Digital Media Specialists

The end client is a listed international property fund operating in Europe and the Middle East.

Requirement

To develop an English language public facing website combined with a secure employee intranet.

Key functional elements included:

• Creating bespoke modules that allowed site administrators to upload the end client’s financial performance data with differing views for the public site and intranet
• Providing a full searchable document library with an upload module for all intranet users
• Giving intranet users different levels of access to internal data based upon their login profile
• Displaying financial data on the public facing website graphically using rich media components and dynamically based on data uploaded into the intranet
• Developing a custom module to allow rich media content on the site to be completely editable by site administrators

Technical Solution

The foundation for the application was a commercially available .net CMS integrated with a MS SQL 2005 database and JavaScript and Flash elements on the front end.

The CMS was used as a foundation for the application with a significant amount of customised .net modules created to both control the intranet and also provide the site administrators with the ability to edit all content including content within the Flash used on the site.

Project Mechanics

The project ran for three months from initial planning to launch and involved working closely with both the agency and end client throughout the project. Some key stages of the project included:

• Detailed planning of the database structure to ensure that it was suitable for both the intranet and public facing website
• Developing prototypes of the look and feel and key functionality of the site for user approval and review before build started
• Working with the end client to migrate historical and current data to the site to ensure that the intranet provided maximum value at launch
• Planning the subsequent build phases for the site post initial launch

Conclusion

Our expertise in developing and delivering intranet and public facing web solutions ensured that we were able to deliver the best possible solution to the end client for both sites.

The advice we were able to give, particularly with regard to the intranet, meant that the final solution was exceedingly well received by the end client’s offices around the globe and it was immediately adopted and used.

The intranet site won the agency a major award in 2009.