ikaun
ikaun

For obvious reasons, it’s hard to find an authentic medieval castle in North America; their imitations, however, are few and far between. Castles are an amalgamation of various European cultural inputs and styles, diverse components each intricately created or added to serve a different function. Building a castle then may serve numerous purposes, ranging from protection to creating a vantage point. One can see why Lance Keene, the CEO of Keene Systems and ardent programmer, found something of a calling in the art and science of castle building. To him, the development of enterprise web applications too requires various tools and solutions that work together seamlessly to create something striking. The associative cognition between Keene’s passion for web app development and castle building was not born overnight. Keene previously worked as a programmer in the U.S. Army—stationed in Germany for a few years, where he studied German and Computer Science. While he was there, he observed several instances of classical German castle architecture, realized how fascinating they were, and decided to build one himself. Soon after, he bought 20 acres of land atop a mountain in New Hampshire's White Mountains National Forest and started building even though he had no building experience. Keene’s dedication and technical prowess is admirable; this passion and attention to detail which carries on to Keene’s commitment to providing cutting edge custom build web application solutions. Much as how Keene's castle is function-specific, so are his applications purpose-driven to help clients solve today’s complex business problems and prepare them for the future. “We employ a wide range of technologies and make companies more efficient by writing custom web software to improve their manual processes and better manage operations. We develop software to manage things like customer data, billing, time tracking, inventory, compliance, reporting, operations, and complex process flows,” asserts Keene.

"We employ a wide range of technologies and make companies more efficient by writing custom web software to improve their manual processes and better manage operations"

Keene Systems was founded in 1987 in Florida and is now located in Plymouth, New Hampshire. Today the company has over 30 highly skilled and versatile .NET developers with extensive experience solving business problems employing Microsoft .NET technologies, the .NET Framework, ASP.NET, Microsoft SQL Server, and .NET Core. Other technologies include PHP, MySQL, FileMaker Pro, React, and support for iOS and Android. The company believes in the idea of developing customized software versus one-size-fits-all, off-the-shelf software to meet a company’s unique needs. Keene explains it by giving the example of Neuco, a company that specializes in the pipeline and distribution of natural gas and electric utilities. The company was experiencing substantial difficulty managing its operations and accurately accounting for work done. This was mostly due to a manual and time-consuming, error-prone process of recording operations data in spreadsheets prior to rekeying it into their accounting system. Management had a difficult time tracking projects. Valuable data was spread across multiple spreadsheets, which made reporting cumbersome and, in some cases, impossible. Keene Systems stepped in and solved their client’s problem by developing a custom web application with mobile capabilities based on Microsoft ASP.NET and SQL Server technologies. Initially, Keene Systems’ business analysts figured out exactly how the company was operated. There were specific business rules regarding billing that were to be applied as per the contracts with the gas utilities. After the rules were defined, the data entry screens were designed to get the stakeholders’ input. The company built a flexible database architecture allowing for any reporting as well as smooth expansion of the system in the future. The screens were also designed with usability in mind so that the foremen in the field could easily interact with the system from a mobile device.
Keene also mentions that the company’s customized software solutions help clients from different backgrounds. Keene Systems also does “takeover projects” where Keene System takes overall development of their client’s existing systems in order to maintain them and expand them simultaneously. “There are companies who hire us to manage all of their IT needs. We act as their outsourced IT department by managing all of their programming and server issues,” comments Keene.
With such capabilities all-around, Keene proudly mentions that after completing 32 years in the industry, Keene Systems is well-positioned with positive feedback from its clients along with strong revenue. "We are on a growth vector now, and having more businesses will give us an extra edge in doing sales and marketing more efficiently. We are making a considerable investment into sales and marketing and expecting to double in size this year,” concludes Keene.