Case Study

Brief

As the scientific analysis arm of the Cadbury confectionary group, Reading Scientific Services Limited (RSSL) provide food analysis services to not only their sister company but also many other food manufacturers in the UK. The service offered involves the analysis of food products and the most efficient way to provide the results is via an online portal, linked in with the RSSL website.

Strategy

Leveraging RSSL’s relationship with Cadbury, meant that the underlying website platform was developed on Microsoft Sharepoint, Cadbury’s corporate online platform. The customer data is processed via an internal Oracle database, and so the website was to be extended using web services to present this data within the Sharepoint page templates.

Execution

Following consultation with marketing, customer service, customers and IT teams, the project got divided into two phases. Firstly the main website, delivered using Sharepoint and which was to provide a variety of ways of presenting corporate information alongside marketing messages and industry news.

Secondly, the Results Online portal, which was the area for RSSL’s customers to request new analysis, view the results of previously requested work, and also see account information such as invoice statuses.

Once the challenges of presenting a considerable amount of technical data was overcome the focus turned to the transfer of data across the different platforms. Close collaboration with the RSSL IT team on the development of web services that were triggered by the website, meant that a variety of data types could be passed securely from Oracle to the website, such as account information, analysis results and downloadable documents.

Results

The new website has met with wide acceptance by the RSSL customer base, and plans are being developed to extend the functionality to include online payment for services, as well as further integrate other services from the business, such as training courses and trainee portal.