May 1, 1997
"We’re not passionate about Microsoft technology. We’re nutcases about it!"

— Don Baarns, President, The Baarns Consulting Group, Inc.

Baarns Consulting offers a wide array of services and products that support Microsoft® Office and BackOffice™—technical information and training, custom software development, packaged software, books, and consulting. The Baarns Office Resource Center Web site is an important strategic tool for marketing these services. Using Microsoft tools, Baarns Consulting created an innovative site that makes it easy for customers to find the information they need, positioning Baarns as a leader in Microsoft solution services.

In the '80s, Don Baarns was in the business of catering lunches to offices in downtown Los Angeles when he caught the Excel bug. He became so expert at programming Excel (his system could track and project sales down to the tomato slice!), that he began to speak at developer conferences. Hobby turned into full-time job when companies like ARCO began contacting him for software solutions to their business problems and Baarns Consulting was born.

The company’s Web site, first created in 1995, quickly became an important part of promoting and expanding its business. In early 1997 Baarns redesigned the site to engage and keep visitors by making it easier for them to find information (especially the information that Baarns wants to promote). While visitors find it easy to navigate around the site, the underlying architecture and technology is quite sophisticated. Microsoft technology makes a site of this scope and complexity possible. Without it, the dollar and resource cost of building and maintaining the site would be prohibitive.

Innovative Microsoft tools have also made it possible for Baarns Consulting to build an online bookstore which not only reaches thousands of new customers with only incremental expense, but also completely eliminates the steep cost of a printed catalog.

Products used:

• Microsoft Internet Information Server 3.0 with Active Server Pages 
• Microsoft Windows NT® 4.0 operating system
• Microsoft SQL Server 6.5
• Microsoft Exchange 5
• Microsoft Index Server
• Microsoft Visual InterDev™
• Microsoft FrontPage™ 97
• Microsoft Visual C++® 5.0 development system
• Visual Basic® Scripting Edition
• Advanced Data Objects (ADO)
• Microsoft Visual SourceSafe™ 5.0 version control software
• Microsoft Access
• Microsoft Word 97
• Microsoft Excel 97
• Microsoft Notepad