A Case Study – Creating a Website of the Future

Apto have been providing professional services across a range of Adobe enterprise software products since we were founded in 2004.

We are one of very few Adobe Forms Specialisation Partners as well as having expertise in the broader AEM and Document Cloud platforms.  Here we outline how our services helped deliver a large firm’s future digital vision.

Case Study – ‘The Website of the Future’ Project  

Overview

Apto were engaged to assist on a project to create a ‘Website of the Future’.  The redesigned “Website of The Future” will evolve in the coming years as our client moves beyond a basic product offering website to create a lifestyle led brand that will be showcased through their digital marketing channels with their website being central to this transformation. This project was part of our client’s huge internal programme of developing their future lifestyle led vision for customers. Their chosen digital marketing platform is Adobe Experience Manager, using Sites for their website build.  

Our involvement was a tri-party one. We provided a technical delivery consultant to interact with the customer, at times the design agency and the offshore developers. To guarantee success our consultant needed a combination of product experience, a wealth of project experience and leadership skills.  

Project Details 

We were chosen to work on this project as we are known specialists in the Adobe AEM product. They knew we were well placed to assist them. There were several activities which required the input and knowledge of our consultant, these included:  

• Studying and analysing the functional and non-functional requirements for our client’s website rewrite. 
• Studying the existing AEM physical architecture and mapping it with the requirements to assess if it is sized and configured correctly, making recommendations to improve where needed.  
• Content mapping from our client’s existing website to the new website using wireframes provided by the design agency. Identifying the AEM components and templates that need to be developed. 
• Defining a framework for handing over components to producers of the final webpage build. 
• Deriving a set of implementation dependencies for the build phase. 
• Estimating the AEM implementation effort for the build phase. 
• Defining the sequence of build activities taking into consideration the priority, complexity, interdependencies and desired outcome. 
• Defining knowledge transfer activities for our client’s developers.  

Providing the role of technical lead, we specifically helped with: 

• Developing AEM components and templates. 
• Carrying out AEM setup and configuration tasks. 
• Creating analytics tagging. 
• Leading the offshore development team in resolving technical challenges. 
• Reviewing deliverables from the offshore team. 
• Taking ownership of the overall development process. 
• Tracking and managing dependencies. 
• Ensuring best practice is followed within the team. 
• Coordinating with the test team. 
• Supporting and providing reporting to the delivery manager. 
• Training. 

Why were Apto Solutions engaged with this project? 

Our expertise and hands-on consultant were needed to guarantee the Adobe Experience Services project was delivered successfully and to a high standard.  

We are often cited as going above and beyond, this is often a result of our product and industry knowledge. We have the vision to see where the Adobe portfolio could expand the delivery as well as where innovative ideas can help clients improve their use of Adobe Experience Manager to get increased return on their investment. For this project we provided insight on the opportunities presented from the data analytics.  

Another example is the use of Adobe Forms and Sign. During the COVID-19 pandemic, in one financial quarter alone Adobe Sign sales increased 170% as organisations continued their digital transformation journeys. As an Adobe Specialised Partner we could see the value of adding this software to our client’s capabilities. During this project we were able to make the team aware of the power of Forms and Sign to further expand their services if needed. 

The digital transformation journey 

There are many steps along the digital transformation journey, at Apto we are able to support each step from contributing to bids, aiding knowledge input and pre-sales activities to implementation and deployment.   

We build rich customer journeys across many different channels and have worked across most sectors, delivering experience and data insight platforms. Our flexible approach means we work alongside large system integrators, agencies and solution providers to combine our expertise with theirs and deliver large-scale programmes. We can work across the full project lifecycle from architecture and design, through to delivery and into support. 

If you’d like to find out more about how we might be able to help you on your digital journey, please get in touch. Or find out more about what Adobe AEM can do for you.

Call us on +44(0)845 226 3351 or send us an email: enquiries@aptosolutions.co.uk