Consultancy Projects

Vivamex are working on a Master Data Management project at a major international corporate. A key success factor will be the introduction of best practice techniques in a sensitive manner to an already complex SAP based supply chain environment. Vivamex CEO John Platten said "Knowing how to do MDM in generic technical terms is only half the battle. Without sympathy, understanding and customisation of approach to the current environment, and related change management based approaches, there remains a high chance of rejection of the technical aspects of data modelling and data transfomation. Consultants cannot 'parachute in' with a pre-formed works-everywhere magic wand and expect to succeed. It's not often you find a client who doesn't already understand MDM to a reasonable extent or desire its positive outcomes. Their challenge is more often implementing it across the complex landscapes and technical histories they have inherited. Finding a way through is the true consultancy they desire, not asking them why they are short on MDM practices as if it is an error of some sort on their part."

2008 Data Migration Pro - Vivamex Principal Consultant John Platten has been invited to join the expert panel at Data Migration Pro and has also written several articles for this leading website.

2007 Telecoms Data Migration - Vivamex have been assisting a major broadband supplier in their assimilation of a recently acquired competitor. The challenge as ever is to deliver on the business benefit of the purchase by bringing the two data sets under control and separating them from their current legacy platform.

2007 Absence recording data warehouse - Vivamex have been assisting a significant and growing player in outsourced absence management with their reporting. The project primarily concerns the creation of time series data across the pre-existing operations allowing improvement trends in employee absence to be analysed. The project will deliver specific reports, a new data structure and operational capture of time series information that should support further categorisation and presentation.

2007 Oil Company Performance management project 2007 Vivamex assisted a leading international oil company with a financial performance project in the IT department that could have serious long term impacts on optimisation and cost savings within the IT function.

2006 Government Data Migration Project - Vimamex assisted in the data migration of an Oracle 11i EBusiness suite ERP implementation coupled with Primavera project management.

E-FIT, Police Composites, Crimewatch etc.

Vivamex Limited have for many years written the code behind the premier UK police composite system often seen on BBC Crimewatch, national newspapers and virtually a household name - "E-FIT". The project again demonstrates the continuous benefit of engaging Vivamex as a partner in multi-year spanning development programmes.

2007 Network Version (Pending)Vivamex are currently working on a network implementation of the popular E-FIT system aimed at learning instituations, training suites and permanent interview suites. (E-FIT was previously most often run on portables so that crime witnesses can be visited in their own home, putting them at ease which can be important psychologically for maximum recall).

2006 Colour - Greyscale images are very good for basic facial recognition of suspects, getting items such as skin tone correct being in witness terms a further thing to worry about rather than an aid to recognition. There are also well documented issues in general computing terms of matching screen tones to printed tones and teh different ranges each will support. However there are some specific cases, such as the depiction of ginger hair, where color can be an extremely important tool in obtaining a lead from wanted posters and other media. The new colourisation feature of E-FIT is incredibly flexible as it allows colour to be applied to an underlying image - making a single hairstyle available as both ginger and blond and allowing the colour range, saturation and brighness all to be amended from a preset base position. Vivamex CEO John Platten said, "The key thing is always simplicity of operation. Colour was not easy to implement and potentially would have been equally hard for operators to use. By combining both preset 'known good colours' to start from and easy variabilityI believe we have catered for all levels of user"

2005 ClotheIT.NET - The .Net version of Aspley Limited's full body composite system has been completed and released. The system complements E-FIT.NET and can load its facial composites onto the rest-of-body images that ClotheIT creates. Previously, Aspley Limited's eagerly awaited E-FIT.NET police composite system was also been rolled out to police forces around the world. The new system brought massive increases in ease of use for users, while retaining the power and lineless nature of the previous system. Consultancy Manager John Platten said, "We have retained the class leading power of the previous product but in the new version that power and flexibility is worn more lightly. It will provide complex options on tap when officers want to draw on them - and greatly improved ease of use when they don't". Vivamex have been assisting software publisher Aspley Limited with software development on their lead E-FIT product for many years.

2002/2003 E-FIT.NET - Vivamex completely rebuilt to the E-FIT product in C#, seizing immediately on the power of the newly available language, within which rapid design, internationalisation and a strong graphics library are all key features. C# winforms has been a joy to work with. We don't get to say this all the time, but "Well done Microsoft!"

As seen on BBC Crimewatch - An E-FIT.NET screenshot appears below:

Address Data Cleanse Project Completed

2004 Vivamex Limited assisted a major Telco client with an address data cleanse. The addresses were radio masts so could not be 100% validated against Royal Mail Postal Address Files (PAFs). E.g. "Grass verge 400m down A40 from J10.." We bound together such diverse elements as MS Access, Streetmap, Google and AFD address lookup software to provide comprehensive and accurate SAP delivery addresses. The solution is necessarily part software automation and part process design.
More than the sum of its parts:
Streetmap: www.streetmap.co.uk
AFD: www.afd.co.uk
Google: www.google.co.uk

£50M SAP Data Migration

2003 Vivamex completed a complex PM (project management module) data migration at a major Telco. The client and the major partner, IBM Global Services, have rated the project as a major success. We supplied the client with R/3 data conversion expertise, data management expertise, good practice advice and bespoke tools for data mapping, preparation and entry. We also provided the Telco with our extensive data issue management solution that tracks issues to their solution, generates progress statistics in real time and can be hotlinked directly into MS Project.

2003 Other projects included a Data Management Strategy for a pensions company, a Testing Strategy for a global data warehouse and a secure barcode issuing system for a pharmaceuticals multinational.