Partner Solution Case Study
/ Web Design Firm Cuts Time-to-Market by 50 Percent, Costs by 67 Percent; Sees Rapid Growth
“The combined impact of DotNetNuke Corp. and Microsoft on our business is phenomenal. The most significant growth for our company will come from what they deliver to us.”
Tim Speck, President, Graphic Images/GI Solutions
Web design firm Graphic Images/GI Solutions is small, but it dreams big. Partner programs and technologies from DotNetNuke Corp. and Microsoft are helping to make those dreams come true, with broader development possibilities, 50 percent faster time-to-market, and development costs that are 67 percent lower than before.
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010
Business Needs
Tim Speck, President of Denver-based Graphic Images/GI Solutions (GI/GIS), leads a small, successful website and web application design and development shop. His company has succeeded by tailoring its services for small to medium-sized nonprofit organizations.
Informally, Speck is also something of a teacher. “Our clients typically lack in-house technical expertise,” says Speck. “They look to us not just to implement a web solution, but to recommend that solution. We continually spend time to educate our clients about what they can get for what they can afford.”
The best teachers are those who are willing to be learners, as well. Speck has proved to be both, to the benefit of his fast-growing client base. Take Highlands Ranch Community Association (HRCA), a 29,300-member homeowners’ association for a master-planned community 12 miles south of Denver. HRCA wanted to replace its aging website. It wanted a website and content management system that would be easy for staff to learn and administer, freeing the association from dependence on outside vendors. It wanted stability, to minimize problems, and guaranteed support, for the problems that couldn’t be avoided. It wanted the features that its web visitors would expect, at a price that was consistent with a nonprofit budget. And it wanted all this relatively fast.
Some commercial systems offered the qualities that HRCA wanted, but at a price beyond its reach. Some open source solutions were inexpensive to launch, but lacked the guaranteed support and functionality that HRCA sought. Custom development was too expensive. What could Speck and GI/GIS offer?
Solution
The challenge came at an opportune moment for Speck and GI/GIS. For its own intranet, the company had adopted DotNetNuke, a leading open source web content management platform that functions as both a web content manage-ment system and an application develop-ment framework for Microsoft.NET–based web development. Based on his company’s experience, Speck felt the software would meet the association’s requirements.
At the same time, GI/GIS began down a path that would benefit HRCA, itself, and clients in the future. GI/GIS joined the DotNetNuke Corp. Partner Program, which entitled it to partner-only documentation and online forums, and participation in partner-only training and conferences. The knowledge transfer was bound to benefit Speck’s future clients. What impressed him, though, was that it paid immediate dividends for his current client, HRCA.
“We encountered an upgrade issue we hadn’t seen before, as well as an issue with a third-party module,” Speck says. “With DotNetNuke Corp. support for DotNetNuke Professional Edition, we resolved those issues immediately.”
DotNetNuke Corp. gave GI/GIS another piece of valuable advice: It suggested that the company join the Microsoft WebsiteSpark program, of which DotNetNuke Corp. was a Network Partner. WebsiteSpark was designed specifically for small web design and development shops like GI/GIS, and it was designed to give those shops market visibility, support, and software to contribute to their success. Speck took the advice, and his company’s participation gained it access to Microsoft database, development, and web server software, plus support incidents, training, and networking with other Microsoft partners for the duration of the three-year program, with a simple $100 program fee.
Its participation in WebsiteSpark gave GI/GIS access to, and knowledge of, tools in Microsoft SQL Server 2008 that it imme-diately put to use in developing custom reporting views that several customers wanted. Longer term, the program will facilitate the company’s internal develop-ment, as well as its ability to advise customers about their choices among Microsoft software.
Benefits
Speck says that business has grown by at least 10 percent in just the last few months—an increase he attributes largely to the support of his new “partners.”
“The combined impact of DotNetNuke Corp. and Microsoft on our business is phenomenal,” Speck says. “The most significant growth for our company will come from what they deliver to us.”
Provides Platform for Creativity
Speck sees the combination of DotNetNuke Corp. and Microsoft technologies and partner programs opening unlimited vistas for him, his company, and its clients.
“DotNetNuke Corp. and Microsoft provide a vast platform for creativity,” Speck says. “I don’t see any limits to what we can do with these products. We can ask clients for their wish lists, and tell them that it can all be done. We can come up with a solution for any scenario the client gives us. We don’t have to reinvent the wheel. We don’t have to break something to make it do something else. We don’t have to feel boxed in by technology.”
Cuts Time-to-Market in Half
GI/GIS completed the website redesign for HRCA in less than four months—half the time that Speck estimates it would have taken without WebsiteSpark and the DotNetNuke Corp. Partner Program. As he’s gained more experience with the two companies’ technologies and programs, he sees that faster time-to-market as another given—and another benefit.
“We definitely see Microsoft and DotNetNuke Corp. helping us to deliver faster turnaround,” says Speck. “We can’t tell our clients that a job is going to take six months; they can’t wait that long. With the support we’re getting from these pro-grams, we’ve cut our typical turnaround from five-to-six months to less than three.”
Reduces Costs by Up to 67 Percent
Speck also sees Microsoft and DotNetNuke Corp. helping him and his clients to save up to 67 percent of the cost of website development.
“Without DotNetNuke Corp. and WebsiteSpark, you’re doubling or tripling the cost of getting these projects up,” Speck says. “We would have seen costs that much higher with commercial packages or custom development. Now, clients are within reach of solutions they couldn’t consider before. They can have the type of high-value sites that their members expect. And we benefit because we can do more, the projects can be larger, without reaching prohibitive costs.”
This case study is for informational purposes only. MICROSOFT MAKES NO WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, IN THIS SUMMARY.Document published June 2010