Arke

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a product manager in the youth development department at the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. I manage the digital resources that our organization provides to chapters across the country.

What challenge were you trying to address with Arke?

We needed to rebuild a preexisting web platform used by youth, staff, and administrators in Boys and Girls Clubs around the nation.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We originally created the platform with another partner who we stopped working with in 2017. It became unsustainable, so we brought on Arke for the rebuild. They managed development, debugging, maintenance, support, and some new features. 

The platform itself contains multiple components, and Arke employed different systems to build each of them, including Sitecore, Microsoft Dynamics, and React Native.

What is the team composition?

We worked with one main senior developer, but we also had a few project managers who cycled on and off the project depending on where we were in the timeline. 

The team also included about two to four offshore developers.

How did you come to work with Arke?

When we were winding down our partnership, we focused our search on companies that were also based in Atlanta and connected with Arke.

Ultimately, we decided to move forward with their team because of the quality of their proposal and their expertise in Sitecore.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent between $250,000-$300,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

The project lasted from January 2018-January 2020.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

The transition from our original platform to the one Arke built for us was very precarious, as the documentation wasn’t up to par. Arke’s team was able to focus on identifying the root causes for many of the issues we were experiencing, and developing the right solutions.

We’ve received a lot of positive user feedback since we’ve released the platform, especially on some of the new features. We’re pleased with the quality of work the team was able to produce with our limited budget.

How did Arke perform from a project management standpoint?

Our lead developer, who was our main point of contact, was very detail-oriented and collaborative. 

He displayed a lot of creativity in both investigating the reasons we were experiencing obstacles and in finding methods to remediate them. It was clear to us that he and his team were actually dedicated to correcting problems rather than just applying patches. 

Throughout the duration of the project, the team was extremely involved and able to communicate with us as they progressed. We were included in their daily stand-up meetings. Also, we used DevOps and Teamwork to track and share progress.

What did you find most impressive about them?

There are many development firms to work with, but Arke is a true, thoughtful partner. The team is engaged with you when they make decisions.

Arke doesn’t just look to sell clients their vision, but rather to help clients realize their own.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There was nothing they could’ve done better.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Arke does their best work when they’re engaged with their client.

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the SVP of marketing for a financial services firm.

What challenge were you trying to address with Arke?

Although we were a digital company in terms of products, when it came to marketing, we were traditional in our approach to acquiring consumers. We needed support creating a roadmap to implement a digital strategy and infrastructure into our marketing efforts.

What was the scope of their involvement?

Arke was hired for two different purposes: one strategic and one more tactical. Their team consulted on our efforts to build digital capabilities into our marketing strategy. They helped create a technology roadmap to implement our new strategy, which included developing a CMS; this was the tactical component of the collaboration.

First, they assessed our needs. Then, the team made recommendations as to which platform was the best fit for us. Arke understood both our marketing and IT needs, communicating to me our technical capabilities. Since our IT team works primarily in Java, we weren’t able to support a commercial .NET platform. While we have skilled developers, an open-source platform would be too difficult. They helped us understand that we weren’t scaled for this type of project quickly and intelligently.

We expected their team to implement the CMS, but our company decided not to fund the project. If we’d funded the project, Arke would’ve been an important partner of ours throughout the entire RFP and implementation processes.

What is the team composition?

Two individuals worked on the project. The CEO helped create our strategy in addition to one other teammate who also supported the CMS discovery phase.

How did you come to work with Arke?

Arke is well known in Atlanta.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent about $25,000 on the project.

What is the status of this engagement?

We collaborated for six months between 2015–2016.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

We still refer to the roadmap they helped create. They also supported us through a key decision-making process, preventing our team from pushing ahead with a bad decision. Enabling us to make a decision quickly that our team felt good about has had a huge impact. If we didn’t go through all the steps of considering one platform versus another, we would’ve faced a lot of challenges and no one would’ve been happy in the end.

They effectively guided me through the uncertain waters of being a new leader in an organization; it’s hard to put a number against that.

How did Arke perform from a project management standpoint?

There were just three of us on the project, so communication was good. We spoke a couple of times a week and Arke often met us in person. I did a lot of the management myself since we were trying to be pretty scrappy; our team didn’t want to spend a lot of money.

What did you find most impressive about them?

Arke was a great partner. If I were getting into an unfamiliar tech space where there were pitfalls ahead of me, I would call the Arke team to help. They have a variety of experiences.

Are there any areas they could improve?

No, there isn’t anything they could’ve done differently.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

Be clear about deliverables and the project’s direction. When the client doesn’t know what they want, it’s really hard for a partner to deliver successfully.

Could you briefly describe your company?

We are a staffing management company. We work closely with hospitals throughout the United States, and provide services to them in which we manage service and personnel contracts.

What is your position?

I’m the director of marketing production so I work with all of the websites that TeamHealth is affiliated with.

Could you describe the business challenges or opportunities you were attempting to address when you began the project with Arke?

Sure. Just to be a little transparent, when we first started working with Arke, I was not in the role that I am now. There was a predecessor to myself that initiated the process of moving to a Sitecore product. That same person also engaged Arke, but I have been involved since about August of 2012. We have worked on several projects with Arke in which we’re transitioning our Web content to our new Sitecore platform. Some of the challenges with that included not being able to make changes to our website quickly and flexibly, and having to have a vendor be involved in that process, whether it was a content change or whether that was even a graphical change. We wanted more flexibility so we could do those things in house while also reducing maintenance costs.

Could you describe the scope of these projects? For instance, did they involve custom design, development, training, or support?

Sure. The projects that I have been involved with haven’t so much been designed since we already have designs done. It was essentially a migration from a previous platform to Sitecore. Arke did provide some training opportunities for us to ensure that everyone on the team was trained on using the platform properly. They also provided backend support with regard to coding that we aren’t necessarily involved in and don’t really see.

Why did you select Sitecore as your CMS over some of its competitors?

I hate to say it, but I wasn’t a part of those discussions. We transitioned what the previous environment was to the Sitecore product back in January of 2012. I was not directly involved in those discussions.  

How did you select Arke as your solution partner?

From what I understand from previous conversations, we were working with an agency that had partnered with Arke on other projects. It was essentially a referral.  

Could you give me a sense of the size of the Sitecore implementation in monetary terms?

I’m not too sure what it was for our main site, which is the TeamHealth.com site. The other projects that we’ve had them work on usually go. We had two big projects in the summer that accumulated to about $100,000 to $125,000, and then our current plan is we’re actually taking six different sites migrating, which is also adding up to about $100,000.

In terms of results, could you share any statistics, metrics, or user feedback that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

We’ve definitely seen an increase in visitors to our main website, which is TeamHealth.com. During the last year – I don’t have the percentages off the top of my head, but I do have the numbers – we were trending about 37,000 visitors to our website, and now we’re currently seeing that to be more like 57,000 to 60,000. We’ve also witness value in terms of cost savings. Having the Sitecore product in house has greatly increased our process efficiency, and our ability to track and monitor our workflows.  

How do you think Arke performed on these projects?

We have a very strong relationship with Arke. They quickly tackle issues as they arise, and always take care to communicate updates to us. As far as communication and problem solving, they’re always very quick to respond, which we’re very appreciative of. They do it in a tactful manner, too. Even though there might be a solution that seems a little easier to do at times, they want to do what’s right.

When working with Arke, is there anything you would consider special or unique about them compared to other solution partners you’ve worked with in the past?

They take the time to understand our business and our team. We are a niche audience in the sense of what kind of services we provide. We’re not selling potato chips or anything, so I feel like they really have taken the time to understand what we are looking for and what is the best solution to get us the best results.

Could you briefly describe your company?

We are a medical publishing and education company. We publish medical journals, news, books and also engage in medical education activities.

What is your position?

I’m the vice president of information technology.

Could you describe the business challenges or opportunities you were trying to address when you initiated the project with Arke?

At the time, we had nearly 35 different websites, and absolutely no content management system whatsoever. We’d had all of our online content funneling through the IT department, and being posted manually onto our various websites. There were two different challenges. The IT department was being inundated by the sheer volume of content that required attention and, as a result of that, we also had serious issues disseminating our content in a timely fashion. We also had a significant usability problem in terms of disparate content. We had users that would go to one website for book content, and that same user might also be interested in journal content, which then required them to visit a separate website. We approached the project as a whole from both the back and frontend. From the user perspective, we took all of the websites and put them into one medical platform so that all of our book, journal, medical education content, and news content was all delivered on one platform. There were multi-channels, and all of the content became accessible for each and every user. The platform itself became much more valuable, and we generated much more traffic as a result.

Could you describe the scope of the project? For instance, did it require custom design, development, training, or support?

We worked collaboratively on all aspects of the project. We tend to be a very hands-on company, so we had some definitive ideas of what we wanted it to look like, and how we wanted to approach it. Arke assisted us with our vision. They would lend guidance to us where they thought we might want to take path X versus path Y, and certainly from the technology standpoint, they always guided us in the right direction. We also have an in-house department of developers that we knew we wanted to be able to pick up the system, and keep going with it. They worked collaboratively with us on that as well where we would have daily scrums with them. They really built it for us, but there were some agreed upon parts that we worked as well, and they worked with us during the entire process, keeping our developers in the loop of what was being done so that by the end of the process they would be able to transfer complete responsibility onto our team.

How did you select Arke as your solution partner?

It’s a very odd story. We had sent out a bunch of RFPs. We’re a fairly small company, and we had a massive project. We had a small budget. The scope of work that I just described is obviously quite large. We had people who didn’t respond to the RFP at all. We had people that came in, and the number was so big that it just was out of the question. We had decided on a couple of vendors. We were looking at vendor and technology because, at that point, we hadn’t even decided to use Sitecore. It was a vendor with technology, and I was a proponent of Sitecore. It was one vendor with Sitecore, and it was another vendor with SharePoint. I did not feel comfortable using SharePoint for an external facing site. I think that our entire group had decided that Sitecore was the technology that we should be going with. We brought the vendor in, and the vendor had said that they could do it with our budget. When we actually went through the discovery phase, the cost almost doubled as we began to get into the nuts and bolts of what we wanted to do. We couldn’t afford to do it, and we were at a standstill. We had realized at that moment that, in addition to Sitecore, we also needed to implement a CRM, which we also didn’t have. We were at this hiatus point, and then we were talking to Microsoft about CRM and Microsoft Dynamics, and we knew that Dynamics had a connector to Sitecore. It was Microsoft who had suggested Arke as an implementation partner for CRM. We became very comfortable with them, and it was a relationship that grew. Eventually, we simply decided to have them handle our technology needs.  

Why were you more inclined to select Sitecore rather than SharePoint?

We liked the idea of the separation of content from presentation. We knew that we had content that we wanted to multipurpose for different medical specialties. One piece of content we might want to show to a cardiologist and to an endocrinologist, for example. Just the ability to, within Sitecore, show that piece of content and separate the content from the presentation layer, coupled with the built-in DMS capabilities, it just seemed like a well-rounded package. At the time, I was looking at Gartner, and following where everything was stacking up in the Gartner report. We were looking for a content management system that was going to be around for a while. I wanted to make sure that we had one that two years from when we made this investment was still going to be around, and that there was going to be support.  

Could you give me a sense of the size of this initiative in monetary terms?

I believe it cost approximately $350,000.

When was the implementation completed?

April of 2012.

In terms of results, do you have any statistics or metrics you could share that would demonstrate the effectiveness of the work they’ve delivered?

The best results that I could share with you is when we decided to do this we believed that our user base would grow significantly, and we have surpassed our projection as far as the traffic on our website by more than double.

Do you have any feedback from internal/external users of the system?

We just get little bits here and there that people like the site, they like what they’ve seen. I guess the fact that the traffic numbers are as high as they have grown, that’s really the best thing that tells us that we’re doing things correctly. Internally, we have people who are outselling projects that they would have a couple of years ago, they would have been used to a six-month turnaround for a project that they go out and sell, and now they come back with an expectation that is in the weeks rather than the month.

When working with Arke, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to service providers you’ve worked with in the past?

They’re friendly and approachable. They respect our cost and time constraints without fail.

In retrospect, are there any areas you feel they could improve upon, or are there certain things you might do differently as the client before approaching this type of project?

As a client, I think that I would limit the amount of customizations. The customizations that we asked for are what caused many of the issues we faced. The only suggestion for Arke might be to caution their clients more readily when it comes to these customizations. I realize it’s in the best interests of any service provider to attempt to deliver whatever the client wants but, in certain cases, perhaps many, the client isn’t 100 percent positive about what they want. More importantly, even if the client is crystal clear about what they want, sometimes it simply isn’t necessary for the project goals to be achieved. There’s a balance to be struck.

Could you briefly describe your company?

Travelport is a global distribution system that has various customers. We take the content and the inventory from travel suppliers, such as airlines, hotels, tours and cruises, and then make that available to our agency partners via online or offline channels.

What is your position?

I’m a senior marketing manager.

Could you describe the business challenges you were attempting to address when you initiated the project with Arke Systems?

We outsource our website maintenance and development. We were with a local Atlanta agency, and we were not pleased with their service provision. We decided reached out to various agencies in the area that do similar work. Based on their track record and demonstrated expertise, Arke was selected to be our maintenance and development vendor moving forward.

Could you describe the scope of the work that they’ve provided, such as custom design, development, training, or support?

As far as training goes, I’ll have to tell you when we first engaged with Arke, the previous agency came and did a handover of some of the components that they had just finalized for us. After the previous vendor left, an Arke representative actually told my employee, “Let me tell you in laymen’s terms what that means to you.” Our employee was confused with what she was being told by the previous agency, and then the Arke representative brought it all down so that she completely understood what was being done. That’s only one of the many benefits that I believe Arke is capable of providing to their clients. They also do custom design for us. They’ve just applied a new skinning to our website. They also create new templates for us. They’ve done a lot of optimization work with our website to ensure that we don’t need multiple licenses for CMS, that the site is consistently up and running, and that it’s not being brought down by any external factors, such as a newsfeed or something like that.

What CMS solution are you utilizing?

We use Sitecore.

Could you describe the process for selecting Arke Systems?

We put out an RFP and asked three or four different agencies to respond to it. We then invited them to introduce themselves to us. When we met Arke, they were very down to earth and interested in our business. We got a good sense from our conversation that Arke would be a good fit moving forward.

How much did their services cost?

We have a retainer that equals roughly $250,000 a year.

In terms of results, could you share statistics or metrics that would demonstrate the effectiveness of their work?

They’re very responsive to any of our needs. They handle our online support all day, every day. They actually customized the system to make sure that the alerts were being sent out throughout their organization to the key people so that they were addressing issues immediately. We’ve received a tremendous amount of positive feedback, too.

When working with Arke, is there anything you would consider unique or special about them compared to other service providers you’ve worked with in the past?

I’ve really enjoyed the one-on-one time with their developers. Previously, we had to go through a project manager, and sometimes, what you’re saying becomes twisted or turned, which results in unintended consequences. Things like that can seriously break a project flow, but we don’t have to worry about that. We work directly with the developers that interact with our website, without the hassle of sending requests down the telephone wire. The level of accountability and ownership that they've adopted has a serious impact on the quality of work they're consistently able to deliver. 

In retrospect, are there any areas that you feel Arke could improve upon or things that you might do differently as a client before approaching this kind of project?

No, I would definitely still choose Arke as my solution partner. The only thing I’d have done differently is altered my approach to our website optimization. In hindsight, there is a lot of additional functionality that we requested that just wasn’t worth it. It would have been more efficient to know exactly what was going to be done, and what its exact ramifications would be on the platform and the end user before having it implemented.