Sisyphus IT Consulting has worked with a wide variety of business with a similar wide variety of technical and business challenges. Out of the box software solutions can only go so far to address the often highly specific requirements of a business.
Here are a number of business challenges and successful solutions that I’ve worked on over the last several years. Due to respecting the privacy of their back end data, the images are very general. Privacy and security are a high priority.
Example 1: SOAR Solutions Fleet Management
A local trucking company specialized in trucking and the delivery of petroleum based lubricants for businesses connected with the petroleum industry
Our challenge was to create a fleet management system for their trucking and logistics data.
The system needed to track and record drivers licenses and expiry dates, trip lengths and times, types of loads. Drivers would be able to enter data through their phones to the cloud based system.
The strict and accurate statistics are required for government industry regulations compliance.
The fleet and trip management application required performance reports to be generated to allow management to track the numbers. Another important feature were automated notifications to management about upcoming license and permit renewals.
Success: The application made tracking and accurate record keeping much easier for both delivery drivers, management and the tracking of maintenance scheduling. No more clipboards and drivers scratching out figures with a pen leaking ink.
Example 2: Oil and Gas Pages Search Engine
A group entrepreneurs in the oil and gas industry in Alberta, Canada had amassed a large database of business contact information related to the main base of the local economy – the supporting industries related to the petroleum industry in the province.
The entrepreneur had extensive knowledge of the petroleum and support industries and wanted to create a searchable database of companies that would most accurately target the user’s search terms.
The entrepreneurs outlined the criteria and order of importance of how the results would be ranked. They divided the list into meaningful categories that users would most likely be looking for.
Together, we designed in J-Query, PHP and MySQL a search engine that ranked and returned the most relevant results and suggested related services according to market and company service niche.
The search algorithm was the biggest technical challenge.
The database search engine indexed the DB fields to optimize each search for speed and relevance.
Data security was very important to the owner and we implemented a number of checks on the back-end to prevent hackers and SQL injections.
Success: We created a clean and intuitive UI with a very accurate and effective way to find the service the user searched for.
Example 2: Ouano Woo Commerce to Shopify E-commerce
My Los Angeles based sports wear online and wholesale retailer had a WordPress based website with the e-commerce plugin Woo commerce to run the online catalogue.
The owner enjoyed the relationship building and deal making part of the business, but had little interest in processing products images and entering them into the online catalogue. He preferred to hand that part over to me and concentrate on what he did best.
Dissatisfied with the ROI, the parent company wanted to switch to Shopify online e-commerce platform.
Using the internal Woo commerce tools I exported a file of all legacy inventory to a file.
I migrated a the Woo Commerce data over to Shopify – using Shopify’s import too. I imported the product data, prices, media and inventory quantities. There were inconsistencies in the data fields being migrated and multiple errors resulted.
I quickly repaired errors to ensure the service interruption to the new e-commerce was minimized. The store transition was as seamless as possible.
Success: The migration from the old Woo Commerce store to the Shopify platform has been successful in increasing online product sales.
Example 3: Gracie Barra Online – Streaming Video
A subscription based online sports video service had a large back inventory of video content that had not been indexed properly with descriptive titles, tags, or descriptions containing searchable keywords.
A lack of searchable keywords made much of their video assets invisible to members and effectively wasted the content.
I created an indexing system of tags and keywords that allowed users to search effectively for the all but invisible content, increasing the value to the viewers.
The hosting website had an Analytics section, but lacked several key metrics (Customer Lifetime Value, geographic location of members)
I downloaded a large, raw dataset from the video website. Using my knowledge of SQL, I used ChatGPT to analyze raw user and viewing statistics. This business intelligence allowed the website to more accurately target new customers through social media advertising. This member data would allow for targeted Google and Meta ads campaigns.
Example 4: Simpang Restaurant SEO Ranking
A Los Angeles based duo of restaurants had a Wix website that was not generating much web traffic in Google searches for Indonesian restaurants.
I conducted a SEO analysis and immediately identified some significant problems..After completing the internal Wix SEO requirements, I went to work on the public website.
The most obvious problem was a near total absence of relevant Keywords for their restaurant niche. For example there were no names of any of the dishes they served on the home page.
I researched ans wrote keyword rich content of menu specialties and edited their graphics to add valuable (and visually appealing) content to the website.
Success: Within 2 weeks the restaurant had archived a #1 organic Google ranking for their niche restaurant in a competitive marketplace.
Example 5 : GB Institute Integromat to Make Migration
GB Institute was based around an online learning platform called LearnWorlds. The user base was several thousand members from all over the world.
My role was to oversee the technology employed by the company to run it´s instructor certification online program.
The e-Learning platform was integrated with several 3rd party applications (Saas) for increased functionality and sharing data with other company entities (a Global database for all schools worldwide) and services (ie. MailChimp)
The primary automation and API manager (Ipaas) was Integromat which was purchsed by Make.com. The staff that managed the learning platform had next to zero knowledge of Integromat as the previous developer had left the company abruptly.
The task was to migrate complex systems and data from Integromat to Make without service disruption to the learning platform. Moved legacy data from the old, deprecated systems to newer systems as the company upgraded and modernized their record keeping.
I supported the customer service staff in the new software features and troubleshot any website glitches..
Success: There was minimal service disruption to the learning website, no critical data lost and a smooth transition to the new Make system.
