Beagle - E-Business Strategy & Implementation

Recent Website Development - a case study

Our most recently completed project is Flexiglow Hong Kong's website:

Flexiglow Hong Kong (www.flexiglowhk.com)

Our Mandate

Beagle was engaged to develop the website of this Hong-Kong based manufacturer of innovative lighting solutions.

Our mandate was to develop a website which helps Flexiglow Hong Kong build their international distribution network.

The site is targeted to Flexiglow Hong Kong's dealers and wholesalers, so key requirements was for the site to provide up-to-date information on Flexiglow Hong Kong's latest product innovations, showcase their rapidly changing product range, as well as provide detailed information on product components and packaging options.

The Challenge

Challenge 1 - Easy Content Management

Flexiglow's products are innovative, with new products released frequently. A key requirement was a mechanism to incorporate new products or changes to existing ones easily and rapidly. To meet this requirement we developed the site using Beagle's WAG^tm technology. Beagle's WAG^tm is developed in perl, and allows our customers to drive their website content from their existing internal product database.

Flexiglow HK's product database is a Microsoft Access application, but Beagle's WAG^tm supports a range of database technologies, and is platform independent.

WAG (tm) by Beagle Beagle's WAG^tm allows Flexiglow Hong Kong to:

Make changes to their product database, with the website automatically updated to reflect the changes.
Keep full control over their database, keeping it resident on servers in their internal corporate network, where it has always been.
Avoid complex database synchronisation solutions which would have been required using a dynamic content solution such as ASP or php, which requires an up-to-date extract of the database on the website host computer.

Challenge 2 - Achieve Consistency with Flexiglow's Branding and Packaging

Beagle worked closely with Flexiglow Hong Kong's graphic artists to achieve a look and feel which is consistent with Flexiglow Hong Kong's packaging portfolio, and which shows off their innovative lighting solutions.

Challenge 3 - Get the Site Up Quickly

Flexiglow Hong Kong needed their site up quickly, but also needed to retain a high level of flexibility in their requirements. Every day their site was not up represented potential loss of revenue. The project was completed in record time, and the website went live 4 weeks after sign-off of the conceptual prototype developed by Beagle and in-principle agreement on the method of integration with Flexiglow Hong Kong's product database.

The Result

Flexiglow Hong Kong are ecstatic about their site:

It shows off their products stunningly.
It is a breeze to maintain, and update content.
They received free advice on design and maintenance of their product database.
The next phase of their e-business strategy, marketing their site, and search engine optimisation, is about to begin.