PLUMCHOICE: BRANDED PORTALS + USER EXPERIENCE

OVERVIEW

PlumChoice, a pioneer in the remote technical services industry, is a provider of best-of- breed technology care business solutions. Through its patented SAFElink® Technology Platform, technology suite software-as-a-service, and remote and on-site services, PlumChoice empowers customers to launch premium technology services businesses and manage internal technical support programs. PlumChoice primarily delivers support to and through Fortune 2000 companies in technology, telecommunications, consumer electronics, financial services and service partners.

CHALLENGE

PlumChoice provides its solutions through and to a diverse base of business customers including major service providers, retailers, hardware and software manufacturers, and warranty service providers. The company saw a need to provide a branded experience for each of its customers’ end users. The solutions provider’s IT and business teams determined that customer portals running on a single infrastructure would best enable reusability of content and functionality. Accordingly, PlumChoice began seeking a platform to host its multiple, uniquely branded customer portals that would also integrate its patented SAFElink® Technology Platform.

RESOLUTION

PlumChoice took into consideration a portal platform’s ability to support branded portals for each of its customers, while also providing a personalized user experience. Liferay was selected as the best candidate for the enterprise portal provider’s attractive pricing model, competitive and innovative features set, and lightness of weight (as compared to other portal products). Liferay Portal’s ease of customization and rich content management tools also enabled a quick turnaround in building multiple customer sites.

“The Liferay platform increased our speed to market, which is of real value to us,” said Martin Higgins, PlumChoice’s Vice President, Engineering. “The standardized portlets and content management capabilities enable us to go live with new customer sites more quickly than ever before.”

The company retained XTIVIA, a certified Platinum-level Liferay partner, to work with PlumChoice’s IT and business teams in a phased approach using Agile development methodologies. The XTIVIA solution involved extensive customization of core Liferay functionality, custom portlet development, themes and layouts, and integration with PlumChoice’s SAFElink Technology Platform.

SAFElink was updated to add support for SugarCRM as a system of record. Today, these customer sites leverage a common set of SAFElink web services to access their CRM systems. The SAFElink web services control portal functions and content displays. In addition to utilizing a services-based approach for integration, this project leverages Liferay’s Communities concept to build out each customer site and web content management and publishing to manage the content on the site.

“XTIVIA, a trusted partner of PlumChoice, displayed a best-in-class knowledge and expertise in Liferay and web technology on this project,” Higgins said. “The team was responsive and performed a rapid and effective deployment of qualified consultants to meet our needs.”

PlumChoice has plans to roll out more sites on Liferay Portal.

VALUE ADDED

Transitioning PlumChoice’s customer websites to a single, shared infrastructure reduced the associated operational costs, while making it easier to on-ramp new customers and share content and functionality between the sites.

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