Consulting: How an effective information technology solution provider should work

As the Internet keeps expanding, companies are not satisfied with mere web presence. Discerning companies today want their websites to reflect their corporate philosophy. An information technology solutions provider builds and maintains a company's digital brand image by developing unique, customer centric web development solutions that augment their corporate image. They cater to all your business needs – from creating a simple static site to complex database driven interactive websites.

What separates them from the rest is the strength of the creative team, which is a harmonic blend of innovation and experience. The end result is visually stunning websites that are functionally efficient.

In the ever-changing myriad world that is the Internet, it is no longer sufficient to have a website that looks merely good and is functional. The end objective of a website is to enhance brand awareness and increase the sales. As the web keeps on expanding, it is becoming increasingly evident that companies need to explore all the avenues that will make their website more accessible.

Search engines play a vital part in promoting business by driving more customers to a site. Surfers today rely on search engines to find context sensitive information.

An effective working IT solutions provider has to take cognizance of this trend. He has a dedicated team of SEO professionals who use proven design methodologies that drive targeted traffic to your site, thereby opening more avenues of revenue generation. He has developed an array of software products that avails maximum advantage of the benefits the Net has to offer. This range of products empowers a company to be cost effective. The products are highly scalable, and can integrate with an existing legacy system.

Web based software applications makes project management trouble free and straightforward, simplifies the process of lead tracking and generation for call centers, develops a transparency within the team members which in turn speeds up the complete process, and are useful for webmasters who are responsible for handling many websites at a time.
Essentially, this software applications automates many manual processes and also provides help from its constantly upgraded knowledge base.

Evaluation Phase

The evaluation phase gives a clear and concise understanding right up front of the capabilities, scope, requirements, costs and schedule for a system that meets current business objectives, while building a foundation that allows you flexibility and scalability for future needs. Recommended is an appropriate course of action to deliver the new or re-engineered system.
This phase includes functional requirements, high-level system architecture diagram, and a project plan, as well as technical and related business risks that the existing system may pose to future operations.

Analysis Phase

Combined with applicable evaluation phase findings the analysis phase lays the foundation that turns your business vision into operational reality. The analysis phase produces detailed requirements and system architecture specifications to ensure smooth, predictable project execution. Key Analysis phase deliverables are:
- Requirement Specification – a detailed description of functional needs, as well as non-functional requirements, including performance, reliability and security requirements.
- High Level Object Model – highlighting key business objects and their relationships.
- High Level Project Plan – with preliminary schedule, tasks, resource requirements and organization chart.
- Technical and Software Architecture Specifications – including software partitioning, other products, protocols and deployment options.
- Architecture and GUI Prototypes – to insure that the end product is not only functionally efficient, but user friendly.

Development Phase

Milestones are assigned for each grouping of business functions, and for implementation and testing. Generally, each milestone is completed within four to six weeks, depending on the number of business functions in the milestone and the complexity of the functionality described. The development work for each milestone includes:
- Design Documentation – with sequence diagrams and a greater level of detail provided to the Object Model.
- Source Code Written – to implement each business function in the system.
- Testing – beginning with unit testing, followed by incremental integration testing and regression testing.
- Functional System Demo – as each milestone completes, a demonstration of the functionality becomes available for review.

Testing Phase

This final phase of the development process actually starts during the analysis phase when the project team evaluates and selects the best testing tools for your company's system test. A three-step testing process begins with:
- System Test and User Acceptance Planning – which details processes for conducting the system test, defines how and when performance and stress testing will be conducted, details reporting and tracking of software defects and outlines test team member roles.
- User Acceptance Test/Pilot – the last step in the testing phase includes final testing of the software and release to a subset of the user community. The pilot process develops a core group of users to debug the system in its actual production environment and to help accelerate training when made available to a broader user community.

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