CHALLENGE

Microsoft needed a vendor they could trust to manage the updates to and ongoing maintenance of a global portal which serves as the online support vehicle for thousands of Microsoft partners worldwide. Providing timely information to these partners is imperative, as they are responsible for billions of dollars of Microsoft's revenue, and rely on the site for information to help their businesses succeed— including sales and marketing tools, technical support information, training resources, security updates, and other support resources.

SOLUTION

Allyis originally had just one consultant on the project, but soon increased its presence to a 20-plus person team to become the end-to-end provider for the Web site, providing key consultants across many functional areas. With on and offsite publishing, editorial, and development teams, Allyis works with Microsoft project and marketing managers to create, modify, provide quality assurance, and publish content for the Web site. The Allyis team manages workflow of publishing tasks, ensures completeness of all content, and adheres to strict publishing guidelines. Production personnel initiate any content revisions or bug fixes with the appropriate editorial, program management, and development contacts.

The Allyis editorial team, working together with the production team, provides strategy and execution of content development for publication to a worldwide audience of corporate partners and business entities.

In addition to managing the editorial process and the publishing of all content, the Allyis team has worked on several large-scale projects, including:

• Improving search results — To improve search results on the portal, Allyis' editorial and production teams reviewed all resources on the site (almost 20,000 pages), then compiled all the pages, set tagging guidelines and completely changed every page's metadata, resulting in quicker and more accurate search results.
• Tracking metrics — Allyis developed and managed an online marketing campaign process to track monthly Web site metrics, subscription numbers, and clickthroughs. Using these metrics, the Allyis team provides business intelligence reports to management, allowing Microsoft to make informed business decisions.
• Managing large-scale migrations — Together with Microsoft clients and other third-party vendors, Allyis drove the rollout of U.S. and global sites from HTML to XML database-driven technology, and is currently working on the rollout of all worldwide subsidiary partner Web sites.
• Creating custom site templates — Allyis rebuilt the templates used on the site, allowing for a new look and feel and better usability for the partner user experience.

PRODUCTS AND SERVICES

The Allyis team provides end-to-end support, including:

• Content management and publishing
• Production and development
• Support and analysis
• Business intelligence reporting
• Project management
• Marketing management