Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. Announces the Launch of ConnectIR™, the Infrared Industry’s First Bidding Website

Greensboro, NC, February 20, 2007 --(PR.com)-- Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. announces the launch of ConnectIR™, the industry’s first bidding website which matches potential clients of electrical infrared surveys with infrared thermographers. ConnectIR™ is owned by Stockton Infrared Thermographic Services, Inc. (SITS) and was created by Greg Stockton, founder and President. SITS was founded in 1989 and has become an industry leader and innovator of infrared applications. Inspired by e-bay, ConnectIR™ makes it easy for those wanting electrical thermography services to locate a thermographer. This service is free for clients.

When a potential end-user of the service enters the web site, he/she creates an account, a specification and then a Request For Proposal, which meets his/her needs and sends it to ConnectIR™. ConnectIR™ searches the database of registered thermography service providers and sends the RFP to those bidders. The bidders review the specs and fill in the prices. ConnectIR™ then sends the profiles of companies including their bids to the client. The client sorts the profiles by all sorts of criteria like price, report features, experience of the thermographer, etc., and selects the three profiles that best match what he/she is looking for in a contractor. The three selected service providers contact information is then sent by ConnectIR™ to the client who chooses a qualified service provider. The price and specifications have already been determined, so only minor points need to be addressed in order for the client to write a contract with the service provider.

There are plenty of places on the internet where a potential infrared customer can locate names and lists of infrared thermographers to perform electrical infrared surveys, but ConnectIR™ takes the “finding a contractor” process several steps further by matching thermographer’s profiles to the client’s job requirements. “The specifications are where the rubber meets the road,” states Mr. Stockton. “The system walks the customers through the process of creating a tailored job specification. We designed the site with the customer or end-user in mind and tried to make allowances for every type of job in every business sector. Throughout the specification creation process, the system helps the client by pointing out options they may want and ones they may not need,” Mr. Stockton explains. “We have spent a great deal of time and money working with specialized computer programmers to develop the algorithms and codes which do the actual matching of the thermographers qualifications to the customers job specifications,” states Mike Hall, Design and Systems Manager for SITS. “This is, by far, the most involved web project we’ve undertaken. Our goal throughout the entire project has been to make the time-consuming and often laborious process of creating job specifications easy for the thermography customer,” Mr. Hall says.

Infrared Thermographers can register their company profile on ConnectIR™ and receive opportunities to bid on jobs. The cost to register is minimal and the benefit to the thermographer is that they receive opportunities to bid on actual jobs without the usual costly and often laborious sales & marketing tasks required to obtain jobs. Infrared thermography companies are often small, one to three person operations. Also, most of them work in a small geographically limited area. Advertising, marketing, and sales is a tough job in any business and a small infrared service struggles to find effective advertising in a limited geographical area. ConnectIR provides a very cost and time effective means of obtaining new business. “We are marketing ConnectIR™ nationwide and worldwide. By utilizing ConnectIR™, thermographers are tapping into our sales and marketing resources and saving themselves the time and money it takes to advertise their services,” states Cindy Hawks, Stockton’s Marketing Director.

For more information on ConnectIR™ and its benefits and to sign up, please visit: www.connectir.com.

To learn more about Infrared Thermography and Stockton Infrared Thermography Services, please visit: www.stocktoninfrared.com or call 1-800-248-7226.

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