Baytech Digital Develops an E-commerce Portal for Skyline

Introduction
Skyline provides a unique hybrid of IT education and consulting across all Cisco architectures, which include training, design, and implementation. Because of their blend of services, Skyline empowers their corporate clients to develop the skills needed to achieve desired business outcomes. As Skyline evolved from integrators to a full-service business, the company focused on their core principle—exceptional customer experience. Founded in 1989, Skyline spent the past thirty years setting milestone after milestone on their way to becoming an industry leader in Cisco and IT solutions. As a result of their expert solutions, Skyline won Cisco’s worldwide corporate sponsor award for excellence. Since Skyline was searching for a developer that could build a robust e-commerce portal, they hired Baytech Digital, the Bay Area’s leading Web Design agency.   

Challenges
As part of our e-commerce overhaul, our team migrated content from their Drupal solution to our custom WordPress content management system (CMS). Since Skyline’s business specializes in IT education and consultation, we set up the infrastructure then integrated with their third-party careers and learning management system (LMS). Additionally, our team collaborated with multiple internal and external design and development teams. Finally, once our team developed the initial wireframes, we rebranded Skyline to highlight their award-winning services.

• Overhaul their e-commerce website.
• Migrate content from their Drupal version to our custom WordPress CMS.
• Integrate with their third-party careers and LMS tool.
• Set up infrastructure for their third-party tool—learning management system.
• Collaborate with multiple internal and external design and development teams.
• Rebrand Skyline to showcase their thought leadership.

Solutions
Because we had a tight schedule, our team analyzed the scope and deliverables prior to kickoff. We assigned dedicated resources to the project in advance. Once we began work, our team held scrum meetings every morning. Our daily scrum meetings allowed us to set the context for the coming day’s work. Since we were migrating content from Drupal to WordPress, we collaborated with the Skyline development team and the internal design team to ensure the integrity of their content, some of which was proprietary. Because of our meticulous preparation, we overcame unexpected challenges during the complex e-commerce portal development. To accommodate our client’s expectations, Baytech maintained flexible development and QA schedules. During the development of Skyline’s e-commerce solution, our team informed Skyline’s web administrators of every detail concerning their new WordPress CMS, which ensured a stress-free transition. Once our e-commerce build neared completion, our team began a marketing and branding campaign. We employed a design strategy that emphasized Skyline’s success in IT education and consultation across all Cisco architectures.

Results
As part of our preliminary efforts, we developed custom wireframes on the front end that allowed Skyline to make quick decisions. Because of this extra effort, our e-commerce solution implemented seamlessly with Skylines third-party integrations across multiple platforms. Also, our team set up infrastructure LMS implementation, so Skyline has room to grow as their business expands. As an added benefit, our custom SMS tool offered the same functionality as their previous Drupal solution without the technical hurdles and steep learning curve. Finally, Skyline’s new brand and corporate message showcase their commitment to excellence and award-winning services.