Latitude 40 Consulting

About Beta Health :

Beta Health Association is a Denver, Colorado based company which has specialized in both group voluntary (employee paid) and contributory (employer paid) dental, vision, life and disability products since 1990. They also have a wide selection of national individual dental and vision plan products.

Challenges :

When Beta Health found Latitude 40, they were facing significant challenges that were hindering their progress and growth:

Outdated Systems: Their existing .NET systems were outdated and struggled to support their expanding operations, leading to inefficiencies and limitations. Simple changes to the applications were also expensive and time-consuming to make.

Security Vulnerabilities: The legacy system had numerous security vulnerabilities, putting sensitive data at risk and increasing the potential for breaches.

Performance Issues: The system was plagued with bugs and redundant code, causing slow performance and frequent disruptions.

On-Premises Limitations: Operating from an on-premises environment limited their scalability and flexibility, making it difficult to adapt to changing needs.

Inefficient Software Delivery: The lack of continuous delivery and integration pipelines resulted in a slow and unreliable software delivery process.

3rd Party Needs: They had no CRM and their payment processor was expensive and required a lot of manual work to stay operational.

Solution :

Latitude 40 collaborated with Beta Health to modernize their technology and support their ambitious growth goals. They formed an agile team consisting of Latitude 40 personnel mixed with existing Beta developers. In addition to the development that needed to be done, a side goal was to help Beta’s developers improve their skillsets in more modern languages, design concepts, and agile practices. Together, they accomplished the following:

Implemented DevOps: Established continuous delivery and integration pipelines to streamline software delivery and make the process smoother and more reliable.

Enhanced Security: Implemented robust security measures and reduced vulnerabilities.

Transitioned to the Cloud: Moved Beta Health from an on-premises environment to the cloud, providing greater scalability and flexibility and eliminating the maintenance required for physical hardware.

​Upgraded Legacy Systems: Modernized their outdated .NET systems to better support expanding operations. Fixed numerous bugs, and removed hundreds of thousands of lines of redundant or unused code, improving performance and speeding up future development.

Integrating with new CRM and Payment Processor: Set up a seamless integration with a new HubSpot environment, and helped implement Recurly as a payment processor.

Along the way, the internal development staff were trained in the agile philosophy and experienced its methodologies first-hand side-by-side with Latitude 40, giving them an improved ability to keep Beta agile moving into the future.

Our Impact :

Improved Security: Security audit scores improved dramatically. All high-priority issues were discovered and mitigated.

Improved Performance: Some operations now perform up to 85% faster and infrastructure can support 3x the traffic.

Scalability: Achieved greater scalability through cloud transition. Adjustments to resource utilization now just takes a few clicks unlike before when it would take purchasing or manually upgrading physical servers.

Improved Agility: Development initiatives can now be done up to 75% faster allowing for quicker reaction to required change or new opportunities.

Streamlined Software Delivery: A single delivery used to take up to an hour of manual work and require significant down-time. Now, test environments are updated automatically as code is changing. Production is updated with a few clicks. This saves a lot of time and allows for quicker and more frequent deliveries.

About Davey Coach :

​Davey Coach Sales is a leading dealer of new and used mid-sized buses and shuttles in North America. They offer a wide range of services, including bus sales, leasing, specialty vehicle conversions, and in-house vehicle services. Known for their customer-centric philosophy, they have consistently received top distributor honors from both customers and manufacturers.​

Challenges :

Davey Coach approached Latitude 40 to streamline their sales and management processes by integrating their CRM and Dealer Management System (DMS). They sought a solution that would enable their sales team to work efficiently within HubSpot while ensuring seamless synchronization with their DMS, Karmak Fusion. Lacking an integration, manual data entry was time-consuming and prone to errors.

Solution : 

Latitude 40 developed DaveySync, a robust two-way integration between HubSpot and Karmak Fusion, featuring:

Automatic Synchronization: Companies, contacts, and deals are automatically synchronized.
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Real-Time Updates: Salespeople can operate entirely within HubSpot, with updates reflected in real-time within Karmak Fusion. Conversely, changes made in Karmak Fusion are automatically updated in HubSpot, ensuring data consistency and accuracy.

Technical :

Latitude 40 created a .NET middleware service with a lightweight SQLite DB. This service runs in the background, monitoring for changes to be synced on either side.

The Impact : 

The integration has significantly enhanced the efficiency and productivity of Davey Coach’s operations by:
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1. Eliminating manual double-data entry cutting administrative time in half.
2. Reducing the risk of errors by 95%.
3. ​Allowing the team to focus more on sales and customer service.

About Bourbeau Custom Homes :

​Based out of Vermont, Bourbeau Custom Homes, Inc. specializes in designing and building homes that are
built with their customer’s lifestyle in mind. This family-run business assists their customers realize their
dreams with standardized construction practices that offer quality construction and a myriad of choices
that help make the home-building process a pleasure and not a pain. “Custom does not have to mean
expensive or high end,” said Denis Bourbeau, president of BCH, Inc. “Our customers come from all walks
of life and professions and we specialize in building custom homes in all price ranges. That is why it is so
important that our customers can easily make design selections, instantly see the results and know exactly
what they are investing in… and why we partnered with Latitude 40 Consulting, Inc.”

​Understanding your client is the first step toward a successful project :

​Latitude 40 began the task with first asking Bourbeau how clients typically select a floor plan and then customize their home. These meetings formed the foundation for the new website application. “It was critical that we met with BCH, Inc. and completely understood their business requirements,” said Andrew Anderson, president of Latitude 40 Consulting. “This is one of the major advantages of custom software development in that we can design and develop software solutions that exactly fit our client’s needs with the room to grow and change as their business grows and changes. We layer the architecture to make it easy to update or replace individual components as technologies improve. For example, if the next greatest database technology comes along, we can replace just that database layer with minimal disruption to the other parts of the system. Our clients know that what they did to get to where they are will not necessarily get them to where they want to be.”

For example, a vital component of the website is that BCH, Inc. clients have an allowance based on their general contract. With this, the client can view all of the options and prices that go with the particular contract. There are no hidden fees and, if the client wishes to change their selections or design of their home, they can do so and know the costs before they approve the change.

​Clients can also pick items – such as specialty windows or doors – provide information to the agent and request a quote. Buyers will see the results of their selections with respect to how they may affect the overall contract and add, modify or delete as they desire. One client wanted a  fireplace in their master bedroom rather than a bay window. With the new website application, she could instantly see the results both in the overall design and in the cost. This removes the uncertainty and perception that contractors hide changes and associated costs to their clients.

​Another important requirement and feature that Latitude 40 designed and developed was the ability for BCH, Inc. customers to instantly view items that need action before the contractor proceeds. “We do not act unless our clients give us the green light,” said Bourbeau. “And while some may think this lengthens the design and build process, in fact, we have found that it actually shortens the overall construction time.

Results :

​In the first three months since the new website application went live, BCH, Inc. has about seven new clients; the first of which was extremely happy with the process and the additional service the new website application provides. What’s more, Bourbeau demonstrated the new application at a recent home trade show. One potential client even signed up to meet and discuss building his home using the web application directly on the trade show floor. “We couldn’t be happier,” stated Bourbeau. “And it’s all due to our partnership with the Latitude 40 team.”

About InnovAge : 

InnovAge is a leading provider of PACE (Program of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) services, dedicated to helping seniors live independently in their communities. With a growing participant population, InnovAge offers comprehensive healthcare and social services to meet the diverse needs of the elderly.

Challenges :

As InnovAge was rapidly expanding, they turned to Latitude 40 to modernize their internal development team's capabilities. Through mentorship and collaboration on software projects, InnovAge aimed to become a more agile organization and sought guidance to achieve this transformation. They identified several business challenges that required software solutions:

Financial Profile Management: Securely managing participants’ financial profiles for legal compliance and financial visibility, especially with complex Medicaid/Medicare billing rules.
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Supportive Housing Program Management: Efficiently managing legal documents and finances for participants in their supportive housing program.

Participant Tracking: Maintaining accurate tracking of participants’ locations to enhance safety, coordination, and quality of care.

Referral Management: Prioritizing referral scheduling with contracted providers to reduce costs and legal exposure.
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Systems Integration: Integrating with existing systems such as Dynamics CRM, Snowflake, and Plexis Quantum Choice.

Our Solution : 

Latitude 40 formed a development team to operate on-site at InnovAge corporate headquarters. This team consisted of Latitude 40 personnel mixed with InnovAge internal developers. Together, utilizing a basic agile framework, over time, they built out a comprehensive set of solutions that met their needs.

Core Services : 

​One primary objective was to develop a suite of secure core services for company-wide use. These services were designed to handle essential functions such as providing a standard way to query for participant information, handle new enrollments, and search for providers. This ensured consistency and efficiency across various current and future initiatives.

Integration Services :

​InnovAge uses many 3rd party software packages for various purposes. Integrations with these packages were desired to help eliminate extra data-entry and all the ensuing mistakes that commonly occur when doing so. An adapter service was created for each 3rd party product to encapsulate the (sometimes very complex) knowledge on how to integrate with that particular product. Each service exposed simple APIs to make integrating very simple.

UI Applications :

​There were different applications created to be used by different business units. One was built to manage the financial profiles of all participants where they would track assets, sources of income, insurance information, manage Medicare/Medicaid rules, etc. For those in the supportive housing program, it would help track what facilities each participant was assigned to and manage related legal documents. Other apps were created to manage participant encounters, manage a core database of providers, and manage referrals to those providers.

The Impact :

Participant Safety: Improved tracking of participant locations has enhanced safety and coordination.

​Productivity: Increased overall efficiency and productivity, allowing InnovAge to better serve their growing participant population.

Enhanced Compliance: Improved compliance, especially when it comes to Medicaid/Medicare billing rules and management of certain legal documents.

Operational Efficiency: Optimized scheduling with contracted providers has reduced costs and legal exposure.

Increased Agility for the Future: InnovAge developers gained proficiency in modern programming languages and coding techniques. This enabled them to write clean, maintainable code that could be easily updated over time. They also learned the principles and practices necessary to make and keep InnovAge agile to continually enhance all the above.

About Millstadt :

Millstadt Young Plants is a leading producer of young plants for greenhouse growers. They specialize in a wide range of selections, including annuals, geraniums, mums, and poinsettias. They are known for their commitment to quality and offer various programs to meet the needs of their customers.

The Problem : 

Millstadt was using a popular off-the-shelf horticultural software package which required many staff, created complicated processes, and had several issues inherent with off-the-shelf products such as:

        • Inability to get desired changes
        • Forced unwanted changes
        • Inconsistent support
        • Complexity and administrative burden

Millstadt sought a solution that would allow them to streamline their workflows for operational efficiency, improve quality and communication, but also be flexible so processes could change in the future with ease.

Our Solution :

Latitude 40 developed a custom greenhouse management system tailored to Millstadt's needs, featuring the following key modules and functions:

Availability: Provides real-time rooted cutting availability to customers based on current greenhouse inventory, sales, and potential orders from suppliers. This information is automatically communicated to larger brokers via EDI and displayed on Millstadt’s website.

URC Purchase Order (PO) Management: Automatically adjusts supplier POs based on sales forecasts and actual sales activity. PO communications are managed in the background via EDI processes.

Tag PO Management: Manages tag POs with MasterTag automatically, ensuring tags arrive at the customer's site simultaneously with the cuttings shipped by Millstadt.

​Sales Orders: Facilitates EDI-based ordering with larger brokers while allowing manual order entry for smaller clients.

​Production: Optimizes sticking and inventory management during production. Tools confirm inventory before shipping and allow adjustments if unexpected issues arise.

Shipping

• Shipping Planning: Facilitates planning of truck or FedEx shipments.
• FedEx Integration: Prints FedEx labels with a single click through integration with FedEx APIs. Unified labels combine FedEx and box content info, saving time and preventing mismatches.
• Pull/Pack/Ship Process: Streamlines the packing and shipping process, ensuring efficient and timely delivery.
• Track & Trace: Uses scanners for track and trace, providing complete visibility into the supply chain to track the origin of cuttings shipped to customers.

Invoicing: Ensures accurate and prompt billing, with pricing based on seasonal order volumes and freight costs determined by customer location and shipping method.

Contract Growing: Manages contract growing operations for orders taken and managed by other companies.

The Impact :

The custom system has empowered Millstadt Young Plants to optimize their operations and reduce costs. By automating key processes and providing real-time insights, they can focus on producing high-quality young plants. The solution allows them to operate with just a couple administrative staff and increases product throughput with streamlined communication and workflows. They also have peace of mind knowing that ANY desired changes in the future will be possible, something you can’t achieve with off-the-shelf software. Special care was made to build the system with agility in mind so future changes can be made with minimal effort.

Syngenta Flowers, Inc.
Syngenta Flowers is dedicated to the breeding of innovative flower varieties that offer outstanding performance in the professional greenhouse, at retail, in the landscape and in the home garden. They are one of the largest wholesale breeders of flower cuttings in the world.

In late 2007, Syngenta purchased Fischer Companies which was powered by a unique ERP system created by Latitude 40 founders Andrew Anderson and Daniel DeLeeuw. Their objective when approached by Fischer back in 1998 was to provide a common platform that would unite Fischer's worldwide sales organizations with their various types of cutting production sites located all over the world. Over the years, this system evolved into a tool with modules covering pretty much every aspect of the business making it very efficient and productive. (See below for a description of some of these areas and functionalities.)

This software continues to be used by Syngenta today; however, one of the current projects at Syngenta is the creation of a new SAP/.NET based platform combining the functionalities of both Syngenta and Fischer legacy software into a single platform. As business process analysts/experts from the Fischer business, Latitude 40 has been played a critical consulting role in this endeavor, working alongside Infosys and other consulting firms to get it done.

Logistics
With diverse production sites located around the world supplying product globally, the logistics behind such an operation require creative automation help. Workload is reduced with software that assists with the harvesting and shipping processes, including batch printing of shipping documents such as packing lists, box content labels, bills of lading, proforma invoices and other mandatory paperwork required by export and import agencies such as the USDA, USDHS and other foreign government agencies.

Track & Trace
Real-time USDA required tracking of product from production to harvest to retail through barcoding with limited labor needs. Tracking accuracy cannot be taken lightly as large companies have been shut down due to disease that couldn't be tracked according to the needs of the US government.

"When the traceability USDA legal requirement went into effect, most companies implemented a standard system of barcoding and scanning throughout their supply chain which added significant overhead to their shipping processes. Given the high volume of product we ship in peak-season (millions of flower cuttings per week), we sought a more advanced solution to limit that overhead. Together with Latitude 40, an ingenious system of tracking was developed that requires virtually no scanning whatsoever and actually improves our performance in terms of efficiency and quality."

    Achim Hitzigrath
    President, Vivero International (Syngenta Supplier)

Sales Forecasting & Demand Planning
This tool provides views into current and past weekly sales figures with future projections allowing the creation and comparison of multiple sample offering scenarios. Ultimately, this becomes the completed demand plan for upcoming seasons which is in turn reverse engineered into a production plan.

Availability/Capacity Algorithm
One of the treasures of the system is the ability to provide the customer with accurate availability for all products and for any required delivery time whether it's over a year from today or if the product is needed immediately. While we can't disclose the algorithm behind this calculation, we can tell you that the combination of the algorithm and good procedural discipline has led to the highest availability accuracy level in the industry.

Order Entry & Maintenance
Most orders come in seamlessly via B to B connections with their largest brokers. The others are entered using a very user-friendly module that allows for speedy and accurate data entry. All orders are bound by the constraint of availability/capacity that is kept updated with direct links to the production sites around the world. In the case of any kind of availability reduction causing shortages, another tool allows for easy batch order adjustments where the most appropriate orders are easily adjusted through product substitution, back ordering, or direct shortage.

Federal Express Automation

• Combine the standard FedEx label and the various types of internal box content labels into a single customized label so one label can be applied to a box rather than two. This saves valuable time and reduces labeling errors.
• Preprint these labels in a batch operation days in advance of shipment and report the tracking numbers to customers as a pre-notification of shipment.
• Create labels at foreign farms that have domestic origins when scanned after US import clearance. This gives the customer the ability to ship Domestic Express with bottom line savings over International Priority charges.

Journal of Clinical Orthodontics
The Journal of Clinical Orthodontics is a peer-reviewed professional publication, published monthly, with offices in Boulder, CO.  JCO began publication in 1967, and for more than four decades, has kept its readers on the leading edge of professional development, and set the standard for the most useful and up-to-date information on clinical techniques and practice management.  Internally, subscription and advertisement management is all handled through custom software applications created by Latitude 40.

Subscription Management

• Manages standard subscriber information such as names and addresses, pricing, subscription terms, expiration dates, etc.  Includes full history of past subscriptions and financial transactions for research and other reporting purposes.
• Has detailed circulation reports for every aspect of subscription processing including school subscribers, group subscribers, list purchasers, agencies, subscription counts, back issues, suspended and duplicate records, subscription liability, renewal, inventory, postage and tax reports and mail merge files.
• Mailing labels are easily generated for each monthly issue run.
• Renewal program of various efforts meant to conserve existing subscribers prior to expiration as well as resign prior subscribers who have allowed their subscription to end.
• Internal audit reports are used to validate quantities and types of subscriptions.
• A targeted list selection program allows for flexible selections of subscribers for external list sales and internal promotions use.

Website Integration
Data synchronization with subscriber website gives subscribers appropriate access to JCO's archive of online articles and allows for coordination of information between print subscription and online only subscription accounts.

Advertising Space Management
This module helps manage the sale, tracking, quoting and reservation of advertising space within the publication.  Pricing is based on ad size, page counts, black & white vs. color, text/image sizes, frequency, etc.
jco-online.com

Americade
Attracting an estimated 50,000 enthusiasts, Americade is the largest motorcycle touring rally in the world.  This week-long annual event features massive trade shows with nearly 250 vendors, demos and displays from most major motorcycle manufacturers, catered boat cruises, guided tours in the beautiful Adirondack Park and the Green Mountains of Vermont, exclusive rodeos, stunt shows, laser shows, comedy clubs and much, much more.  Software created by Latitude 40 helps manage the complexity involved in the organization of such an event.

Targeted Marketing
The Americade system tracks information on riders such as years participated, how the rider found out about Americade, the rider's motorcycle make and model and previous packages purchased.  This information is used to create targeted marketing so interested riders can be kept up to date on Americade events.

Ticket Sales
This module keeps track of ticket purchases for Americade entry as well as the optional activities from horseback rides, steamboat cruises, hot air balloon rides, various seminars and drawings, etc.  Ticket holders can request itineraries and printed tickets for their paid-for events at any time.

Event Management
Activities are originally planned based on an estimated attendance, but ticket sales for each event are carefully monitored to ensure that proper arrangements are made ahead of time should sales go better or worse than expected.  If higher attendance at a popular event is simply not possible, the system will help prevent overselling of the event.
Americade.com

Direct Dental Plans of America
DDP utilizes a custom ERP solution to help manage their offerings of low-cost dental, vision, prescription, chiropractic, and massage benefits. This solution was created many years ago and helped support the initial stages of business growth. However, as DDP evolved, the database became increasingly overburdened by the size and scope of business that DDP was growing to be. After over a decade of such growth and increasing system manipulation outside its original intent, the tool eventually started to bottleneck company expansion. Latitude 40 was hired to solve that bottleneck by modernizing the system to simplify their processes and add the modules listed below.

B2B (Business to Business) Module
DDP not only offers their own plans/benefits but also those provided by multiple external vendors. B to B account synchronization with these partners handles the inadequacies and inefficiencies of the manual and error-prone processes that were previously required.

Accounting Module

• Full register for customer accounts with tracking of all financial activity.
• Automatic charges occurring at appropriate times in billing cycle.
• Monthly statements listing all financial activity for the month with a current account balance and payment options. Depending on customer preference, these can be automatically e-mailed to the customer or batch-printed and mailed the old fashioned way.
   

Custom Report Writing Module
This module was implemented to give the users complete control over their reporting needs to solve the problem of having to bring the IT person in whenever a new type of report was needed. This led to valuable time and money savings.

Automated Payment Processing Module

• Batch ACH payments via integration with local bank and batch credit card payments via integration with QuickBooks Merchant Services. A click of a button processes payments for all customers authorizing monthly ACH transfers or credit card charges.
• Automatic credit card validation at data entry time.
• Automatic and immediate rejection of credit card charge in the event of insufficient funds.
• Chargeback handling in the case of insufficient funds after ACH request. 

ePlantSource
ePlantSource is an online broker of live goods to professional greenhouse growers in North America. This proprietary eCommerce site provides growers a self-service, price efficient system to place, track and edit orders. Because the online storefront streamlines the supply chain, provides up to the moment availability, and furnishes instant order updates and shipment notifications, ePlantSource allows for faster order management, giving growers more time to do what they love.

ePlantSource was born from a commitment to taking the industry to new standards. With systems innovations that will save time, centralize processes, and organize information, ePlantSource is the answer many growers have been looking for.

Ordering & Real-Time Availability
Some of the biggest challenges in the industry are how to determine who will have availability of what you need week by week throughout the season and then placing and maintaining individual orders with each of those suppliers. It is a very time consuming activity that has been relegated to the brokerages and is, in fact, the main reason that the entire industry is one of the few remaining that still uses a brokerage system.

The main logistical problem with a page like this is performance. With potentially tens of thousands of availability records being populated into a single non-paged grid, you can imagine how much time that might take to prepare and display to the user. We put significant time into that issue and are now able to render a grid of 20,000 availability records in just a few seconds. On the order summary page, you can choose how you'd like to pay

Credit Card Management
Direct integration with Authorize.net allows us to securely store all credit card information offsite in the Authorize.net vault in a way that is fully compliant with the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS). Credit cards are charged through additional Authorize.net API automatically at the appropriate time.

Online Product Catalog
Customers can browse the product catalog to see pictures and get all kinds of other information about each product offered by every supplier. This kind of detailed catalog providing information from so many different sources is a rarity in the industry.

Instant Notifications
Customer e-mail notifications occur instantly when an order is placed, changed or shipped, when a supplier has any communications they are sending out, etc. This automatic communication mechanism is very important for any internet based business because it provides timely communications to your customers without the need for extensive personnel.