Atlantic Business Technologies, Inc.

Category: ABT Culture

How One Growing University Found Genuine Brand Unity

Campbell University has grown tremendously over the past decade. We’ve proudly added 3 new schools and dozens of additional majors and programs. We expanded to new campuses. Throughout this growth, one thing has remained clear. The university website continues to be our most effective recruiting and engagement tool with prospective students.

The old campbell.edu did not engage our community with a united message and brand.

However, our 10 distinct colleges and schools often operated their websites independently. There would be little to align them to the main campus site. This contributed to a disjointed experience on www.campbell.edu. For years our university site was a collection of independent websites. Each site was only connected by a central university hub. This was no surprise for a 130-year-old institution. There’s been a lot of time for schools and departments to move in different directions. Every branch was chasing their own aims and feeling passionately about their brands.

Notice how different Campbell’s pages could be from one department to another. We had to bridge this brand gap.

Campbell.edu was a clear reflection of that decentralized reality. There was little visual and navigational consistency. We also lacked a clear URL naming structure. Our primary CMS was built on a structural plug-in that was no longer supported. Two of our colleges and schools operated outside of the current CMS (including one built in a programming language that we could not support). This left us with ten unique websites with unique goals, unique design, and unique code bases. Furthermore, it was all managed by a staff of two web developers and one web designer.

The Rebrand and Redesign of Campbell.edu

In the spring of 2016, the University Communications & Marketing team decided to tackle these issues. As a result, two major resource intensive projects were conceived. It was time for a rebranding initiative and a digital transformation of our website. But we needed a partner to help us tackle these large-scale projects. The projects required a team who could work in a timely manner. Ultimately, they needed to deliver the results our university deserved.

We found a partner in Atlantic BT. They recognized the importance of a global mindset. This didn’t mean ten different sites with their own voice and tone. It meant one unified site with multiple branches. ABT worked in tandem with our marketing and communications team. Together, they looked for every opportunity to build commonalities across schools and programs in both content and design.

Campbell worked alongside ABT’s designers, content strategists and developers. The entire team was able to centralize all of our schools and units into a single WordPress multi-site installation. They ultimately deployed 21 subdomains over a 20 month span. Our teams collaborated throughout the process on content auditing, updating, and getting the new site ready for deployment. The ABT team helped steer the development of compliant brand-consistent global headers and footers. They also created a flexible band system which permitted school sites to highlight specific content that was unique to their students and audience groups.

This gave all our schools and programs what they wanted—the ability to be distinctive—while maintaining the global look and feel that Campbell.edu needed. It helped that our teams solicited ideas and feedback from all these schools throughout the process. This increased their buy-in and made it easier to tailor content to their needs.

Campus Reception of New Brand and Site

The feedback from our campus units regarding the website transformation has been overwhelmingly positive. By approaching the project from a “global” perspective, the entire site maintains a consistent visual identity with site-wide structure for search and navigation. Schools were pleased with the relative speed of launch and flexibility regarding their own content. More than 100 content contributors have been trained to update sections of the website. They have also been eager to learn the CMS system. Each school and unit was able to customize the navigation and content prior to launch. Consequently, campus users have been able to focus on maintaining content for their programs. They no longer need to worry about design or development issues.

The Campbell web development team has also experienced benefits through the partnership. Atlantic BT handles security and server maintenance. Hence, Campbell developers are free to focus on the current update needs of the website. The ABT developers and project managers are promptly responsive with any issues that may arise.

We continue to work with ABT for site improvement, building out new features that will help support all of our users on www.campbell.edu. Together, we are responding to the changing needs of the web. We’re on good footing—and ready to face the next year ahead as a unified university with a consistent online foundation.

March 21, 2018
Celebrating International Women’s Day with the Ladies of Atlantic BT

The women of Atlantic BT run the world.

They are leaders, doers, creators, and visionaries.

They are daughters, sisters, partners, and moms.

They are managers, developers, accountants, researchers, writers, artists, and strategists.

In honor of International Women’s Day, we celebrate the team of women whose contributions help shape the work and culture that make up Atlantic BT. In their own words, they share what their experience means to them and champion the work of women here and around the world.

” When you think of a strong woman, who do you think of? For me, the first person who comes to mind is probably Beyoncé. Each lady at ABT is a Beyoncé in her own right.”

–Maris Hall, UX Desinger

“The ladies of ABT know how to work and play hard. From running a meeting to running the trails, we’re always pushing the limits.”

– Erin Rabatin, Project Manager

“Something I say often is HTFU, which a lot of ladies do here. They are tough as nails and I wouldn’t mess with any of them.”

–Jessica Altvater, QA Analyst

“Each lady here is like one of those magical automatic doors at Target. Everything she has to offer inside is pure genius and she’s always open to give insight, go the extra mile, or lend a helping hand.”

–Rachel McKay, Office Administrator

“In the world of CQS, our ladies are always a 10”

–Kate Geisler, Project Manager

“Whether it’s at Reading Between the Wines or in the Cellar, the ladies of ABT know how to have a good time.”

–Karen Handy, Senior Project Manager

“As the only female backend developer, I know how to keep up with the boys”

–Ria Manglani, .Net Developer

“I am continually inspired by the women I work with; by their intelligence and kindness, talent and work ethic. They empower me to be better at what I do inside the office and out. Today, I celebrate them and all that they have accomplished and the incredible things that are in store because we are lucky enough to have them.”

– Lorelei Canne, Content Strategist

“While women are a minority in our industry, we are mighty. The ladies of ABT prove everyday why women kick ass; we are strong, smart, driven, and chock-full of talent that will change the world. Get on board or get out of our way!”

–Townsley Minton, Senior Account Executive

“I think it’s an important time in our country. As women, we have the power and influence to invoke change. It’s not just today. I get the pleasure of seeing it every day. I get to work with some of the most brilliant, amazing, talented women in our industry. These women support our community and through their knowledge continue to eliminate the gender stereotypes. It makes me proud to be a woman and gives me great hope that my daughters will have the chance to fulfill their dreams, whatever they may be.”

–Eileen Allen, VP Strategy

“ABT women would make the Women’s Rights Movement proud as we are a group of women who are strong, supportive, encouraging, diverse, and accepting of one another as equals.”

–Amy Sullivan, Project Manager

“Every woman at ABT is a trailblazer in her own right. Each day she writes another inspiring chapter of HERstory in history as we move closer to gender equality in our industry. #PressForProgress.”

– Yolanda Hyman, QA Manager

(We wanted to get a quote from Project Manager Andrea Osborn, but she was too busy raising the next generation of feminists.)

Happy International Women’s Day! We look forward to all of the great things the future has in store.

March 8, 2018
We Moved! Meet the New Home of ABT

Atlantic BT has a new home. It’s true. We’ve moved. As our ranks continued to grow and business thrived, it was clearly time for an office upgrade. We needed a space that gave us plenty of room for big ideas, great opportunities, and very intense Foosball. As the ABT Office Manager, it’s my pleasure to invite you to our new location and show you what we’ve been up to and where we plan to go from here.

Welcome to the new ABT! I’ll be right behind this desk.

When I heard that ABT would be moving, I stalked the new location like you would an ex-boyfriend on Facebook (but with far more optimism). The building we were in at the time had served us well, but our new building had everything we needed and then some. Space! Light! Food trucks! Top secret buttons! It was going to be great. On top of that, the building was also LEED-certified. Working in a cool new space while also helping to save the planet? Yes, please.

Our new conference room inspired us to practice our serious meeting faces.

With everyone ready and on board, we were prepared for our adventure. The great thing about my coworkers at ABT is no one hesitated to offer a helping hand or allow the move to distract them from the projects they were working on. As the move took place, it was business as usual. Everything was completely normal. To be fair, there were some hiccups along the way. One chair was temporarily lost. There was some anxiety around the coffee machine. Too many questions asked about secret buttons. Standoffs within departments to claim desks thankfully never claimed any lives and no employees were harmed in the making of the new ABT office.

Moving isn’t easy on the emotions, but we talked it out—and Allan found his chair.

We’re all happy to be settled in and enjoying the space. I especially love my new, central location at our office’s entrance. It’s great to be able to see everyone as they come in. Have I mentioned that I also have a new button behind my desk? It makes me feel drunk with power. The button’s capabilities have piqued a great deal of curiosity but you will not see a picture of it (It is, after all, a secret button.).

Our flexible meeting spaces give us a lot of options for important ABT discussions—and nerf negotiations.

As for our current and future clients, they have a lot to look forward to. Here are just a few things that you can count on:

Excessive Quality Service

Groundbreaking Creativity

Awesome People

Superior Nerf Battles

Space to Do Great Things

We’re proud of the steps we’ve taken to move our company forward and we’re happy to have you along for the journey. Our doors are open. Contact us today if you’d like to arrange a visit!

February 19, 2018
How WordPress Empowered Campbell’s Higher Ed Brand
Ask any brand marketer why brand consistency is important and you’ll get a variety of answers. Most boil down to how a consistent brand allows you to convey your values, manage perceptions, and grow within a framework. When your brand or messaging is inconsistent, there can be an erosion of trust or confidence from your audience. Over time that results in negative returns from any promotional efforts—which is why more and more higher education institutions are taking branding seriously.

66% of colleges have spent more than $100,000 on brand strategy development.

–The Chronicle of Higher Education

Beyond the creative challenges associated with higher ed branding, there are significant technical hurdles to portraying a united brand on a university website with multiple programs and schools. That in mind, this blog post will use my company’s recent collaboration with Campbell University as a working example of how we overcame the technical roadblocks in Campbell’s way. We met the issues Campbell University faced with WordPress’ multi-site installation to give Campbell the digital platform they needed so they could freely focus on performing their best brand work.

Campbell University and the Need for a Shared Framework

First, some background about Campbell University’s legacy site: the university had a website for their main campbell.edu property, and each individual school at Campbell. The central Marketing Communications (CMC) team had limited influence over the content produced by each school and whether it complied with Campbell’s branding or not.

Notice the differences between the sites for Campbell’s Divinity and Law Schools. We needed to unify the brand look across Campbell’s schools and programs.

As you might imagine, this led to a confusing user experience because the look, feel, and tone of a Campbell.edu page could change substantially as you navigated across school sites. Campbell University’s Assistant Vice President of Communication and Marketing, Haven Hottel, described the legacy campbell.edu as “disjointed”:

“The site was a collection of independent websites connected to a central university site. Beyond the top level, there was little visual and navigational consistency; two of our colleges and schools operated outside of the current CMS; and there was not a clear URL naming structure.”

As Campbell’s partner for their site redesign, we wanted to change this situation by balancing university governance with empowering stakeholders across Campbell. This meant changing the web environment from every department having their own tool to everyone having a shared framework from which to produce content for their schools—content that had a universally-branded look and feel.

The key to accomplishing this was a multi-site installation of WordPress. We built each school’s property as their own website within the global campbell.edu domain. This allows each of them to have their own space to produce content, style their pages, and generally retain the control they wanted. As for the CMC team, they are now able to utilize user permissions and workflows for content production within WordPress. This helps achieve their goals for content production and brand integrity. Now they can review and provide direction for all the content their stakeholders produce as well as how pages are styled going forward.

By enabling content managers across Campbell to designate user roles and privileges, we helped university stakeholders contribute to their branded sites without going off-brand.

This shared framework has brought together the CMC team and the content producers at the schools in a new way, and sets Campbell up for success going forward. The results so far have been on par with the original intention: freedom for all to contribute, but within the framework of the core brand.

How We Set Campbell Up for Brand Success on WordPress

Campbell’s client profile is unique. The CMC team planned to own the whole website and brand ecosystem going forward and support it for their constituents—the schools. Within this atmosphere, there were a number of objectives we wanted to achieve throughout the life of the project:
- Position the CMC team as the project lead to their constituents.
- Incorporate the CMC team as a part of the ABT team in all facets of production.
- Give them the knowledge base needed to move forward.
- Help secure traction at the highest levels of the university for the initiative.
To achieve these objectives, we created processes and played roles newer to ABT. One process we implemented was “tearing down the wall” between the client and project teams: the CMC team were at our office weekly for all-day working sessions, participated in our huddles, reviewed work-in-progress, created some designs, and generally worked together with our experts all throughout the lifecycle of the project. In short, we operated as one team. This gave the CMC daily details on the project to communicate to their constituents while enabling us to move at a much faster pace than usual.

We also have now created two permanent documents that go along with the product we built. The first is a product specifications document that outlines all facets of the websites’ functions. Typically we create a specs doc during most projects, but for this product we wanted to make sure it would live on permanently after product launch. The second is an instructions document for the CMS itself. These documents are referenceable by the CMC team, their constituents, and even the ABT team going forward as new features or people are introduced to the product. We continue to keep these documents current so the information is always relevant and useful.

Lastly, we partnered with the CMC team to explain the “why” of this initiative at the highest levels of the university. We presented to the deans of Campbell University, explaining why this web redesign effort was important to their institution, its brand, and its success going forward. Providing an expert voice from an outside party can better position any client to engineer loyalty from their audience. By conducting this exercise early on, we helped earn credibility for the project to secure the proper participation along the way.

The Right Strategy for Your Higher Ed Site

The new global-minded look of campbell.edu helped unify the brand of every department in the university.

The new Campbell.edu has been a big success for both incoming students and the university’s various schools and departments. As Hottel described:

“The feedback from our campus units regarding the website transformation has been overwhelmingly positive. By approaching the project from a “global” perspective, the entire site maintains a consistent visual identity with site-wide structure for search and navigation.”

No two universities’ challenges are exactly the same, and there are a myriad of solutions that could work for you. There may be a different technical roadblock standing in your way that we can help you overcome. After the success of ABT’s redesign of Campbell.edu, we look forward to partnering with more higher education clients to find the web technology and CMS design that works best for them. If you’re interested in working with ABT, we’d love to talk about your challenges and what technology ABT can provide so you can have the best possible foundation on which to succeed.
January 23, 2018
My Takeaways from the AWS re:Invent Conference

As an Amazon Web Services Partner, we always pay close attention to any new technology the AWS team announces. This makes the recent AWS re:Invent conference feel like Christmas morning—if Christmas lasted multiple days (So it’s more like Hanukkah!) and some of the presents you opened promised to change your entire life and business.

That might sound like an exaggeration, but last week AWS announced 61 new services and augmentations to existing services. This is impressive as it brings the number of services offered by AWS to 127 total—proving that the industry leader in cloud hosting is not only committed to staying in the lead, but truly dominating its market.

While we had 3 ABTers on the ground in Las Vegas, the rest of us watched the Keynotes over Amazon’s livestream all gathered in our Level 1 lounge. I personally feel it is important to hear the information from Andy Jassy (CEO AWS) and Werner Vogels (CTO Amazon.com) first hand. I also like seeing the reactions and discussions that erupt from my colleagues when the announcements happen.

For me, the COO for an AWS Partner like Atlantic BT, all these new services inspire a lot of excitement and speculation about how my team’s work is going to change—and more importantly, how we can leverage AWS for our clients’ digital platforms. In this post, I wanted to go over some of the new services that I’m most excited about.

AWS Fargate and Aurora Serverless – Reimagining IT Services

While we at ABT have only been exploring containers behind the scenes and currently don’t run any production workloads in containers, we’ve paid close attention to this technology. We also have been doing research and development into FaaS and utilize AWS Lambda infrequently. Our developers understand the power of this tech, and we are looking for the right client project. If you have some ideas drop me a line.

That said, the release of AWS Fargate and Aurora Serverless will be instrumental in both our adoption of containers and “serverless” (I get it…there are still servers). AWS Fargate takes over all of the container resource management and allows us to simply deploy containers into AWS using the control plane of our choice. This hands-off resource management is a tenant of why we rely on AWS and have been a Consulting Partner for 6 years.

Amazon Aurora Serverless is another exciting new service which creates the first ever serverless fully relational database that you pay for one minute at a time. This addition to the highly scalable AWS Aurora database technology makes Amazon’s database storage and usage more agile and affordable than ever. For our clients with unpredictable database usage, Aurora Serverless will allow us to batch hundreds of database requests and run them all in a minute—driving substantial cost savings.

Amazon Comprehend and Alexa for Business – Natural Language Processing Takes Over

Amazon announced six new machine-learning services at re:Invent, showing their commitment to leading in the AI and machine learning. Of these, the services that most intrigue me are those related to language comprehension and the applications of it.

Amazon Comprehend is a natural language processing service that finds value and insights in text. This description might sound modest, but consider the applications: you could use this machine-learning program to read a book or white paper and have the program sum it up for you. AWS Comprehend could also retrieve information from the internet for you, allowing users to give commands like “tell me the maximum building restrictions in the 27612 zip code.”

With Comprehend, Amazon is essentially giving us a digital researcher who can handle textual analysis from a variety of sources in 100 different languages. In the same vein, Amazon Alexa for Business offers organizations the power of a digital assistant who can respond to questions and commands based on information from different data sources. I could ask Alexa to find a meeting time and place that’s available based on the schedules of multiple colleagues, or compare the prices of different technology vendors.

My big takeaway from these re:Invent announcements is Amazon wants to make natural language processing the primary way we interact with technology. This might sound like a radical change, but when I consider that we still rely on input devices (mouse and keyboard) that haven’t radically changed since the 1970s, I can see why it’s time to evolve. It will be interesting to see how other tech giants like Google or Apple respond to these changes outside of their flagship phones.

Amazon GuardDuty Automates AWS Threat Detection

Another important advancement powered by machine-learning, Amazon GuardDuty also stands to simplify threat detection across AWS accounts and workloads. Using normal use patterns from data and application interactions, GuardDuty’s machine-learning technology automatically monitors AWS environments and alerts users to anomalies like repeated failed login attempts or outside traffic coming into your database.

For a security-minded company like ABT (And hey, we should all be security-minded these days!), this stands to radically speed our ability to recognize potential breaches before they happen. I’m particularly happy to see how easy it is to customize GuardDuty’s monitoring across different AWS environments, which should help us find the right security fit for each of our clients. And as my friend Ulf Mattsson wrote earlier this month, having strong cloud security in place is vital for any organization with a large network of connected devices.

The AWS Future at re:Invent and ABT

Because AWS hosting has been a foundational part of our business for the last several years, ABT remains committed to delivering the best possible value for our AWS customers. This makes me excited for what our team can do with all the new services Amazon just announced at re:Invent. To learn more about our ongoing work with AWS, visit our Cloud Services page.

December 15, 2017
ABT Modernizes Site for NC Department of Revenue
Atlantic BT is proud to announce the launch of the North Carolina Department of Revenue’s new website. A partnership that began in 2015 (as ABT was collaborating with NC.gov) has come to fruition with a stronger and more streamlined DOR site that provides easier access for both taxpayers and DOR staff.

Because of the many rules and processes of NC tax policy, the restructuring of the DOR site required ABT to tackle complex situations with nuance and care. Our team conducted extensive research to ascertain the needs of taxpayers as well as internal users who maintained the site. This research led us to shift the web experience to focus on the tasks users wanted to accomplish on the site rather than the identity of the users themselves. This task-oriented approach became a defining characteristic of the project.

User Research Provides Answers for State Government

Using Tree Test Diagrams developed from an in-depth persona workshop, our designers created an ideal path for different users to follow when visiting the DOR site. The UX needed to be just as clear for a user looking for general information as it was to a taxpayer who had a specific issue to be addressed.

This tree test shows possible user paths for checking the status of an NC tax return.

Keeping this in mind, we migrated the site over to a new platform powered by Drupal. This gave internal users more autonomy and flexibility, making it easier to update the site as technology and tax laws changed. At the same time, Drupal enabled strong governance over the different internal users to ensure their updates fit the larger vision of the department. Redesigned information architecture, which was now data-informed rather than data-driven, also established much needed clarity to enhance the user experience across the site.

New Offerings on NCDOR.gov

Everyone has a story of a tax situation gone awry. Our Research Manager Randy Earl shared one that he experienced while he was working on this project:

“Resolving complex tax issues can often feel like being trapped in an endless loop of frustration,” he said. “Finding the right information and understanding the process can make all the difference; that’s why making this site stronger and more accessible for taxpayers is so important.”

Data-informed information architecture powered this new user interface for NCDOR.gov.

The new DOR site will now lead users exactly to where they need to be and create opportunities for tax issues to be remedied easily for everyone involved. Atlantic BT achieved this with:
- A reorganized and modernized web interface with user-friendly access to essential pages.
- A shared design platform with other NC Government branches for clarity and unity.
- Mobile-friendly site capabilities.
- Updated technology with the ability to maintain pace with ever-changing user needs and tax laws.
Tax related stress is no joke. That’s why the DOR wanted to ensure that its new design prioritized the user, making the entire process as simple as possible and perhaps even enjoyable. Atlantic BT is proud to work alongside the DOR and looks forward to future collaborations to build NC.gov sites that support and empower the people of North Carolina.
December 14, 2017