Vertical Communications, Inc.

 

"With in-place editing we can now dynamically deploy updates and new content from any web enabled device without the need for complex coding, website administration software or a VPN connection. Edits can be made from anywhere at any time, which enables us to rapidly respond to customers' needs and business opportunities."

Objectives

Gatelets is a long-standing Vertical partner. We were responsible for developing various micro-sites and the Vertical V-Connect customer portal. Vertical wanted to replace their old Vertical.com site (HTML-based static site with a dated look and old information) with a new powerful piece of software. The intention is for the Vertical.com site to become a pillar for communication with prospective customers and existing dealers, distributors and partners. The overall intention is to simplify or reduce the vehicles for communication with various audiences - an overall goal will be a single place for everyone to learn about Vertical cutting-edge products, find personalized content, download software patches and more.

Key goals for what we call Vertical.com 1.0 were:

• A new clean design based on an updated brand and identity from Wonderful
• A solid foundation on which to build the initial site and enhance or extend over time
• Integration where possible in the first release with the V-Connect portal
• Ability for employees with the appropriate access rights to add, remove, and update content
• Lead generation capabilities
• Support for key content including testimonials, case studies, awards, press and events
• A custom ROI calculator for the Vertical Wave product
• A novel information navigation system - the ability to perform deep-dives into content
• A series of product and phone matrices so users can quickly compare systems
• The ability for users to search any content on the site.
• Integration with social media services including Twitter and blogging

What we did

Working hand-in-hand with Wonderful, Gatelets leveraged the Denali 5.0 framework to be the foundation for the site. The design also makes use of the Grid 960 system to help provide consistent layouts that can be easily accessed on desktops, tablets or mobile devices. The Vertical system includes a unique encapsulated API to support very specific Vertical workflows (example: integration with V-Connect) that can easily extended to support new functionality and requirements. The project involved many stakeholders, and therefore we used 37Signals Basecamp for the general project management.

• The system provides in-place editing capabilities. Employees with sufficient access rights can modify content "in place" — no need to go to a separate CMS interface.
• Unique search engine that is V-Connect aware (searching over news, events, webinars etc.) and automatically bins content based on "type".
• Unique content management for sections of the site such as "Product Information" - enables the author to create unique content accordians and graphical carousels.
• Tight integration with V-Connect - the site intelligently looks for news and events from this site. Authors on this site can define when information expires, what is public and so on.
• Blogging environment integrated with news and events
• Ability to add case studies, testimonials and other content and then link to solution areas or products.

What is V-Connect?

This is the TeamServer-based (early version of Denali) Vertical customer portal. Peter Bailey, CEO summed it up as follows:
"We believe achieving transparency and a spirit of partnership are paramount to fostering successful relationships with our channel partners, and the introduction of V-Connect represents a significant step towards this goal," said Peter Bailey, Senior Vice President Product Management and Business Development for Vertical Communications. Our stated mission is to develop tools like V-Connect to remove the communication barriers that exist between vendors and their channel partners, which often get in the way of success. We are convinced this channel-focused philosophy is a long term competitive advantage in an industry that has historically dealt with its channel at an arms-length." He added, "During the planning stages, we worked diligently with members of our partner channel to ensure V-Connect encompassed all the tools and critical information needed for their business as a Vertical reseller. And this is just the beginning. Plans are underway to expand V-Connect to support our education delivery, extended Customer Care workflows, access to searchable customer escalation systems, and broadly enable a rich framework for vendor-channel interactions."

V-Connect provides the following services:

• Intelligent dashboards - administrators can define users or groups that do or do not have permission to access these dashboards
• Unlimited file uploads and downloads
• Ability to tag, label and annotate files - supports powerful searching, including use of Apache Lucene to enable document indexed searches (search the contents of a PDF or Excel file). Additionally, the system understands who should or should not have access to the files and therefore users only see what they are supposed to.
• Ability for "Power users" (Example: distributors) to add and manage their own users
• Events and training management
• Online calendar
• Partner services — V-Connect brokers access to various distributed services including eCommerce stores, 3rd Party Vertical University, JIRA and more.
• Real-time secure dashboard-based blogging. The system provides integrated HTML Editors and various other services
• Powerful reporting and administration tools including the ability to manage groups, users and system settings.

 

Craig Morgan, Director of Marketing has this to say about V-Connect; "Vertical Communications is dedicated to the success of our dealers, a cornerstone in this strategy is V-Connect by providing our dealers with one place to go to access all of the information and related partner services that they need. V-Connect has been developed on a flexible development framework, TeamServer from Gatelets, which has enabled us to quickly provide new services and integration with product specific Websites, that are all centrally managed through V-Connect. Gatelets is a strategic partner of Vertical Communications and we look forward to nurturing this relationship further as we continue to expand V-Connect."

Where does the relationship stand?

Peter Bailey says it best:"Vertical has been working with Gatelets for several years now, having partnered with Jean and his team extensively to build out our partner portal (leveraging Gatelets' technology) and more recently rebuilding and launching our new corporate website. Gatelets does great work but perhaps more importantly is a true partner with its customers, offering inventive insights and accountability with respect to the projects Gatelets drives on behalf of its customers. Vertical continues to be thrilled with their work."

Gatelets hosts all the Vertical online entities and from time to time supports Vertical with the creation of specific Marketing materials. We are now looking to future releases of Vertical.com (1.1/1.2) and a new V-Connect 3.0 that will be built using the latest Denali 5. The new release of V-Connect is destined to include new functionality surrounding intelligent file bundling, better large file upload tools, increased personalization, more social notifications and more.

Tell me more about Vertical

www.vertical.com