“Our venture with Active Lightning began in 2011. As an Epicor Eagle user with aspirations of developing an E-commerce channel, our attraction was onset by the Active Transfer software piece. The solution continues to work seamlessly to this day, with the AL team addressing necessary updates and modifications in a proactive manner.

“Over the past five years, and through countless projects, our relationship with Sally has paralleled our success. Her business mannerisms allow working together to be a pleasure. To my preference, Sally’s communication is always clear, precise and accommodating.

“Even during requests outside of the box, Sally and her staff have worked hard to provide affordable solutions that have met our needs.

“Various projects outside of the initial website build include: SEO, catalog automation, blog build, live chat implementation, custom page builds, active fly-in build, AMZN connectivity, automated order management solution, and even logo work.

“The notion is that with Active Lightning, you are investing in opportunities beyond your “today” need.

“Our decision to partner with Active Lightning has not only resulted in tangible rewards, but also a very steadfast business relationship that continues today.”

Jonathan Miller
Managing Partner

“Our company tries to use technology to give our business an edge over competitors, and to provide our customers a compelling reason to buy from us. We do routine beta- and alpha-testing for our main computer system, Epicor’s Eagle System, (and have for many years). We do this to be an early adopter of innovative and useful technology in our industry. Still, we had no experience developing our own software when we hired Active Lightning. In many ways, we hired Sally's enthusiasm and positive attitude as much as her demonstrated technical ability.

“Our initial relationship was based on the development of an automated publishing solution for our 1100-page product catalog. After that project was completed we developed the idea—after discussions with Sally about the various possibilities—for a customer relationship management application that would integrate with our existing point of sale system, that was affordable, and that would provide us with a real advantage in our market. Sally was instrumental in researching, selecting and implementing that solution in short order and within budget.

“We have worked with Sally and Active Lighting since 2002. The relationship, while still based on the effective and innovative use of technology in our business, has moved to a higher level now. I find that whenever we discuss how to solve a particular issue, we inevitably end up discussing each issue from a total marketing perspective, versus a straight technology solution. I don’t know if every development company works that way, but I’ve come to depend on it from A/L. They have become a virtual marketing department for our company.”

Virgil Cox
Owner

“Active Lightning designed and produced our website. We have a lot going on and Active Lightning organized the plan for steps we needed to do. We were asked relevant questions and fine tuned the project to our wishes. Active Lightning kept us from spending any wasted effort or going down the wrong track.

“I appreciated the experience that they contributed to the process and their ideas. In addition to setting out the framework of the project, they were quick to understand our business. They proposed ideas that supported our marketing effort exceptionally well. They met my desire for having the capability to feature auctions inexpensively. My order desk can chat online with visitors. And the Special Orders section helps my in-store staff to work with customers helping them to pick out what they want.

“I enjoyed the people I worked with on the project. They were easy to talk to and work with.

“People are amazed by our website: how good it looks and how easy it is to use. We are very happy with the design. The design process was easy. And now, with limited effort on my part I have a great website that successfully promotes my business.”

Jim Gerber
Partner

“As a small company with no in-house IT staff, it is difficult for us to stay abreast of the technology tools available in the marketplace today to streamline our operations and marketing efforts related to providing product information to our customers. One of our major voids in our business has been our inability to provide product catalogs (both hard copy and on-line versions) to our customers, so they can easily see what items we stock and at what price.

“Active Lightning has been an integral part of our recent marketing efforts to fill this void. Through their technical expertise, we have been able to integrate the latest software tools available with our Epicor [formerly Activant] Eagle System, allowing us the flexibility to publish industry-specific product catalogs targeted toward our various customer market segments. We simply identify the product categories we want to include in our catalog, identify the images associated with the products, and run the software tools that extract the necessary data from our Activant data base, creating pdf files to send to our printer.

“Because we use the same common data base for our e-commerce initiatives, the customer sees the same information on our e-commerce site as they see in the printed catalog. As we look to the future, we foresee the ability to easily publish flyers containing monthly specials, new products, etc., using the same software tools used to publish our catalogs. It’s that simple.

“Because Active Lightning also has detailed knowledge regarding the workings of Epicor’s iNet product, they have been very instrumental to us in enhancing our e-commerce ordering site to make it more user-friendly for our customers. Active Lightning takes the time to understand our needs, suggests various alternatives for consideration, and then implements the chosen solution.”

“Thanks, Active Lightning, for being an essential member of our marketing team.”

Tony Miller
President
Hanneke Hardware

“We were extremely pleased with the search engine optimization work that Activelightning did for our website (HardwareSource.com). I was very impressed with the professionalism of the staff. Every person at Active Lightning that I worked with seemed genuinely interested in trying to find ways to improve our website. And they did greatly improve our keyword rankings, especially on Google and especially for the most important keywords. Search engine optimization is very hard work and I feel that the people at Active Lightning are certainly up to the task.”

Rip Fleming
Partner
San Diego Hardware

“Thank you Active Lightning for all of your help with our website. Our new website is wonderful we love it.

“Everything went very smoothly once we got Activant [now Epicor] to get their part done.

“Customer Service was excellent! Anytime that we needed assistance you were right on top of it. Even now your continued assistance on little things that pop up is great.

“Sally, you have a very friendly and helpful voice and it makes it easy to listen and learn from you. Also you’re a very encouraging person which I found very helpful when I was learning to do stuff on my own for our site.

“We would definitely use Active Lightning again. Actually we plan to use you again soon to help with promoting our site and getting more traffic.

“Thank you for all of your help!”

Kim Brenneman
E-Store Manager and
Plymouth Store Manager
Smith Farm Stores

“I like Active Lightning’s willingness to take on something that they hadn’t done before. I knew what I wanted but did not know how to accomplish it. I wanted to have my 2 ecommerce sites get automatically updated with good quantity-on-hand information, and I wanted my order information from these ecommerce sites to be automatically loaded into my point-of-sale system. It was my first time working with a software developer. I didn’t know how everything would come together. Active Lightning made it happen. They accomplished my vision for the amount I budgeted. And Joel, the programmer on the project, was great to work with.”

Steve Scartozzi
Owner

“I contacted Active Lightning to provide automation as part of a solution that we wanted for our eBay store. I wanted our listings in eBay to be selected according to my financial criteria. I also wanted our orders on eBay to get automatically loaded into our Epicor [formerly Activant] Eagle System. Active Lightning provided a solution they call ActiveTransfer.

“ActiveTransfer is an affordable solution that does what we want efficiently, seamlessly and effectively. It works magnificently! It works so well doing its thing that we don’t know its there. …other than the fact that we see the results – results that are just what we wanted.

“I have found Active Lightning to be responsive and reliable, with creative solutions. Everyone on our project performed wonderfully; they are great problem solvers. Sally is intelligent and willing to go the extra mile to provide what we want and need. She is interested in our business and works for our success as if it were her business.

“Active Lightning is a true business partner.”

Paul Wenke
President/Owner
Valley Ace Hardware
and Hardware Overstock

“A couple of positive phrases about having Active Lightning as our software developer... This is just off the cuff...

1. Active Lightning is not afraid to tackle even the most complex and cumbersome projects. When no one else even wanted to give us a quote they gave us results!
2. Active Lightning gets the job done right with professional perseverance and quality programmers.
3. Active Lightning never charges unfairly for work. Projects are done to spec and completed in a timely manner.
4. Active Lightning is very easy to work with. They are flexible, considerate and genuine.
5. With Active Lightning we really get the feeling that they are ‘on our side’ - fighting for what's best for us even when it doesn't directly benefit them.”

Nathan O'Neal
Vice President
A-1 Appliance Parts