Completed a six month project in less than 90 days, per spec, and well under budget.

Overview

Sage Software approached Zertia seeking a partner with website development and content management expertise to complete the build of their ISV Partner Portal. With a 60 day deadline quickly approaching, Sage desperately needed a business partner that could strategically align with their internal creative team to deliver a solution that was on-time, on-target, and within budget.

Challenge

First and foremost, the 60 day timeline presented a huge challenge for a project that would typically require 3-4 months for successful implementation. Zertia was tasked with pulling together an enterprise team to fully execute on the scope of work within a specified timeline, which included a hard stop date set by the annual partner conference. Second, the development required full integration with several legacy systems and data feeds. The Partner Portal enables users to find and compare third-party application and extend the functionality of twelve separate Sage products. Finally, Zertia would also be charged with completely managing the project from an enterprise level. This includes Zertia’s development team plus Sage’s business analysts, creatives, and developers, which are located in multiple Sage offices nationwide.

Solution

As a first step, Zertia kicked off the project by creating a comprehensive project charter. This document was signed off by both parties and includes creative and technical specifications plus detailed information regarding milestones, communication process, scheduling, and deployment. As a next step, Zertia worked closely with Sage to wireframe and prototype each of the key screens of the application. Being a solution utilized by over 10,000 Sage Partners, the usability and functionally of the application was critical to the success of the website. Lastly, Zertia worked nights and weekends side-by-side with the Sage team to complete all of the heavy lifting, get corporate approval, and launch the website. Developed to the highest W3C standards for web application development, the .NET 2.0 solution features enterprise content management, custom searching capabilities, and the functionality for partners to completely manage an online profile and product capabilities.

“Zertia provided clear value and leadership throughout the project from conceptualizing through implementation,” said Jason Martin, Sage Director of Web Services. Although quite a challenge, the release of the website at Sage’s annual partner conference was a huge success and received rave reviews from partners.