GIGABYTE is a global manufacturer and distributor of computer hardware specializing in the design and manufacture of several computer hardware products including motherboards, graphics cards, power supplies, server hardware, and smartphones. With sales exceeding 20 million motherboards annually and having won over 12,000 awards won since its inception, GIGABYTE has built up a reputation as a worldwide leader in Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
The client approached Asahi Tech after a warm introduction by one of their partners, for whom we built a mobile application in the past. They wanted to develop a new corporate portal that would enable them to effectively connect and provide exclusive marketing collaterals and other content to their North American partners (i.e; Resellers, distributors and system integrators). Although they had other corporate portals hosted at their Taiwan headquarters, they required a new one to be hosted in North America so that they could have tight control over the distribution of relevant and exclusive content to their North American audience.
They saw this as an opportunity to extend their outreach and foster a more direct approach that would improve interpersonal relationships with their partners in the United States and Canada. At the same time, they wished to establish an easy-to-use portal for communication, engagement, product information, and distribution of marketing material to their partners.
Recognizing GIGABYTE's need for a scalable solution that could adapt to future company growth, we suggested implementing a Content Management System (CMS) to develop this portal. Using an established CMS ensures quick and easy access to a wide range of plugins and a community of developers to help with troubleshooting of any unexpected issues. Additionally, CMS is an effective way to deliver a high-quality corporate portal, without building a web application from scratch, thereby saving significant time and effort in the process.
Magnolia CMS - a Java-based enterprise-level CMS - was chosen to develop GIGABYTE's partner portal. It has a robust user-management system, security capabilities, and is rich with features and add-ons, which made it an ideal fit for this requirement. Because it is open source, Magnolia also provides a developer-friendly environment, giving our team the flexibility to add custom features as necessary. Our team developed custom HTML and CSS templates to ensure that a consistent design is applied across the entire GIGABYTE site. Chart.js was used by the client to pictorially present its partners a variety of information related to sales targets and revenue expectations on a YTD, monthly, quarterly, semi-annual and annual basis.
The portal can be accessed by North American partners through a link from the main site after registration and internal approval. GIGABYTE's partners have exclusive access to the assets there, namely stock product photos, assets, project request forms, product change notices, insights into future product plans along with marketing material such as product manuals and catalogs.
Through this portal that is simple yet powerful, GIGABYTE partners can access interactive forms, databases, search functions, enlargeable and downloadable content (images and PDFs), and simple static pages. Additionally, according to the 'business type' and 'user type' information declared by the user at the time of registration, each user sees a personalized screen with access to content that is relevant for his/her line of business and role.
This serves as a platform where they engage and update their North American partners regarding recent developments in the company, including new programs, product features, and more. The new software solution grants the company complete visibility into their sales cycle. It allows them to monitor partner sales activities, track current deals, and measure the overall success of each partner. Through the CMS, team members at GIGABYE can easily manage and administer the site and quickly respond to partner needs.
Because, we used a widely supported CMS solution like Magnolia, GIGABYTE can support and build upon the work that we have done to support future growth and scalability needs.
