PEORIA MAGAZINE September 2023

had been empty for about three years, most recently housing Tazwood Com munity Services.

‘A STEADY HAND ON THE WHEEL’

Whitehall, 46, grew up on small farm near Aledo, where he helped his family raise hogs, cattle, corn and soybeans. He began learning to write computer code when he was 4. He later went to Monmouth College, where he earned degrees in computer science and music, with honors. He worked at Caterpillar Inc. as a software engineer for eight years after graduation, then for a consulting firm where he designed and built an order processing system that at its peak was completing more than 10,000 orders a day and generating a half billion dollars in sales a year.

“I had a personal relationship with my clients,” said Mark Lockett, former CEO and creative director at Creative Sites Media. “I needed someone to take care of people I deeply care about, and there’s nobody I would trust more than Matt. He’s a steady hand on the wheel, a pro. He’s talented. He’s hired some quality people who follow his vision.” Absorbing Creative Sites Media’s former clients was the catalyst that launched GoodJava into the company it is today, said Whitehall. The company employs about a dozen people and retains 20 clients across a variety of industries in central Illinois and the Midwest. Whitehall leads the way as GoodJava’s solutions architect. ‘GOODJAVA SOLVES BUSINESS PROBLEMS’ One client is SAMI, the acronym for Student Apartment Mart Inc., a property management company that offers apartment rentals to students at Illinois State University and Heartland Community College. SAMI pays the utility bills at each residence. Students are billed monthly for the utilities on a pro-rated basis based on the number of students living in the residence during the month. Billing periods for utilities vary, complicating matters even further. “Creating the students’ bills for util ities was a labor- and time-intensive process for us,” said SAMI owner Darren

Rogers. “We needed an automated soft ware solution that integrated with our property management software.” Several months of discussions, followed by development and testing by GoodJava, resulted in a solution. ‘A LOT OF SOFTWARE

COMPANIES ARE GOOD AT WRITING CODE, BUT NOT ADDRESSING BUSINESS PROBLEMS’

— Darren Rogers

GoodJava was formed by Whitehall as a one-man show in 2014. As a software consultant with an emphasis on agricul ture, one of the first clients he brought on board was Precision Planting, the Tremont-based ag technology giant.

“We did away with the Excel sheets we were using for utility bills early this year,” Rogers said. “The utility billing software has been tweaked since we started, adding functionality and new features through a combination of our thought process and GoodJava’s solutions. It’s been great. “It seems like a lot of software com panies are good at writing code, but not addressing a business problem. GoodJava solves business problems.” GoodJava can be contacted at (309) 431-2451, info@goodjava.org, or goodjava.org.

‘I NEEDED SOMEONE TO TAKE CARE OF PEOPLE I DEEPLY CARE ABOUT’ — Mark Lockett

Another client was Creative Sites Media, a software consulting company based in Bloomington. A project White hall delivered led to Creative Sites Media being acquired by AGCO, Precision Planting’s parent company, in 2021. That acquisition left Creative Sites Media’s clients without a software consulting vendor. Whitehall and GoodJava filled the void.

Steve Stein is a longtime Peoria area print journalist

SEPTEMBER 2023 PEORIA MAGAZINE 51