Who is the customer?
Relativity Technologies is a US-based high tech solutions provider in the legacy modernization market space. Their business is helping organizations to cope with the pace of change in information technologies. For example, many organizations today have large “legacy” mainframe systems, generally coded in COBOL, which contain vast amounts of valuable intellectual property -- such as data definitions, business logic, calculations, etcetera. However, these legacy systems generally cannot support
modern web-based transaction models. Relativity Technologies expert services and specialized tools can help such organizations identify and “rescue” the valuable intellectual property -- transform it into components that can be deployed as part of a modern system.

What needed to be done?
Relativity Technologies wanted to more effectively communicate their value proposition and better explain how they could help customers. They also had five years worth of press stories displayed in chronological order that included great material but was very difficult to access -- you either had to browse through hundreds and hundreds of articles, or search for text strings and hope all the articles that would interest you included the right words. So they needed a website with a completely different look and feel that effectively communicated their new message and which enabled users to access relevant selections from their huge collection of press clippings. for Relativity Technologies

Why choose Innasite?
“We really liked the websites they had done for previous customers, and
then to seal the deal, they offered us a great price,” stated Relativity Technologies CEO, Vivek Wadhwa. “We have a lot of experience working with offshore programming services, so engaging programmers in India to do a website for a US-based company was not an issue for us.”

What was Innasite’s solution?
Innasite planned a three-pronged approach to the design and development of a new Relativity Technologies website:
* New look and feel
* Flash animation
* Content management/advanced search facility tools

How did the solution work?
The Innasite design team in Chennai worked closely with the project manager and webmaster at Relativity to build a half-dozen mockup sets of the home page and subsidiary pages. Every element of the design -- placement of the components of each page, colors, fonts, menu and button functionality and terminology, photo selection, hierarchy and links, etcetera -- was carefully considered and reviewed. The flash animation was a critical element of the home page design. The objective was to create a “moving picture” that distilled the story communicated by the website down to a few dramatic images and pithy titles. The design and development of the flash animation was a group effort that involved a wide cross-section of content experts at Relativity Technologies. The final result illustrates the three main “flavors” of legacy modernization services that are provided to organizations by the company: Legacy Understanding, Legacy Transformation, and Business Process
Improvement.

Innasite also provided Relativity Technologies with a content management tool that enables content providers to associate key words with content items, as well as standardizing the handling of article titles, link labels, third-party content providers logos (for example, InfoWorld, Wall Street Journal), and other recurring elements. Relativity Technologies content experts using Innasite’s content management tool can quickly add, edit, or delete content without any need to code in HTML, using pre-configured templates.

The advanced search facility Innasite built for Relativity Technologies enables website users to easily sort out relevant press releases and third-party articles (as well as other content on the site) for review. For example, a health care executive who is persuaded that his organization could benefit from a Legacy Understanding services engagement can easily sort out from the hundreds of articles on the site those that are relevant to previous LU engagements for health care organizations.

The Innasite design and development team in Chennai worked closely with the project manager and Relativity Technologies webmaster, with a daily chat session scheduled at the start of the day in India (night time in USA). The site was built on a Innasite server, and migrated to a Relativity Technologies server prior to the launch once all the components were working properly. The new site was launched in May 2002.

Bottom line: is the customer satisfied?
“Innasite did such a super job building our new website that I decided to give them a bonus!” said Wadhwa. “Effectively communicating our new message to customers, prospects, analysts, investors, and potential recruits is a key prerequisite to success. The work Innasite has done goes a long way towards meeting that critical need for our company.”

“It was great the way Innasite handled the flash animation...the whole process starting with their needs analysis and storyboarding right through to the finished product. The final result is absolutely stunning!”
commented Dave Krauss, Relativity Technologies product manager.

“I demanded a lot from them, and they were very patient and worked hard to meet or exceed all our requirements,”
stated Relativity Technologies webmaster, ChristineHoover.

Relativity Technologies is a leading supplier of legacy modernization solutions. Its solutions and services enable IT organizations to dramatically cut costs associated with maintaining and operating complex mainframe-based legacy systems, improve the efficiency and performance of their mission-critical applications and rapidly integrate key business processes with modern enterprise and Web-based technologies. Founded in 1997 and based in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, Relativity Technologies was selected as one of Fortune Magazine’s 2001 Cool Companies and Computerworld’s Top 100 Emerging Companies for 2002.

Innasite is a four year old e-business solutions provider with extensive experience in building web-based financial applications, exchange/marketplace solutions and EAI. The company has been angel funded by a successful US-based entrepreneur and co-founder of Covansys (Nasdaq: CVNS) and Indigo Technologies. Innasite’s development methodology is custom designed to handle offshore development. The methodology defines streamlined processes for application design, technology development, workflow and communication with customers.