In 1993, Frank began developing his web publishing skills in conjunction with membership in the Compuserve Forums, in DOS.     These skills were not by accident. Having worked in the Pacific Hqs for the U.S. Army in payroll applications for five years, self-study leading to his bachelor's degree in business evenings and weekends, Frank chose to specialize in solutions for electronic directories.

    While an on-staff consultant to American Honda Motor Company from 1985 to 1992, one of three dozen major projects single-handily designed and developed was an electronic telephone directory pegged to publish an elegant white and yellow page directory.     A perfectionist, Frank built elaborate front-end data entry systems for key staff employees throughout the company divisions to coordinate updates with the Office Services Dept.

    The internal print shop was the receiver of the final product generated from a special-purpose mini-computer system for publishing.     The problem was the interface took half a month for editting by the Data Control Dept.   This mini-system required a script language besides the output from my front-end in order to get all the elegant characteristics of a published directory, eg, bolding, tabbing, etc.

    Frank sat down with the staff of this department to review the issues and came up with a special output file with both the directory information and embedded script commands.     Results:   the task was reduced from four man weeks (160 hours for two staff workers) to one half-day per section (white and yellow pages,) or 8 hours!

    It became a logistic night-mare, though, for the staff of the print shop and distribution and determined that the updates, on a monthly basis, were not significant enough to require a new version of the telephone directory to be published monthly.     Final version was set up for a quarterly update.

    From this application experience, Frank knew that he was going to specialize in such business solutions; solutions that made it easy for internal staff to communicate with other administrative departments throughout an organization.   Frank, of course, has been involved with micro-computers from the early days, before DOS 1.0 and windows operating system.     Fascinated by special tools, or wizards for compiling hyper-text applications before the onset of the "web" as we know it today, b.c. 1993, Frank would compile databases in a useable format.     Taking the Y.M.C.A. database of some 2,400 Y's across the nation, and btw, Frank's oldest client since 1982, he formatted a special DOS/text file to be read by the hyper-text compiler to create a directory-on-a-disk that could be distributed to anyone in the Y-network on a newly invented 3.5 inch 720K diskette.

    After over twenty-five years of business application solution design and development, Frank took a look at the real estate industry and noticed several technical issues that prevented the presentation of properties to potential buyers and the coordination issues associated with an internal real estate broker office and designed & developed a listings wizard software; a sub-set version for "want list" where the office staff could enter, ie, data entry the specifics for properties in inventory (agent for) as well as buyer agent needs.     This one originally accomplished in a DOS or non-windows environment.

    One of Frank's earliest clients was a major Century 21 broker in Santa Barbara, California that had a side business of rentals; rentals for university students and tourist that would flock to the coastal community during the summer when his real estate business was slow.     In a matter of a couple of hours of listening to his business interest, Frank told him that he would go home that weekend and design/develop a publishing wizard for his rental listings!     It was crude, but it worked.     In less than 48 hours, taking his original real estate listing design, Frank was able to divert the internal functions to accept rental data!

    Frank, as a senior systems analyst, was able to accomplish the same functionality for the auto industry, for auto dealers.     This particular application was stymied by a lack of industry interest or what Frank liked to think of as "industry politics."     The development was totally unfunded and was a work of personal motivation.     Needless to say, Frank was determined to proceed with other solutions for other industries and still holds optimistic hopes for entry into that market.    But one, not to be discouraged that easy, Frank moved on into the business network industry or chambers of commerce.     Chambers have a diversified membership from the complete scope or range of industries; industries doing business with each other, to consumer products and services as well as unique sets of service, eg, dining and lodging and recreation.     Less we forget the need of community associated entities, Frank came up with a sectional directory that provided ease of look up methods with a three-tier design:   section, group (logical group,) to category.     "Surfing the Net," Frank noticed designed that were strictly category-oriented where you had accountants next to air condition vendors.     ABC approach is okay, but it should not be the primary search or look up method.     Therefore the "chamber wizard."

    From the chamber wizard, came the "shopping center" wizard designed in January, 2002.     Shop Las Vegas (r), officially, has only existed since October of 2002, but it has been fueled with many successful applications in publishing over the last ten years.     Today, Frank received electronic mail input from data sources and is moving to e-forms for individual businesses to sign up and automate the data entry cycle to serve a potential 50,000 businesses in the Las Vegas Valley and hold on - "Phoenix Shopper" is on the horizon!     Phoenix Area will be Frank's first remote project, as a resident of Las vegas.     That is, the management of a website for the Greater Phoenix Area to shop in for products and services from his (to be) home in the high Ridges of the Spring Mountains!

    Frank offers major business with a serious interest in such directory or listings solutions an opportunity to see in a very short time a front-end system to generate the results that, to now, they only could dream of.     If it isn't related, Frank will decline interest in the project.     Consulting budgets, if they are a major issue for you, then may be these solutions are not within your reach or expectations.     Beginning projects start at $25,000 and usually will cost upwards of $50,000 by the time staff is trained and system is secured.     I always tell a client to expect the project to take a minimum of six months.

    Please feel free to call me to see whether there is a "match" and potential solution for your issues.     Frank can be reached at home at (702) 363-3290, there is a 24-hour answering machine, or my cell phone at (702) 326-6753.     Thank you very much.

    Sincerely,


    Frank Picchione
    Your Consultant



    p.s.   For those that like details and a (very) long resume, I will be loading my full life resume
            from my early army days as a young computer programmer to consultant years to date.