Case Studies

As part of their convergence efforts, BCE approached Affinity Systems to build an additional GlobeinvestorGOLD client that displayed streaming financial information over the Bell Mobility cellular network. We designed and implemented the complete product, a Windows CE client together with a streaming protocol that supports both low- and high-speed wireless communications.

BookNet Canada approached Affinity Systems to implement an Internet portal capable of storing and distributing large amounts of data. We designed and implemented the complete solution which included a portal that was highly customizable, offers extensive administrative control over its functionality, and supports a large amount of content. The result was a flexible, high-performance application that provides sales feeds to Publishers, Retailers and Libraries over the internet in a timely manner.

Brandimensions, an industry leader in brand equity on the Internet, approached Affinity Systems to develop their brand and domain intelligence service. The brand protection service is comprised of software to search, retrieve and determine relevancy of online content, and present relevant content back to customers in a web-based reporting centre. We worked with Brandimensions to formulate the business concept and define the product offering. We designed and implemented the complete system, including defining a language for scoring content relevancy, and creating robots for content searching on websites, search engines, news sites, mailing lists, and news groups.

See Microsoft’s Case Study on our solution.

BrandIntel approached Affinity Systems to build and maintain customizable solutions that allow consumer published content to be turned into actionable business intelligence. Affinity Systems partnered with BrandIntel to build an information-delivery platform that combines award-winning technology with human intelligence and analysis.

BD-BrandProtect approached Affinity Systems to build and maintain a state-of-the art technology platform capable of monitoring the entire Internet for references to clients’ brands. Affinity Systems worked with BD-BrandProtect to help it define its business model, build its entire Internet scanning system and leverage its core data pipeline to expand its business over time.

Affinity Systems was asked to create an intranet portal capable of distributing applications and rich digital content to Brookstone retail store personnel. This portal needed to be highly customizable to conform to Brookstone branding requirements, offer extensive administrative control over its functionality, and support a wide range of digital content formats. In addition, a rich set of applications had to be supported, including e-mail, multi-level calendaring, constrainable web browsing, and access to external applications running in an AS/400 environment.

Chaps Group Marketing, one of Canada's leading providers of turnkey integrated document management solutions, approached Affinity Systems to develop a system to automate the process of scanning business forms, recognizing their content, extracting relevant data, verifying the data for correctness, and exporting the data to another system. The goals of the system included handling high volumes of documents and allowing integration of third-party tools, while being easily extensible and resalable as a product. We designed and implemented a server framework that exposes a number of document-related objects and processing interfaces.

Affinity Systems was asked to engineer and implement a scalable architecture capable of supporting massive volumes for a virtually unlimited number of users. To implement this new product vertical for Ganz, we developed a complex, interactive, high-volume Flash based site with numerous virtual locations, a deluxe subscription tier and extensive parents area.

Affinity Systems was approached to help develop a subscription-based financial information product that demonstrated the convergence of technologies of the BCE group of companies. The product needed to offer value-added content to subscribers and to provide streaming stock quotes, news and video. We designed and implemented both the server and client components. The communications and server architecture we designed provides the basis for a general client-server configuration supporting high-performance "push" architecture. The client software is designed for branding, and is currently being offered by a number of financial institutions under their own banner.

Affinity Systems was approached by The Independent Electricity System Operator (IESO) to create an integrated set of mission-critical applications allowing Control Room Operators to successfully ensure the security and stability of the provincial electrical grid. We implemented a set of complex, highly interactive Web based applications with a single sign-on security, as well as a multi-tier client-server infrastructure.

Affinity Systems designed and implemented Canada's first web-based bookstore for a joint venture between The Bookshelf (an enterprising independent bookstore based in Guelph, Ontario) and Sympatico (Canada's largest ISP). Indigo acquired the web-based bookstore to jump-start their entry into the Internet marketplace. We continued working with Indigo, including making a major branding overhaul to the site, developing a proprietary bibliographic search engine, and extending the e-commerce options to include gift certificates and frequent purchaser cards, in addition to credit card purchases.

Affinity Systems designed and implemented a full on-line brokerage system for active traders, as well as core components of a retail web solution. Active traders typically trade at least four to five times a day, and utilize sophisticated analytic tools for decision support to help them profit from short-term price movements. We worked with InstiPro, a financial technology company, to develop a high-performance trading workstation that offers order execution and position management, integrated with market data and trading analytics. We developed a solution that features lower trading costs, intelligent electronic order routing, and professional quality research tools, all with a level of customer support normally reserved for institutional brokerages.

Affinity Systems was selected by Ivey Publishing to design and develop a web-based application that supports Ivey’s business of selling case studies on line to an international market of professors and students. The iveycases.com site is much more than an e-commerce vehicle. In addition to selling cases on line, the system supports and manages a complex administration of case authors and writers, third-party distributors of Ivey cases, copyright management, third-party suppliers of non-Ivey cases such as Harvard, as well as tracks and reports on sales data.

We perceived a market for a complete document capture, storage, and retrieval system that was usable on a variety of platforms, from a single workstation all the way up to a large enterprise running hierarchical storage subsystems and large database management systems. To fulfill this niche, we designed and developed a highly scalable imaging product called Kea. Kea is independent of DBMS, storage subsystem, and scanning device, and supports such advanced features as annotation, COLD, and customizable meta-data.

Kodak Polychrome Graphics approached Affinity Systems to develop a software solution that could help pinpoint and analyze the source of colour quality issues in a customer's workflow. We designed and implemented a total solution that embraces a two-tiered architecture. Client software, usually running on a laptop at a customer site, allows a specialist to scan a printed target using a spectrophotometer. These readings are packaged and transmitted to a server that analyzes the data using proprietary colour analysis algorithms and returns the results back to the client for reporting.

Affinity Systems was chosen by Mastermind to develop and implement a completely new website for its online retail channel. An updated and streamlined site with greatly improved performance and a variety of new and improved features was needed to provide customers with an easier and more versatile way of shopping for books and toys online.

OSK Services approached Affinity Systems to help them in the development of their premier tool, SMArT-F: Simulation & Modeling of Ambiguous Times Series Forecasts. The goal was to develop a facility that could run simulations of investor behaviour, based on often conflicting or ambiguous recommendations gleaned from advisory publications. These simulations would have access to historical market data against which their constituent actions could be correlated. The result would be a tangible metric for evaluating the recommendations under different scenarios.

Perceptor, a provider of survey services, approached Affinity Systems to design and develop a suite of integrated modules to design, distribute, collect, manage, and analyze surveys. We determined the underlying needs, and designed and implemented the Perceptor product suite. This included modules to design and layout a questionnaire with help from optional wizards, to interact with respondents to collect, validate, and confirm answers, to handle distribution, notification and collection of responses, and to view, analyze, and report on the survey results. Clients are available in multiple forms, including a standalone PC program, static or dynamic HTML, and an ActiveX-based control.

SEVENtwentyfour provides professional services that inform customers how their sites are working, how they rank, and how they are interconnected with the rest of the web. Affinity Systems was approached to design and implement a set of web robots to map the Internet, and to analyze the content and response of websites. Millions of pages needed to be visited each day, to gather and store URL links, response times and other detailed information. To accomplish this, we developed a massively parallel web robot that scans thousands of web sites in parallel while minimizing the load on any specific web server and obeying all robot protocols and control files. The database for this solution is one of the world's largest SQL Server implementations, with over 3 billion links mapped for over 20 million websites.

In an effort to better track and prevent potential money laundering and fraud activities, Sun Life Financial engaged Affinity Systems to design and develop a custom client repository for its Annuity and Life Insurance business channels. The solution has streamlined processes, made workflows more efficient, and better safeguarded against possible fraudulent activity.