Overview
iSoftStone has partnered the Washington State China Relations Council (WSCRC) – one of the nation’s leading organizations dedicated to promoting stronger commercial, educational, and cultural engagement between Washington State and China. Using iSoftStone’s collaborative and iterative processes, we have designed, developed, and actively maintain membership, events management, and charitable contribution WordPress sites for WSCRC and Washington State China Relations Fund (WSCRF), WSCRC’s newly created sister organization.
The problem
- The WSCRC needed a way to distribute information about their organization and promote its mission of fostering business and communication.
- They needed to attract new members to sign-up and receive the benefits that the WSCRC promotes and a cost-effective way of maintaining on-going membership and renewals.
- In addition, the WSCRC also needed a way of collecting donations to be used for charitable needs and to differentiate this as a non-profit.
The solution
iSoftStone implemented an iterative Agile approach to working with key members in the WSCRC in order to gain understanding of the business needs expressed by the WSCRC board of directors.
After analyzing and documenting the requirements, iSoftStone created personas, workflows, user interface (UI) mockups, wireframes, visual design and style guides, and other artifacts to help the WSCRC envision the experiences their users would see. iSoftStone then designed and implemented 2 collaboration sites in WordPress, a platform known for its powerful visual workflows, easy extensibility, and low-cost implementation and maintenance. The result was the creation of the wscrc.org and wscrf.org web sites.
Key impacts
Interactively worked with key members of the WSCRC through a discovery process to identify needs and requirements and produce different POCs to help the client envision possibilities.
Implemented web sites using WordPress, an industry standard which powers approximately 38% of all commercial web sites.
WordPress offers ease of installation and setup, configuration, is easily extensible, provides for low-cost maintenance and ongoing support.
Through the wscrc.org web site, the WSCRC is now able to collect and process new and renewing memberships. With minimal effort, the WSCRC is efficiently posts information on upcoming meetings and events as well as news which is targeted at their membership.
Through the wscrf.org web site, the WSCRC is able to collect donated funds and make purchases to benefit our local community.
Both sites seamlessly integrate with 3rd party content, events management, and payment processing providers.
Core technologies/deliverables
- WordPress
- Integrated with PayPal (API)
- Integrated calendar (API)
- WordPress API
- Integrated conference management (API)
- Membership subsystem for authentication and authorization
- Agile
- 3rd Party Hosting
- PHP/Apache/Linux
- UX, design, and theming
- Integrated events management (API)
- Microsoft Office 365 integration (API)
- Integrated Twitter and social media
- SharePoint (for project mananagement)
- Azure DevOps (for project management)
