Tender generator

In this instance our client came to us with a plan for a major upgrade  for their worldwide Mystery Shopping programme.

As part of the upgrade the client wanted to simplify the way requests to suppliers were handled, 

The client makes over 5000 individual shopping requests every quarter, so it was important to them that as much of the process as possible could be generated automatically.  

By grouping suppliers being tested together in small sets and giving each supplier in the set the same order, instead of making individual requests to each supplier, we were able to streamline the process, and achieve greater consistency for the client.

Part of our challenge was to identify suppliers to be grouped together, as competitors, and in designing the system to provide a tender description which all the suppliers within the group could reasonably meet.

By using a hybrid approach of a Constraint solver paired with simulated annealing, we found a mechanism which allowed our client to control  which  scoring factor to  adjust over time which gave them the desired fine control over the outputs generated.

Network Spa Controller

Our client came to us with a concept for network controlled health spa facilities.

We undertook the preliminary design of the a network archtitecture which would meet their needs, and include a path to future HIPAA compliance.

Since the path to HIPAA compliance was critical to the project, we built in security considerations  from the outset.

In addition, the client required the capacity to operate the system locally in case of temporary loss of connectivity to the wider internet. 

This ruled out securing connections using a cloud based gateway. To overcome this challenge we were able to design and build an internal gateway which could have the same advertised trusted credential and as cloud based gateway, and which could be installed by a non-technical Spa Operator.

A New Kind of Engine

Our client wanted an industry specific survey engine, something they could build on, and scale, without significant internal cost, to plug into databases they could maintain and configure themselves, and share across different clients and markets on an international level.

The end client was a group of well known visitor attractions, offering very different experiences, from theme parks to heritage attractions, but all competing for the same limited family leisure budget. They needed a survey that could measure both the commonality and differences between the attractions, allowing benchmarking, but adaptable enough to meet different clients’ individual information needs as well. To make it adaptable and scaleable as well was a tall order for a single system.

Then COVID 19 hit, and everything in the industry changed over night. It was essential to pivot, and be agile, so Gamma Science’s capability for creative fusion was needed, to provide an alternative to the traditional face to face, paper-based questionnaire, beloved by the client.

With returning visitors highly reluctant to complete face to face interviews Gamma Science was able to come up with the goods, by leveraging the technology in the customers pocket, their mobile phones, using QR and NFC codes (link to blog entry) to enable the customer to access the surveys driectly on their mobiles, or get a link emailed to the to self-complete when they had a better connection.

Our client was most excited by the potential to expand the range of surveys available to clients cost effectively, and now has access to more data, including some from groups of people that could not have been  accessed by the traditional methods.