Objective
Motorola Solutions, Inc. (MSI), a Fortune 500 Company, began a massive digital transformation on a global scale and hired BuildThis to design and develop one of its public platforms, the Motorola Solutions Blog. The platform would ultimately service 12 locales globally, each with unique content, specific to the region. BuildThis worked in tandem with Motorola Solutions’ internal staff and resources to utilize the company’s updated branding guidelines and business requirements as they were released.
Scope
The functional requirements of the project included:
- Utilize a CMS (WordPress) so that internal staff members could be trained to manage the website’s front-end content.
- Uphold consistency with Motorola Solutions’ branding and digital requirements.
- Develop a single platform that could support a dozen regions globally, with separate administrative dashboards and unique front-end content.
- Create a ‘low barrier to entry’ process to add additional locales.
- Migrate select data and content from the legacy site to the new platform.
- Allow registered users of Motorola Solutions to sign on to the platform with their account credentials via SSO.
- Allow registered users of Motorola Solutions to subscribe to relevant content from the website within their company-wide account preferences and pass that data to WordPress via an API.
- As they are created within the website, pass subscription options via an API to the company-wide accounts platform, to be made available for users to subscribe to.
- Send daily notification emails to users containing published content pertaining to their preferences.
- Improve the SEO of the legacy platform.
Process
With so many intricate requirements and working on a rapid timeline, organization and thorough documentation played a large role in the initial discovery and project planning. BuildThis worked directly with Motorola Solutions teams and departments which varied with deliverables, so establishing consistent communication was essential to ensure that all personnel involved with the project were continuously informed on decisions and progressions.
- The Discovery phase of the Motorola Solutions Blog included:
- Database architecturing to support 12 global regions
- Site architecturing and sitemap generation
- Content structuring
- User flows
- Data flows
- Developing interactive wireframes, emulating user flows
- Content migration planning
The Design phase included creating Visual Designs for all front-end pages, for desktop and mobile.
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- BuildThis worked with Motorola Solutions’ design team to review the company branding guidelines to select the styles & specifications of each element within the MSI Blog.
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BuildThis followed an Agile development process that coincided with the development patterns of Motorola Solutions.
- Releases were presented to Motorola Solutions for testing and approval at the completion of a sprint, although the development cadence followed a continuous flow due to the high level of collaboration that needed to take place between BuildThis and Motorola Solutions’ teams.
- BuildThis used its internal project management system, Function Point, to manage and track MSI Blog deliverables as well as Jira, to track the development and testing of collaborative deliverables.
Prior to deployment, extensive testing was performed on a staging environment which included an SEO Audit, Quality Assurance Testing, System Integration Testing, User Acceptance Testing, End to End Testing, and Security Testing. Each form of testing was performed by respective departments within Motorola Solutions.
Analysis
- The completed project is a website that’s modern and easy to navigate, which entices the engagement and viewership of many audiences.
- The new website demonstrates a significant increase in page speed and performance, SEO value, administrative management and usability, and traffic.
