Here at Clark IP, we're currently working on an exciting data management project with a recycling firm in the Northwest that collects sows' ears and turns them into silk purses (pardon the metaphor, but we cannot use their name right now). The project entails monitoring collection and distribution of the reusable materials from over 2,000 sources and the distribution of the products to a growing number of outlets.

The client needed to replace a customer service management process that was straining the limits of a widely used, desktop contact management program. The source material was backing up at client locations, and production of recycled products was lagging.

Our approach was to offload the data, parse the entire database and migrate the data into a fully relational, MySQL database with PHP middleware driving a web interface that lets managers, production supervisors, drivers and customer support staff access and maintain information from any web browser.

Following a planning and development period lasting about three months, we're happy to report that the system launched with only a couple of page-positioning errors that were quickly handled, and the staff abandoned the old method for the new after only three days of experimentation. The backlog of source material in the region has been reduced from 122,000 units to 82,000 units in about ten days of active collections.

Next to our Journalmaker and Sitemaker tools, this is our largest project to date, and we look forward to presenting a more complete case study later this spring.