4-page Case Study - Posted 9/30/2009

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FICO

Content Management Solution for Web Site Saves Financial Firm $257,000

FICO provides analytics and decision management technologies to customers around the world. It wanted to improve its online presence by updating its Web site and streamlining a cumbersome Web content management process that required IT involvement and constrained marketing staff from developing the site along corporate directives. FICO migrated its portal to Microsoft® Office SharePoint® Server 2007 and increased dynamic content by 90 percent. Because marketing employees now manage Web content publication, data is posted 20 percent faster and IT staff can focus on appropriate duties, raising productivity by an estimated 60 percent. Also, thanks to integrated search in Office SharePoint Server, FICO was able to retire its third-party search solution, saving U.S.$37,000 a year. Today, FICO has an extensible set of tools to achieve its vision for a Web site that drives business agility.

With SharePoint technologies, we can update the site easily, responding to corporate directives right from the Web site. Instead of a static site, we have a dynamic, online asset to build our business. Jamie Nelson Senior Manager, Web Channel FICO

   
Situation

Founded in 1956 as Fair Isaac by engineer Bill Fair and mathematician Earl Isaac, FICO pioneered the development of predictive analytics, business rules management, and optimization technologies to support advanced decision management. FICO uses these technologies to help businesses improve the precision, consistency, and agility of their complex, high-volume decisions.

Business clients in 80 countries work with FICO to increase customer loyalty and profitability, cut fraud losses, manage credit risk, meet regulatory and competitive demands, and rapidly build market share. FICO scores, available through the myFICO.com Web site, are a measure of consumer credit risk. Since its introduction 20 years ago, the FICO score has became a global standard for measuring credit risk in the banking, mortgage, credit card, auto, and retail industries. To meet global demand, the FICO score is available to lenders in 20 countries on five continents.

Outdated Web Site

FICO wanted to update its Web site to present a more dynamic, interactive, and contemporary online presence that reflects the company’s stature in the decision management field. A rapidly expanding business, FICO had outgrown its existing Web site, which ran on Microsoft® Content Management Server 2002. However, when FICO staff began making plans to modernize the Web site, it was stymied by the site’s outdated, inflexible technologies.

“As a major communication vehicle with members of the public and our clients,  our Web site needs to provide current corporate information through an engaging and interactive online experience,” says Feather Hickox, Director, Web Channel, FICO. “We wanted to improve the customer experience on the Web site with more interactivity, frequent content updates, better search, and support for multiple languages for our global clients. To turn our goals into reality, we needed a more scalable and adaptable portal solution.”

FICO used a search application for its Web site that it licensed from a third-party provider. This expensive solution yielded inadequate results and was not easily configurable to meet the needs of the business; therefore, FICO sought more control over search functionality on its Web site.

Inefficient Content Management

FICO marketing and IT staff alike used an inefficient Web content management system that required IT involvement even for basic content changes. The existing site consisted of hard-coded Active Server Pages and content forms, with virtually no dynamic content. If the same item needed to be published on different areas of the site, it had to be done manually for each instance.

Twice weekly, Jamie Nelson, Senior Manager, Web Channel, at FICO would meet with the IT team to discuss the Web content changes requested by marketing staff members. “Once I received notice from marketing that they had approved a piece of content, I would have to discuss this with IT staff who would then tweak the code, test it, and push it out to the production servers,” says Nelson. “If the matter was urgent, I coordinated with other IT colleagues across the country by phone. Since one of the pages I couldn’t publish was the home page, I was frequently challenged to get important notices in place.”

This situation meant that the marketing team, who authored and approved the content, did not have control over how and when it reached the Web site. Instead, an IT staff member lost two days out of his week revising code and publishing content. “We needed to find Web content management technologies that marketing could use to manage content much more dynamically,” says Hickox.

Disparate Portal Solutions

To complicate matters, FICO maintained different IT environments for its Web site and its intranet. The intranet at FICO had been supported by Microsoft SharePoint® technologies since 2001; since 2007, it had been running on Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007. The intranet was managed by a different IT team from the one that maintained the Web site—a redundant and costly arrangement for the IT department. Furthermore, this scenario meant that marketing staff never could be sure that product sheets, case studies, and white papers—which existed on both the Web site and the intranet—were in sync. Employees lost confidence in corporate information because no one knew which version was up to date.

“Marketing did a good job of managing content on both our internal and external sites, but working with the two very different toolsets meant that only a few individuals were able to post to both systems,” says Carl Samberg, Director of Web Applications and Web Engineering at FICO. “We wanted to standardize on one portal solution where we could enable more people to take on an active content management role.”

FICO began looking for a standardized solution for both the intranet and the external Web site. The company reasoned that a single portal solution would reduce overall IT administration costs. Ideally, the solution would be adaptable and easy to use so that marketing could reclaim ownership of its Web content and relieve the IT department of its content management and publication burdens.

Our Web site needs to provide current corporate information through an engaging and interactive online experience. Feather Hickox Director, Web Channel FICO

Solution

FICO decided to migrate its Web site to Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, thereby standardizing on one IT infrastructure for its intranet and Internet environments and taking advantage of a common content management solution. “We’re a pretty lean staff, and so we look for technologies where we can use skill sets we already have in-house,” says Samberg. “Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an adaptable, leading-edge Web site solution that delivers rich out-of-the-box functionality, so we wouldn’t need to customize.”

While Office SharePoint Server 2007 offers a tool to migrate content from Content Management Server 2002, the IT team at FICO opted not to use it because it wanted to manually review the content and remove outdated information. At the same time, the team began the process of assigning metadata to content items to facilitate dynamic Web content management and optimize search results.

“Marketing staff were used to hard-coded links to documents on static pages, so we had to get them to think about the new SharePoint-based information architecture and how to use document tags,” says Samberg. “SharePoint really opened their eyes in terms of leveraging metadata to build dynamic content.”

Then, a week before the scheduled site launch, FICO announced a rebranding effort to change the company name from Fair Isaac to FICO. The timing of the announcement was driven by an upcoming customer conference. “That’s when Office SharePoint Server 2007 really saved us,” says Samberg. “SharePoint technologies allowed us to make a couple of changes to the master page and page layouts to quickly and easily rebrand the site. In IT, we always knew the technology would perform this well, but marketing was really impressed with the speed and flexibility of SharePoint technologies in helping us meet this directive. In the end, we launched FICO.com on March 9, 2009, only a week after the original go-live date.”

Benefits

Since migrating its Internet site to an integrated Microsoft portal and Web content management solution, FICO is enjoying many benefits. Now that both the Web site and the intranet run on the same extensible solution, FICO has reduced IT costs, increased employee productivity, and improved information management. And since marketing personnel are taking advantage of a streamlined content management process, FICO can post new content much faster.

“With Office SharePoint Server 2007, FICO has regained complete technical and creative control over its Web site,” says Samberg. “Now we are no longer paying the interactive marketing agency that was creating templates and writing custom code, which saves us $180,000 per year.

Reduced IT Management Costs

Because Office SharePoint Server 2007 supports all intranet, extranet, and Internet applications across an enterprise within one integrated platform, FICO is no longer wasting time and money on supporting disparate portal solutions.

Improved Information Management

The new Web site at FICO has 90 percent more dynamically driven content than its predecessor. For Hickox, this constitutes the single biggest benefit of Office SharePoint Server 2007. Using metadata to flag information assets in the central repository, FICO marketing personnel can dynamically assign content, including videos, to related product pages or other areas of either the intranet or the corporate Web site.

“Because of the more dynamic, modular site architecture, we can change one element of a page and leave the rest intact just by updating an image or a piece of text inside SharePoint Server,” explains Hickox. “The days of needing IT for day-to-day management of the Web site are long gone.”

Accelerated Content Publishing

Today, FICO has a streamlined, easy-to-use content management solution that speeds the time to publish all Web content. Consequently, more FICO staff members are updating the site more frequently. “Our current process allows me to publish new content instantly,” says Nelson. “With press releases, I can schedule them to publish at an appointed time and know with confidence that they will go live when they’re supposed to. Overall, I would say we have sped time-to-publication by 20 percent.”

Office SharePoint Server 2007 is an adaptable, leading-edge Internet portal solution that delivers rich out-of-the-box functionality, so we wouldn’t need to customize. Carl Samberg Director of Web Applications and Engineering FICO

Increased Employee Productivity

Because marketing and IT staff no longer have to contend with technology that impedes their everyday work processes, Hickox estimates that their productivity is up 60 percent. This doesn’t take into account the improved productivity for all those in the company that depend on up-to-date Web content to perform to the best of their abilities.

“Before, our cumbersome content management process produced a ripple effect of lost productivity among staff,” says Hickox. “There were also times when we simply couldn’t do what we wanted. With SharePoint-based Web content management, nothing stands in our way. If my boss asks me to change some text, I’m no longer wasting time searching for the graphic designer. Now I can fix it myself.”

Another way to look at improved productivity lies in the way both FICO IT and marketing staff have reclaimed their areas of expertise and defined a more productive partnership. “We are both more effective in our roles because we aren’t constrained by outdated technology that requires too much hand-holding,” says Hickox. “With Office SharePoint Server 2007, my team has all the tools it needs for Web content management. In turn, IT can focus on performing more strategic projects to support the business.”

Enhanced Online Presence

For the first time, FICO has an integrated enterprise portal and Web content management solution it can use to build on a corporate vision for a more sophisticated, interactive online presence. By taking advantage of built-in Office SharePoint Server capabilities such as these, FICO is developing its Web presence into a strategic asset:

• Search – Since taking advantage of the integrated search functionality within Office SharePoint Server 2007, FICO has been able to retire its third-party search application, saving approximately U.S.$40,000 a year. “We have also configured Best Bets and leveraged metadata and some of the keyword features to make search more robust,” says Samberg.

• Interactivity – Now that it’s much easier for marketing staff to upload videos to the Web site, the site is more interactive and engaging. “Using videos on product pages greatly enhances the experience for visitors and improves our ability to make a case for our brand,” says Nelson.

• Language variations – As an organization with a global reach, FICO can use the variations feature in Office SharePoint Server 2007 to reach a diverse customer base. “SharePoint supports all of the language packs that we need, out of the box,” reports Hickox. “Now we can build better relationships with our global customers and target specific information based on geographical location.”

All of these capabilities add up to an arsenal of tools that FICO can use to drive business agility and increase revenue. The easier it is to update the Web site to reflect corporate strategies, present marketing campaigns, and provide up-to-date consumer information, the more valuable the site becomes.

“With SharePoint technologies, we can update the site easily, responding to corporate directives right from the Web site,” concludes Nelson. “Instead of a static site, we have a dynamic, online asset to build our business.”

Microsoft Office System
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For more information about the Microsoft Office system, go to:
www.microsoft.com/office

For More Information

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For more information about FICO products and services, call (888) 342-6336 or visit the Web site at:
www.fico.com