CHALLENGE

A Microsoft group is responsible for the Microsoft Partner Program Web site, which serves as a primary support vehicle for thousands of Microsoft partners who are responsible for millions of dollars in revenue worldwide. Partners access everything from sales and marketing tools, technical support information, training programs and security updates via the site and many rely on these resources to keep their businesses running. With over a million users a month, it is imperative the site feature timely, accurate and relevant information. With this in mind, the Microsoft team wanted to develop a portal that could serve as a knowledge-management platform, making program resources, tools, training and opportunities easy to find, access and leverage.

SOLUTION

The Microsoft group approached Allyis to initially provide a team to manage publishing for the site. At the time, another vendor was in charge of the handling the content management but did not provide a managed-team approach which led to Allyis taking over that responsibility as well. Allyis provided a managed-team that included team leads and project managers, which freed up Microsoft employees to pay attention to their core business.

When Microsoft decided to launch a complete redesign of the website in 1996, they again looked to Allyis to manage the migration to the new site. After working with Microsoft stakeholders to define business objectives and requirements, Allyis engaged a team of project managers, analysts, technical publishers and developers to begin work on the design and development of the portal. Allyis continued its day-to-day management of the existing site while significant front and back-end technology and design changes were being made as they migrated content to the new site.

At its debut, Allyis provided a dedicated Content Team including content managers, writers, editors and production staff that has provided ongoing content strategy and development support for the past 12 years ensuring that all content and messaging resonates with Microsoft partners. The partner center portal has become an indispensible part of their channel infrastructure, serving as a valuable business resource and virtual account management tool for partners.

While originally developing the partner center portal, a respect and trust between Allyis and the Microsoft team was established, and a relationship between the organizations was born. Since this initial work, Allyis has partnered with the Microsoft team on many partner center portal projects, including the development of a custom Content Management System to enable international subsidiaries to publish in native languages, the integration of WebTrends to capture usage data and inform ongoing business decisions and optimization, and the implementation of Windows Live Passport authentication.