Standard Life of Canada offers a range of investment, retirement, and financial services designed to fit Canadians at every stage of life since their original Quebec office opened in 1834. They’ve seen many advancements over that time, and their eye on evolution has kept them at the forefront of their business.
Business Challenges
Standard Life wanted to consolidate a number of independently running sites into one easy-to-use portal for all types of users. The scale of this job required an in-depth knowledge of Standard Life’s business and existing systems. Based in Montreal and serving Canadians across the country, the end product would require a fully multi-lingual experience for all user types.
Our Approach
Recognizing the scope, and some language barriers would need to be overcome, Asponte dispatched an on-site team to collaborate directly with the customer’s development team. Our team began with the Advisor Portal, which required many different areas of expertise including Web Content Management (WCM) architecture and development, custom portlet development, and infrastructure planning.
Next we ensured all users, regardless of location or preferred language, have access to the same information. Asponte took full advantage of the various multi-locale features in IBM WebSphere Portal including a full implementation of the IBM Web Content Manager’s Multilingual Lingual Solution. Finally, Asponte delivered custom-tailored training in Web Content Management and Portlet Development so the Standard Life team’s expertise with their new Portal platform could grow from within.
Software/Products Leveraged
While our team was able to leverage several out of the box features to support the client’s multilingual requirements, some tasks required customized solutions. One such example is the content and document search that was designed to crawl thousands of content items and documents while providing results in both French and English. Asponte’s solution for Standard Life utilizes our Faceted Search approach that can be easily modified by the client to fit new requirements.
- IBM WebSphere Portal
- IBM Web Content Manager WCM
Results
Asponte developed a robust web experience for Standard Life to serve their financial advisors, and, more importantly, to enable their internal IT staff to support their site moving forward.
