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Customer Testimonial
Paul Findlay (Aspire Technology - Australia)
Aspire Technology provides support and consulting services to small
enterprises in Sydney, Australia. Dealing primarily in the financial
services market, our clients deal with real time pricing information
which is critical to their businesses. One of our largest clients, a
boutique energy broking firm, required development of a spreadsheet
which could store bid/offer pricing information for a number of
different energy products. Additional to this, the spreadsheet needed to
be distributed to each of the brokers over two offices 1000Km apart with
the most recent prices changes replicated in real time.
Initially we looked at developing a client/server application, but the
cost of the project was to range from $20,000 - $60,000. It was at this
time, that I came across Cogent through a web search. After downloading
the demonstration version and some contact with Cogent support staff, we got
a simple spreadsheet running between 5 users across three offices in two
cities in two different states. Initially we struggled with the amount
of calculation being done to replicate the data. With over 1500 data
points in the spreadsheet, we needed the most efficient way of handling
this. With no programming skill sets in house, we approached Cogent to
assist. They were more than willing to do what they could to
make it work, providing some customized VBA coding to make it sing.
All up, the project cost under $10,000 in software licenses and
programming and we now have a spreadsheet which show's live prices, and
changes cell colours for a short period when a cell value changes. We
have since extended the spreadsheet to allow text notes to be entered
for each client so that the brokers have a communications log and an
understanding of each client's requirements, even if they don't talk
with that client directly. It has revolutionized the amount of
communication between the brokers and optimized the service provided to
the clients.
We were delighted with the level of service Cogent provided
throughout the project. With extreme timezone differences, Cogent's support staff
made themselves available well into the night to allow phone and
email contact to work through any problems we experienced. All of our
questions were answered promptly and in great detail to ensure we
understood exactly what was going on. It has been a pleasure dealing
with them, and I look forward to recommending their products in future
situations.
Regards
Paul Findlay
Read the Case Study here
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