Internet Services
Virtually every organization can use Internet technologies to improve performance -- whether that means using an enterprise portal to manage intellectual capital, updating an Internet site to respond to evolving customer needs, or using a customized web application to streamline a key business process. If you are looking for a way to advance your business goals, talk to West Monroe Partners. Our full suite of Internet services focuses on improving underlying business processes and developing synergies that can benefit you across applications. Our solutions include: Designing a system or website to reflect the most efficient and natural ways that people work can do much more than improve productivity -- it can impact your performance and your image. Our approach to web design and development considers a variety of disciplines, including the interrelationships among visitor/user needs, information architecture, user-interaction design, content, and brand. User experience often is an afterthought when designing business systems and applications. At West Monroe Partners, we make it a primary element of our development approach. And we've made it easy by creating our own, unique mobile usability lab that enables you to gather direct, scientific user feedback, anywhere, at any time. A content management system supports your authors, delivers the information your audiences need, and positions your organization for success. It provides an efficient means for a variety of authors to publish timely, relevant information to your Internet, extranet, and/or intranet -- usually with little or no programming skills required. In addition, it helps build the necessary structure for communicating the intrinsic value of your content. West Monroe Partners helps intellectual capital-rich organizations adopt a content management and communication approach that frees authors and IT professionals to do what they do best. Internet technologies can have just as great an impact on productivity inside your organization as they can on relationships with those outside the organization. Many organizations use portals, intranets and other web-enabled applications to share and manage knowledge, streamline business processes, and enable performance -- in part because of their familiarity to users. West Monroe Partners can help you create a knowledge management strategy that enables your business. With substantial Internet marketing and design experience and a thorough approach to analyzing website performance, West Monroe Partners can help you gather the information you need to build a more productive Internet presence and realize an array of benefits: lower development costs, faster resolution of problems, instant access to traffic data, and more effective targeting. A website with flaws in usability -- flaws that keep website visitors from accomplishing the purpose for which they visited the site in the first place -- could cost you more than you think. According to Forrester Research, a customer who has a bad experience while visiting a website will tell, on average, about 10 other people. That's a cost that can really add up. Using industry standards and best practices as a guide, West Monroe Partners can help you assess your website's usability through heuristics (rules of thumb for interface design), comparative and competitive analyses, and direct observation. E-commerceMany companies have entered the world of e-commerce over the last decade. For some, it has been a profitable venture. For others, it has been a struggle. If you want to update your e-commerce strategy, or if you're still watching from the sidelines wondering about the right way to get in the game, West Monroe Partners can help. We can work with you to analyze your opportunities and develop an e-commerce strategy that is integrated with your Internet presence and your marketing strategy. We also can help you select the right tools to support your strategy. Information architecture/meta dataInformation architecture not only provides a roadmap that smoothes the site development process; it also provides the foundation for improving user experience by organizing site content into a logical, user-friendly structure. Whether your site has 20 pages or 2,000 pages, West Monroe Partners can apply best practices to create effective information architecture. We also develop related elements -- such as wire frames, which guide the organization of content within a particular page, and meta data, which supports tracking and tagging of content and facilitates search engine optimization. Custom web applications may provide the most effective and efficient means for addressing a variety of needs -- from industry-specific processes, to acquiring data from or entering data to legacy systems, to sharing information among a defined group of people, to gathering feedback on a new product. We help organizations -- particularly those with paper-based processes or processes that need someone to compile data from different sources -- develop custom web applications that improve the processes that improve business. With a continual eye on Internet trends and best practices, not to mention years of experience developing successful Internet marketing strategies for clients in industries from retail to real estate, we can help. We have no canned approaches to sell; just a focus on understanding your goals and selecting the tactics that are most likely to advance them. We can assist with strategy and budgeting, search engine marketing and promotion, cost-per-click promotion, email marketing campaigns, and more. New ways of managing and sharing information via Internet or intranet sites, portals, and other mechanisms often mean new ways of working for the people who use them. But, change does not happen automatically--and sometimes, it doesn't happen easily. To achieve the results you expect from a new Internet or knowledge-management program, West Monroe Partners can help you support it with appropriate change management activities. Contact us for more information about customer solutions. |
