Software adoption makes systems more reliable and secure

Heavy Duty Specialists (HDS) has been serving the diesel and industrial equipment industry for over 35 years. The company started in 1976, serving the Omaha area. Since that time, HDS has grown to become a distributor of industrial parts across the United States and Canada. HDS stocks a full inventory of both common and hard-to-find items from high quality manufacturers and expedites delivery. That means less down time and more productivity for HDS clients.

The Problem

HDS is a unique business that serves a niche market. The company has worked hard over many years to gather the business data that makes its products and services truly valuable to its clients. HDS president Robert Horner has invested heavily in creating a database system to track which consumables clients will need and when they will need them. This business intelligence is a competitive advantage. Through a series of events, HDS recognized it needed a firm to adopt its software system. Volano was referred to HDS and we quickly went to work.

The Solution

The first order of business was to finish the feature migration from Microsoft Access into HDS’ new Microsoft SQL Server application. Once this was finished, we worked to audit the full system for security vulnerabilities and utilization of software development best practices. This uncovered a small number of shortcomings that Volano remedied. Next, we worked to integrate the tracking system with HDS’ inventory management system. This proved to be a challenge, but ultimately we found success by working closely with engineers from the inventory management product. Recently, we helped HDS move its software to the cloud, alleviating the cost of internal hosting hardware.

The Outcome

Volano has made HDS’ custom software stable, dependable, and secure. In doing so, Volano has become part of the HDS family. We are not just a vendor, but a partner. HDS continues to look to Volano for software support and guidance.