Case Study

Overview

The Altec Design team researched, prototyped and ultimately built a custom online vehicle builder for Systems For Public Safety. When the SFPS team contacted Altec their existing website was outdated and their sales process was done entirely "offline" through paper quotes. The SFPS staff wanted to update and modernize their website as well as their sales process to improve the experience for their customers and to improve their own efficiency.

The Altec team worked directly with key SFPS staff members to build a custom system that fit their exact needs, in total the goals for the system were:

• A new beautiful and functional front end website with a custom vehicle configurator that allows potential customers to "build" and configure their desired vehicle online
• Advanced vehicle and inventory management modules allowing SFPS staff members to update all aspects of their inventory without the need for coding knowledge
• A new custom careers application as well as a detailed service scheduler which allowed SFPS to move from paper applications/appointments to digital
• In addition to viewing leads the system generates a custom quote for each lead that can be downloaded in excel format and shared with the client
• Allow all employees to have a login to the website with the ability to view all of the leads/inquires currently stored in the system
• A custom email notification system to alert key staff members when a customer has built a virtual copy of their desired vehicle
• A custom search to allow employees to search through all leads in the system

Choosing The Foundation To Build On

Our preferred Framework is Laravel and whenever possible we prefer to use Laravel for custom development projects. Laravel is an exceptional framework that offers many benefits. First and foremost it standardizes the project so that down the road it is much easier for any other developer to come in and update/maintain the system. It also provides the benefit of helping to enforce good coding habits. We have been called in countless times by clients to come and update or fix other custom applications only to find outdated or improper coding practices in place. Most of the time these systems were built entirely "from scratch" which makes it more difficult for others to step in and contribute to the system. We are strong proponents of using a great framework as the foundation for all our systems so that clients can benefit from the best practices and standardization that comes with them.

Prototyping and Wireframing

With our framework in place we built a sitemap and interactive wireframe documents. While we can't share the full wireframe documents publicly but we can share the single page below. During this stage of the project we shared the sitemap and wireframe documents with the client over the course of several remote and in person meetings. During each session we refined the functionality of the system. Once all details had been approved by the client we created a formal design spec document and received sign off from SFPS staff to move onto design & development work.

Design & Development

During design and development our team built a custom website complete to fit the exact needs of the SFPS team. In addition to the custom administration system our team built a completely custom front end client facing application. The entire design and development process took 6 months to complete.

Site Launch & Ongoing Relationship

Altec’s engineers worked with the SFPS staff to launch the new website on host the website on Altec Design servers. Altec has continued a great working relationship with the SFPS team, often doing quarterly updates to the site. Unlike WordPress Laravel is a framework that does not need constant updates to stay safe and secure, however it is still a best practice to update Laravel versions every 1 – 2 years to keep the site in line with current best practices.