surveys, view results and claim their rewards. We created visually remarkable and clearly laid out dashboards that made it easier for respondents to see activities. 

Increasing engagement and reaching new audiences

Generating insights to inform big brands

Ardent provided an engaging application giving members an attractive way to complete surveys and mini polls at any time of day. The innovative, creative gamification and rewards feature further incentivise them to complete as many surveys and mini polls as possible, generating a wealth of market insights for the end client. This enabled our client to gain valuable insights for some of the biggest brands such as BBC, ITV, M&S and more. Creating a mobile app meant engagement increased with the younger audience while preserving the excellent relationship they already had with their older members.

More on mobile app development and software development.

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Entertaining and inspiring audiences since 1984

Our client are a well-established, multi-national broadcasting company reaching 300 million subscribers across 150 countries, through 50 channels and in 37 languages. They deal with large sets of complex data audience data ranging from streaming to TV audiences. They need to be able to efficiently carry out searches, for research and sales purposes. Their data sets are sourced from Nielsen AMRLD which is stored in their data warehouse.

Program Search and Market Break Ranker tool

Huge data requires a powerful system

Our client’s existing data search tool performed the search queries extremely slow, frequently timed out because of the large volumes of complex data and did not offer the flexibility required. They needed a tool that would help them gain insights from large amounts of data to help support the research and sales efforts of the business.

Flexible, user-friendly tool that handles data searches on large volumes of complex data

Making big data searches, speedy

The client was looking for an improved data search tool that allowed them to have a Program Search as well as a Market Break Ranker. These two different components were essentially search engines for the two types of data the company dealt with .The Ardent engineering team took on board the requirements and created a tool that optimised big data queries for large volumes of complex data with a user-friendly interface, using API Gateway and Angular technologies. We offered flexibility by adding filters and drop-down menus, allowing the users to select multiple categories for the data results see t.As the client wanted the ability to be able to carry out Boolean logic combination searches, we needed to build a system that could search vast data sets to pull out relevant data results. We were able to provide a solution on Lambda and then moved to AWS Batch to ensure a quick and efficient search of the data.

More on our technology partners.

Ardent’s data engineering expertise

Drill down searches with boolean logic

Our expert engineers made recommendations on boolean logic to streamline data searches as we have a vast amount of experience working on a similar scale of data and clients.

Optimised big data queries

Searching huge data sets quickly and easily

Our experienced engineers delivered a fit for purpose data solution, allowing our client to optimise big data queries on large, complex big data with a number of features to make the search process easy and straightforward. This enabled our client to have a quick turnaround time on analysis of the data (household viewing figures), increasing efficiency in the data search process. Overall, they were able to save time, be efficient, and save costs allowing them to focus on other important business goals.

Explore our data engineering services or get in touch to find out how we can help you optimise your big data.

The post Over 35 years of entertainment appeared first on Ardent.

Leading provider of tickets to UKs visitor attractions

Making memories for guests around the world for over 35 years

Our client is an important part of the UK’s tourism industry. They are leading providers of tickets for the nation’s visitor attractions have served over 10 million guests from hundreds of countries around world. They provide a vast variety and combinations of attraction tours and tour packages to both B2C customers and B2B traders across the world.

A multi-purpose user-friendly software solution

Modernising user experience

Our client came to us with the brief for an application that would have functionalities for both their B2B and B2C customers. They required a trader portal within the application that would allow their partners to buy their attraction and tour packages in bulk. The trader portal would act as a customer relationship management (CRM) that would have features such as invoice tracking, credit control and the ability for the partners to buy in bulk. On the other hand, the B2C customers portal needed to have a secure payment gateway, the ability to produce and send receipts and tickets to the customer.

We worked with the client to understand both their and their end customer’s needs. Working as an extension of their team, we were able to pinpoint the most valuable ways in which we could build several cost-saving functions into the application, saving business users money and consumers time.

A future-proof, all in one system

Meeting every demand for every user

We designed a future-proofed multi-purpose web ticketing system, allowing our client to provide a seamless experience to their customers. Ardent’s experienced engineers created an app that is hosted on a Cloud MS SQL Server, Microsoft Azure and has been developed using a .Net, Telerik and Java Script.

More on our technology partners.

The web ticketing system through the trader portal offers the trade partners a secure online payment solution as well as a point-of-sale system. Once a trader has created an account on the trader portal, they can start to build and customise their bespoke portal. The following are some of the key features that our software expert developed:

• Easily upload and remove tour packages and attraction tickets
• Set standard or premium ticketing options
• Option to create individual, group and family tickets  
• Create discounts on specific tours and packages
• View and analyse product and customer reports
• Create promotional codes for marketing purposes
• Manage invoices and payments

A mobile solution was incorporated in the app to allow traders to authenticate tickets at gates with barcode scanning technology. This helped save time and allowed the process of checking tickets quick and efficient.

For the B2C customer, they could quickly and easily purchase without having to log in. However, Ardent created a user-friendly B2C customer portal for those customers that wanted to have access to their order history, receipt and tickets.

User-friendly, high scalable ticketing system

A smooth sailing customer journey

We delivered a user-friendly and highly scalable ticketing system for a growing company that successfully serves all their customers. Our clients can now offer their trade partners a fully integrated, one-stop solution and provide a seamless process of buying and selling tickets various for tours and packages. The website and the customer portal offers a smooth end customer journey, enabling a good customer experience.

Find out more about our web app development and app integration services.

The post Creating memorable experiences appeared first on Ardent.