We have spent many years in the area of data cleaning and scrubbing. We can assist
your organization in cleaning and ironing out bad data. We also provide system
processes to catch and repair or report when data elements are affected.
These preventative measures will ensure long term data accuracy and sustainability.

No matter how good a cleaning tool is, or suppliers claim them to be, don't believe anyone.
No system, no matter how smart, will never match the analytical power of the
human brain and the third eye.
Data cleaning is an on-going process. The only way to ensure good and clean data is to
put master data processes in place to catch and report.
A dedicated team must be assigned to take ownership for master data maintenance.

We have learnt over the years that the biggest challenges facing business and I.T is
maintaining good clean and up to date data, no matter how smart a system looks,
it is only good as the data presented to it.

We have also learnt that poorly built systems lack the necessary data validation "rules"
to ensure clean accurate data capturing. Human errors and faulty systems have led
to data issues which affects business critical processes. More importantly, these errors
cost thousands of rand and continue to absorb hardware, software and human resources.

Address data - Postal and Physical address alignment and cleaning

Phone data - Dialling code and number validation checks

Customer Master - data alignment and repair

Customer Hierarchies - build and repair customer hierarchies

Product Master - Clean descriptions and other product attributes

Product Hierarchies - build and repair product hierarchies

Free Text Data - extract and align data from free text sources

Data Integrity Checks - Report via E-Mail when errors are found

Data de-duplication - Remove duplicate rows or elements from a field or text string

We use custom built software and tools to clean and scrub data. We follow the
washing machine cycle, wash , rinse , dry and iron. We repeat this cycle until
we have reached an acceptable data set.

We can also build and deploy customized cleaning processes for your organization.
We provide onsite cleaning so to ensure we protect your company asset.
We do not store any of your data on our system accept for a very small set of
sample data for testing our cleaning software tools and procedures.

We use various technologies like VB, C++ , Java , SQL/Server, Oracle, Excel, Access.

We have spent many years in the area of data migration and conversion.
We can assist your organization in converting or migrating data from one platform
to another or from one format to another.
We convert tabular data, flat files, office , XML , HTML to most formats to suit your needs.

We have learnt over the years that the biggest challenges facing business and I.T is
maintaining robust and reliable data migration and conversion processes.

We have also learnt that poorly built systems lack the necessary fault tolerant "rules"
to ensure data is converted or migrated accurately without any system or process failures.
When a process fails, I.T and business spend many hours trying to analyse and fix.
This affects the overall productivity and causes long delays in delivering the output.

We use custom built software and tools to convert or migrate data. We can also build
customised conversion tools and processes for your organization.
We provide onsite data conversion so to ensure we protect your company asset.
We do not store any of your data on our systems except for a very small set of sample
data for testing our conversion software tools and procedures.

We use various technologies like VB, C++ , Java , SQL/Server, Oracle, Excel, Access.

We have spent many years in the area of data warehousing. We can assist
your organization in designing and building a data warehouse.
We can create a single place that has an accurate, timely, rich and a complete view
of business content which includes customer profiles, sales data , billing data ,
statistical data, financial data and all customer related data.

Most customers use multiple application systems to store data which includes
customer details, billing data , sales data and operational data with an enormous amount
of data trapped in databases and other source files that can be interpreted by using the
application that created them.

Inconsistent data in fragmented systems have created a lack of user confidence and trust
in safely using them. Due to interface complexities and business challenges, timely data
refresh cycles are missed which places a huge burden on the catch-up process and this
causes data to be out-of-date.

This creates a problem in achieving a “point-in-time” and "single-point-of-view" for
operational purposes.
Managers face a number of choices about sourcing and navigating through published
content using various tools and technology stacks with each one having their own unique
style of screen layouts and tool bars.

All departments in the company have constant access to the most up-to-date and
complete view of customer data available.

Reduce overall data maintenance costs by preventing multiple processing in
different systems thus reducing hardware and software licensing costs.

Reduce storage by using the correct data model strategy.

Improve corporate decision-making in strategic sales and marketing by providing
up-to-date information to everyone.

We have spent many years in the area of data modelling. We can assist
your organization in designing and building a data model.
We can create a complete model of business content which includes customer profiles,
sales data , billing data ,statistical data, financial data and all customer related data.

Most customers have or they are working towards building a data warehouse.
What we have learnt is that data is stored in a data warehouse in a flat
unstructured way ,with very little thought given to entity relationships.

Data is duplicated in several places just to get the job done quickly
without understanding the long term impact.
More duplication means more storage. More storage means more hardware
and maintenance costs.

This creates a problem in achieving usable , easy to use data views.
Managers and users face a number of challenges and spend an enormous
amount of time navigating through flat tables and at times have to
use cumbersome data joins to retrieve large volumes of related data.
This is time consuming especially at month-end when several queries
are running simultaneously.

Reduce overall storage capacity by using the correct data model strategy.

De-duplication of large volumes or data.

Less hardware and backup media costs.

Uniform and controlled data views to retrieve the data.

Save backup run time.

Save processor and memory.

We will place or sub-contract resident and or non-resident I.T staff to your organization.
From I.T consultants, data analysts, programmers, SAP specialists, Data architects,
business analysts, Database specialists and Administrators; we have them all.

We can provide your organization with a site specific customised search engine.

As a search solution, our Index Server is designed to have little resource overhead,
It automatically manages its internal dynamic and permanent memory caches. Its
very low processor and network overheads make it all the more worthwhile.

As a native service by design, and no reliance on object based components has made this
architecture a sound platform for a Windows based search solution.
This architecture and its APIs isolate the web application and the web developer from
complex programming. The implication is that it is the responsibility of this model
to provide these key components, and that the web developer can proceed with the task at hand,
working towards the business solution.

The most important design goals of the indexing service are:-
• Simplicity. Index design removes the use of "spaghetti threads."
and traditional table joins.
• Speed. Indexes and dictionaries can be cached to service millions of queries per second.
• Scalability. Re-distribute indexes across multiple servers.
The memory can be significantly reduced.
Also, index size optimizations are much easier to implement and localize
in a modular index design.

The words and related information, such as the relative position of words
and their frequency of occurrence, is mapped into a dynamic data structure which
is called the index. The dynamic data structure is ordered based on the rank of entries.
The static and dynamic rank of entries is a user defined column within the data store.
Upon completion of the word search, indexer will return the result back to the HTTP gateway for
result set processing and packaging.

Example – HTTP://www.lokabis.co.za/Search.asp?find=plumbers

The browser sends the URL query string “find=plumbers” to the HTTP gateway.
The gateway breaks up the words for indexing and dispatches to the Class index server.
The Class server traverses the index, grabs the entries placed in the location index,
sorts and ranks the relevant entries before returning the results to the HTTP gateway.

Our approach to solution design and engineering is based on many years
of practical experience where we approach each requirement on tried and
tested engineering workflows.

We design, develop, unit test, perform systems integration test and UAT,
document and train before project signoff.

Here is a synopsis...

a. Gather & Understand high level requirements
b. Do a technology impact analysis.
c. Do a sizing exercise.
d. Do impact analysis with cross-functional teams.

a. Produce a logical/conceptual architecture diagram.
b. Present the solution architecture.
c. Get feedback on the baseline.
d. Agree and confirm the baseline solution.
e. Once approved, we workshop and document the detailed requirements
f. If necessary, we build proof of concept, prototype or pilot

We have spent many years in the area of systems integration and interfacing. We can assist
your organization in seamlessly integrating and interfacing between systems across
multi vendor hardware and software platforms.
We have a sound networking and systems development background to architect
a robust and a reliable solution.

Most customers have or they are working towards interfacing between systems.
What we have learnt is that these interfaces are not reliable due to poor choices
of technology both networking and software.
These touch points often fail and place a huge burden on the support staff.
For example, what protocol do you choose when transporting data between
systems, is it ODBC, FTP , SMTP or HTTP? The choices you make are based on analysis
of data formats, frequency , speed and many other factors.
This creates a challenge when systems have to seamlessly interact with each other.

When you invest in expensive technology and systems,
you want to get the most out of them.
We focus on specific areas that need attention.

A faulty piece of code or a troublesome interface can cause
your organization much trouble and affect your business.
Under project demand and pressure, the common behaviour is
to apply quick fixes and take shortcuts thereby creating
additional and unnecessary touch points.

To avoid such common pitfalls and mistakes we improve system
processes such that we reduce the support costs , improve
turnaround times and increase user satisfaction.

We provide services in system process streamlining, process automation,
data cleaning, data conversion, data migration, systems interface and
development, tailor made and customised tools, data warehouse design
and architecture, data modelling, and website design and development.

We have spent many years developing small to medium sized systems.
We can assist your organization in designing and developing robust and
reliable systems.
You can take advantage of our systems development background to architect
value added systems for your business or build add ins for your existing systems.

Poorly built systems have cost some organisations valuable time and money
to up keep these troublesome systems due to skills shortage and wrong
hardware and software choices.
Don't make the same mistakes others have made before. You can rely
on us to develop good working systems to suite your business needs.

You can have the most beautiful plans on paper, it does not guarantee that
the foundation will be solid enough to withstand all the elements and so
it is with computer systems.

We have spent many years developing small to medium sized web sites.
We can assist your organization in designing and developing a very
user friendly website.
Presentation , colour scheme , uniformity , logical navigation is the theme of
a good website. Leave this to us, we will design and architect the website for you.
A good design begins with good planning and thoughtful and logical organization.
We will provide you with all the help and assistance necessary to get your
website up and running in a short space of time.

When a user enters your website, the first impression he gets is how long did it take
to open up the home page. If it takes too long, the user could disconnect and go
elsewhere. So the first impression is the last impression. How easy is it to navigate
thru the content. Is it relevant. Too many pictures and graphics slow down the page.

It is very easy these days to bolt a website. Any one with basic training could build one,
however, will it sustain itself in the future, without having to nurse it and often times
alter its structure. These are just some of the challenges facing us today.

Don't make the same mistakes others have made before. You can rely
on us to develop a presentable website to suite your business needs.