Haringey Council needed a website that provided the highest standards of user experience to the thousands of people who live in the area, allo...
Services Offered
CMS, Web development
The Brief: Blue Prism has a global portfolio of customers and partners who need to regularly access a number of accounts and services that Blue Prism offer, including an online learning platform, and a repository where customers can download the latest versions of their software. These services had been developed independently of each other, built-in Drupal 7, and customers were being forced to log on to separate sites and portals to access different areas. As well as being inconvenient, and necessitating different accounts and passwords for the same customer, the various sites and portals lacked a consistent look and feel, and were not representative of Blue Prism as an organisation. The Customer Portal:
- Acts as a repository for all software products – current releases and previous releases so that customers can download them or download any add-ons that they require
- Holds the supporting documentation library – including user manuals, and technical guides
- Allows access to Customer Support
- Contains a user forum for customers to engage in discussion about the use of the software
- Allows users to access the Learning Management System (LMS)
Blue Prism wanted a single pane of glass view for their customers, somewhere that they could log on once and access all of the necessary information and services that Blue Prism provide.
The Partner Portal is designed for use by trusted business partners and resellers and is a bit more advanced. The partner portal has more advanced security requirements, as it gives users access to sensitive information.
The partner portal is also linked to Blue Prism’s CRM system.
It is used for:
- Raising and managing software licenses for the Blue Prism products
- Acting as a document repository with more sensitive documents designed for partners
- After conversations with several suppliers, they commissioned Ixis to complete the project.
The Solution
Ixis were commissioned to build a coherent and comprehensive solution in Drupal 8, blending together all the disparate services into one intuitive customer portal, and then built a linked partner portal for the sensitive information that only Blue Prism’s partners can access.
The staff at Ixis worked with various business units within Blue Prism to discover what their specific requirements were and where effort was best placed. One of the main features we were asked to provide was single sign on for all the functions. However, Ixis were able to go one step further in that we designed the customer portal to be the point of truth for customer records within the Learning Management System. This means that when customers create an account on the portal, that account is replicated onto the LMS. On an ongoing basis, any updates made in the Portal are synchronised over into the LMS. They also assign customers to companies using their email address and give them access to a suite of courses within the LMS based on this.
There was only one minor setback during the project when we were obliged to complete some extra work on the product repository on the customer portal. We had reached a point where they could manage and upload all of the products and make them very easy to find for the customers, however, it is necessary for Blue Prism to be very tight on their release dates. This is for various reasons including their ISO rating the potential for virus propagation.
This meant that rather than manually creating the products in the portal using the content management system, we had to work with the product development team to sync the automatic process of the portal creating product pages when a new software product is released. This was an extra feature that we developed to tailor the portal to Blue Prism’s specific requirements.
The Results
Blue Prism now have a comprehensive, streamlined customer portal that is functional and fit for purpose.
Ixis worked closely with the design agency to implement the branding, giving it a consistent look and feel across all functions, which is also in keeping with the wider Blue Prism corporate branding.
The first phase of the customer portal went live on the 18th of December 2017, with the partner portal completed on schedule and delivered in March 2018.
Ixis have maintained a contractual agreement to provide agile development sprints to Blue Prism. This means that we are continuously working on smaller development projects to maintain and upgrade the portal, and releasing these features as we go.
We have an ongoing support contract that rolls over on a yearly basis, with Ixis providing a full hosting and support service to Blue Prism for both the customer and partner portals.
Blue Prism is a UK multinational software corporation that created pioneering enterprise robotic process automation software to eliminate low-return, high-risk, manual data entry and processing work.
They coined the term ‘Robotic Process Automation’, and have developed a software platform that enables the rapid automation of manual, rules based, back office administrative processes, reducing cost and improving accuracy by creating a “digital workforce”.
In April 2017 they commissioned Ixis to help them build two portals, one for their customers and the other for their commercial partners.