FirstLink Technology is staffed with exceptionally talented Internet professionals
who regularly deliver
creative solutions to complex problems. We don't believe
that there's any challenge we can’t meet and we have a long track record of
satisfied customers. Read our case studies to see some of the solutions we have
provided to our customers.
Client: Prairie Dunes Country Club
Challenge: Prairie Dunes website was not very attractive or functional
and wasn't meeting the needs of the organization. The site was difficult to update for
Prairie Dunes staff and it was not the effective communication tool that it needed to be.
With the growing need to stay in touch with club members and provide more current
information to them regularly, Prairie Dunes needed a functional modern Web 2.0 site
to engage the club members, manage resource schedules, and deliver important and
timely information.
FirstLink Solution:
To satisfy Prairie Dunes' urgent website needs, FirstLink designed a brand new website
incorporating flash to illustrate the beauty of the Prairie Dunes golf course and to
provide a new interactive course tour highlighting the various holes on the golf course
and an image gallery so members can feel more involved in country club events.
FirstLink developed an easy to use, custom content management system allowing
Prairie Dunes employees to easily edit content, manage members, and update and
display Prairie Dunes calendar events for the various departments. We also created
a reservation system to manage room reservations in the club's newly built lodges
for out of town members. To further aid in their communication efforts with their
members, we integrated a third party mass email application to their administration
tool so they can easily create and send email newsletters to their members.
Client: Ultimate Electronics
Challenge: The original Ultimate Electronics website was generated
through an application service provider from their internal product management database.
The company that provided the website integration piece was extremely expensive, buggy,
and unresponsive to their daily website maintenance needs. Ultimate also needed an
automatic way to comparison shop their competitors daily to insure that they always had
the lowest price on their products to support their price guarantee.
FirstLink Solution: FirstLink examined all of Ultimate's internal
systems and mapped out the way that their data was being stored. Once the general
schema had been identified, FirstLink created a website framework and a custom integration
mechanism to use their internal data directly on their website with total control over
what is being delivered to customers online as well as ownership of the application code.
Now they have eliminated the middle-man and have the 'ultimate' say-so on how to deliver
their product offerings to their customers online. To provide for their comparison
shopping needs, FirstLink developed an automated spider that collects pricing
information from competitor websites every day and delivers that data directly to
Ultimate Electronics.
Client: Pet Doors USA, Inc.
Challenge: After many years their website was falling behind
modern standards. They needed a new look, an improved shopping cart, and needed
to address security and stability concerns. Also, looking to dominate their
marketplace, they needed to improve their search engine placement
FirstLink Solution:
FirstLink subtly redesigned the original website improving aesthetics and creating
additional content areas for ads, coupons and special offers. We developed a complete
custom system that included content management functions, a full featured shopping
cart with coupon support, and order management and processing. Multiple secure
transactional mechanisms are utilized allowing for retail and wholesale login and
purchasing. We provide secure co-located space for the Pet Doors USA servers.
Redundant power, climate control, and internet bandwidth provide a solid platform
to maintain their Internet business operations. Once the site was created, we
provided additional Search Engine Optimization services and succeeded in getting
them near the top of the list for many of their targeted search terms.
Client: National Endowment for Financial Education
Challenge: NEFE offers online financial education and courses
through the websites Nefe.org,
Cashcourse.org,
Smartaboutmoney.org,
Myretirementpaycheck.org, and
Spendster.org.
NEFE spends quite a bit of money
developing and advertising websites, but they were having serious reliability issues
with their old hosting provider, what’s more, the developers and the hosting company
were constantly playing the blame game over who’s fault it was while the
reliability issues remained unresolved. They needed help keeping their
complex sites up and running.
FirstLink Solution: NEFE coordinates all of its messaging and
communication through the web, so uptime is absolutely vital for the organization
to function. FirstLink took over managed hosting services for NEFE in our data
center so that we could exercise our attention to detail to help prevent outings
and mitigate quality issues with their various development companies. Previously,
their developers were working directly on their production servers which was a
big part of the problem. We mirrored their production systems and implemented a
staging environment and QA schedule to limit production sites from exposure to
show-stopping errors. We also integrated a Google mini search appliance to improve
the quality of their search functionality and manage their many analytic tools
such as Webalyzer, AWStats, and Urchin.
Client: Regis Jesuit High School
Challenge:
Regis Jesuit High School was having numerous
problems with their network, but they lacked the resources and expertise to understand
and address the issues they were having. They suffered from an underperforming network,
occasional Internet outages, and bottlenecks and inconsistencies through the entire network.
FirstLink Solution:
To address bandwidth and connectivity issues, FirstLink installed and configured a
redundant 20meg QMOE connection spanning 2 different central offices. To provide
for additional redundancy in case of a Qwest outage, we installed and configured an
additional cable connection through Comcast. FirstLink's network engineers then
architected an internal network to serve their needs better and installed and
configured the hardware needed to execute our design. FirstLink segmented their
internal network into multiple VLANs for monitoring and prioritization, giving
their administrators more precise control over bandwidth allowances and security.
We installed utility services like NetFlow and Nagios so they have more information
on what's happening on their network. We also provided them with a WAN based
disaster recovery solution housed in our data center.
Now their network runs like a dream.
Client: Dean Evans & Associates
Challenge:
Dean Evans & Associates are the developers of Event Management Systems software,
an enterprise application that manages complex schedules and calendars. The design
of their Internet scheduling module requires each individual customer to run the
software on a dedicated Windows server. The problem is that many of their customers
don't have the resources or bandwidth to manage a Windows web server.
FirstLink Solution:
FirstLink now handles all managed hosting for Event Management Systems' Internet
modules. Within our data center we install, configure and manage each individual
Windows server that supports DEA’s customers. This has freed their customers from
the hassle of setting up and managing these servers themselves and has increased
DEA's reach as challenges that existed for their customers before are now being
handled by FirstLink.
