Fort Point Takes Web Projects To The Bank
Fort Point Partners' longtime relationship with Art Technology Group (ATG) helped the solution provider land several projects at Barclays Global Investors (BGI), a San Francisco-based, wholly owned subsidiary of London's Barclays Bank.
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Fort Point helped enhance BGI's intranet, says George Mathew.
"I was looking for a Web design firm," said Jeff Torchon, Internet manager at BGI's individual investor business division. "[Fort Point was more of a systems integration firm, and we already had an integration partner that other parts of BGI were starting to use."
The year was 2000, and BGI had already decided to buy Dynamo, ATG's e-commerce, content management and personalization product, said Torchon. When a sales representative at the vendor mentioned Fort Point, Torchon took a closer look at the solution provider and liked what he saw. Ultimately, BGI made San Francisco-based Fort Point the lead partner and subcontracted work to the now-defunct Addis, a design agency that Fort Point recommended.
The first site Fort Point refurbished, www.iShares.com, went live in April 2001. Originally geared at consumers interested in purchasing Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs), a group of mutual funds that are bought and sold like stock, the iShares site now serves as an information storehouse for brokerage houses and investment banks as well, said Torchon.
ANATOMY OF A SOLUTION
>> COMPANY: Fort Point Partners, San Francisco>> FOCUS: Web site development
>> PROBLEM and SOLUTION: Barclays Global Investors needed to enhance its Web site and Intranet. Fort Point Partners used an array of products to streamline Barclays' online presence.
>> PRODUCTS and SERVICES USED: Art technology Group's Dynamo, BEA Systems' WebLogic application server, Documentum's Web Publisher, Interwoven's TeamSite, NetIQ's WebTrends LogAnalyzer.
>> LESSONS LEARNED:
• Seek ways in which internal applications can be adopted for external use by customers and partners.
• Consider shifting to a fixed-cost sales model if you haven't already.
• Vendors' technologies may overlap, but continue to use the best-of-breed approach if it's worked for you in the past.
"The premise is, if you educate the consumer, they will buy," said Jane Conway, executive vice president of global markets at Fort Point's financial services unit. "Education builds trust, and we had to focus on pushing the appropriate advice out to users [so BGI could cross-sell and upsell" both its products and financial expertise, she said.
No buying or selling takes place at iShares.com, said Torchon, adding that companies wishing to make ETF transactions can do so via ETrade, Charles Schwab or another brokerage firm.
BGI also asked Fort Point to help enhance the investment firm's intranet, said George Mathew, vice president of global markets at Fort Point. "The users were employees and partners of BGI that were looking up the status of an account or putting together marketing materials," he said. "A lot of the tools being used in-house became noticed as pretty valuable, and BGI [realized it wanted to push [the site out to customers." The effort to offer those tools to online investors resulted in a third project for Fort Point: www.barclaysglobal.com.
Torchon characterized BGI management as "incredibly supportive" of online projects. Yet BGI, like many companies, has cut back its Internet project spending in response to the current economic climate.
"Web spending kind of goes in cycles," Torchon said. "We spent a lot on the Web in [2000 and early 2001, but 2002 has been [focused on maintenance. We still continue to spend money, but nothing like what we used to. We're trying to get more out of the applications we bought in 2000 and 2001."
In the meantime, BGI is enjoying the benefits of its enhanced online presence. "Our site complaints dropped off dramatically, from 13 percent of Web-related calls to zero," he said, referring to the iShares.com project.
BGI is also signing up investors to iShares.com at a faster pace than ever before, said Torchon. In 2000, after a costly TV ad campaign, the firm signed 19,000 users. In 2001, only 5,600 registrations were received. Since the first of this year, 13,000 investors have signed on for the services, and Torchon expects the number of registrants to hit 24,000 by year's end.