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"Essemble's methodology reflects their experience. They have a rare understanding of how business and technology are supposed to compliment each other."
- Win Holden, Publisher, Arizona Highways
The Situation
Arizona Highways, a worldwide monthly publication that encourages travel to and within Arizona with a circulation of 350,000, needed a Web solution that met its users' needs - without leaving them high, dry, and abandoned in the desert. The publication's oasis in the desolate landscape was Essemble.
The Challenge
Arizona Highways put the project out to bid among the IT professional public. The ensuing response was overwhelming: between 30 and 50 companies submitted bids in answer to the Request for Proposal.
The magazine's previous site had been operational for many years. Operational that is, in the simplest sense of the word. It existed, but not with any appreciable form or function. Its commerce area, for example, was unreliable and did nothing to cross promote, up-sell, or track product sales. Some products were fast movers, like a desert hare; some remained stagnant for long periods, like a old rattlesnake content on lying immovable on a comfortable, flat rock, soaking up the dry desert heat. Regardless, the inventory-turn data, Web traffic, customer input and, most importantly, competitive analysis, were totally escaping the Arizona Highways business managers.
Another dysfunctional area of the Web site was the inability for publication staff to update the content easily and efficiently. The content management process, and subsequently the entire publication’s writing staff, were being held hostage at the mercy of the Web site's development/hosting company. For a publication, especially a world-renowned one, dynamic content is its life's blood. By getting lackluster responsiveness and high-cost estimates every time Arizona Highways' personnel made requests for the Web-hosting company to make important and time-sensitive content changes, it was clear that the publication’s Internet users were suddenly getting severely shortchanged.
Arizona Highways as a publication and as an organization had traditionally been considered very high on the list of interesting, dynamic and contemporary publisher's. For the executive team, the current scenario was absolutely unacceptable, and, to their credit, they were determined not to let it continue.
The Response
Essemble submitted a proposal that outlined its "Safe Passage" program, a unique and comprehensive suite of applications and business process methodologies designed to put technology ownership and control back in the hands of business owners. The various parts of this program include educating each client on how technology best fits within his or her business goals, while helping to work through the ever-important, but not so obvious, issues like domain-name registration and control, Web site maintenance, IP ownership and technology change controls.
For Arizona Highways, Essemble proposed a package that included a highly customizable, robust content management solution coupled with a high-end, extremely well constructed e-commerce application, not to mention award winning graphical designs - all for a price that was well within the publication's state-funded budget.
Essemble was chosen to fulfill the publication's contract from a field of some of the state's biggest Web-technology firms. On the strength of Essemble's “Safe Passage” program, the project was awarded and engaged. The Essemble team began the project by conducting its detailed discovery analysis, in which client goals are matched to cutting-edge technologies, and continued to expertly manage the project through all phases of a very professional and successful project management methodology. As a result, Arizona Highways' new, beautifully designed Web presence was launched, complete with a greatly improved commerce element that includes the capabilities to cross-sell, up-sell, promote and track activity. Supporting the new and improved web site is a content-management program that is database driven and can be updated easily, efficiently and in-house by non-technical personnel.
The Result
In just a few short weeks working with Essemble, Arizona Highways was able to clarify its Internet business strategy and user community goals; launch a completely new, beautiful designed, dynamically constructed and user friendly web site; learn the ins and outs of sophisticated, yet easy-to-use e-commerce and content-management engines; and gain the ability to update the site at their leisure - all for a price well within their budget.
Most importantly, now that they are technically self-sufficient, they are forever extricated from an all-too-common situation that still plagues many of their contemporaries: Having their business objectives held hostage by an unhealthy and unmanageable dependency on a technology company that has its own business goals - instead of its clients'- as a top priority.
"We are delighted with Essemble. They really pushed forward the content, and didn't let the technology overshadow it. The Essemble team listened to our ideas, and then made our ideas become a reality. I would work with them again in a heartbeat."
- Win Holden, Publisher, Arizona Highways
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