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Great brands trust Ramp Group to design and develop their next
generation business applications. A common theme across relationships is
visionary organizations that are in rapid growth or change mode and want to use
technology to create better opportunities for their business. Our clients range
from rapid growth emerging to Fortune 100 companies.
Executive Briefs
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Coinstar Business Intelligence
"Ramp helped us chart a course and streamline our corporate reporting function. This effort has unlocked value and helped us steer the business more effectively."
-Christi Liebe, CIO, Coinstar The top brand in consumer coin counting, Coinstar has expanded to multiple lines of business serving countries around the world. Internally and through acquisitions, Coinstar has significantly added to its array of products and services in recent years. Senior management called in Ramp to help the company unlock and integrate important data gained through growth and held in disparate systems.
Coinstar's improved information systems now bring together data gleaned from its numerous and expanding enterprises, ensuring reports are pulled from the same consistent source and helping them improve business decision-making.
- Activities
- Analysis
- Design
- Development
- Test and Implementation
- Deliverables
- Data Warehouse
- Design Documents
- Production Support and Analysis
- Reporting System
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National Cellular Carrier: Corporate Scorecarding
For companies to survive in fast-paced competitive markets, providing a complete and accurate representation of business metrics is essential to assure strategic advantages. A balanced scorecard - a method of measuring and managing a corporation's financial outlook - is what a national cellular carrier engaged Ramp Group to produce. More than simple metrics, this carrier's vision of a balanced scorecard needed to span multiple critical organizational processes and link the business metrics to mission, values, vision, and key performance indicators.
Ramp Group designed a balanced scorecard that linked business metrics to key performance indicators giving executives high level information with the ability to drill down into the details with a click. 
Progress was measured in percentages rather than absolute values, allowing for easier comparison of different metrics. The requirements were complicated: provide greater communication and accountability among groups; crisp and concise publication of business metrics filtered appropriately to every company employee, thus assuring each employee's sense of value, contribution, and alignment with company goals; and produce an engaging visual representation and communication of metrics where previous attempts had failed.
Ramp Group facilitated thorough business intelligence gathering from the company's stakeholders, thus ensuring accurate depiction of appropriate metrics and incorporation of business requirements. Throughout the development process, Ramp Group applied solid information architecture methodology, created interaction mapping and wire diagrams, and produced visual designs correctly aligning the scorecard with established brand guidelines.
Ramp Group's final prototype included metric charting and statistical trending, with a flexible template that supported future expansion of core company objectives and metrics. Ramp Group's proficiency at distilling and prioritizing business needs, while providing strategic guidance, elicited unanimous approval from the business leaders to implement Ramp Group's final balanced scorecard solution.
Activities
- Business Process Analysis
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Task and Workflow Analysis
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Visual Design
Deliverables
- Project Planning
- UI Specifications
- Technical Feasibility
- Proof of Concept
- Prototyping
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Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction – a Microsoft SharePoint Installation
"Washington State is a leader in implementing innovative, responsive technology solutions ... and so we were honored to be asked to work with them on this exciting project and give them a solid truly extensible solution."
-Bob Duffy, Ramp Partner Washington State's Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction’s K-12 Website attracts millions of visitors who view tens of thousands of documents. But OSPI received extensive feedback from its constituencies that the site was no longer meeting all of their needs. They turned to Ramp to help them create an exemplary Website, designed to truly connect and enrich the relationships between students, parents, educators, community members and legislators with each other, state-level resources and the important work being done in Washington schools.
Ramp began by spending time with students, educators, parents and legislatures to gather requirements. The team created workflows to establish a process of content generation, review, approval and deployment to ensure quality and relevance of information and resources. Initial designs were prepared and tested with OSPI's various constituencies and, with that feedback, the site design was finalized. "It was great to work with users who were so passionate about helping the state provide useful information. They helped our design team create a truly compelling experience," said Ramp partner Bob Duffy.
The site design is highly interactive, setting the stage for OSPI’s various constituencies to quickly and effectively tap relevant information from myriad sources. The information on the Website comes from memos, guidelines, sample tests, interactive resources and directives, as well as information from state-wide tests, such as WASL results and statistics.
The site is designed to use leading technologies from Microsoft in order to make the varied content immediately available to users from a single interface. Windows Workflow Foundation was used to support content creation, approval and publishing. Key technologies for the Website included Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007, Microsoft SQL 2005, .NET 2.0, C# and Microsoft SQL Reporting Services.
Activities
- Analysis
- Design
- Development
- Test & Implementation
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Marchex Transparent Datamart and Domain Parking
Marchex has grown rapidly to become the leader in delivering vertical and local online traffic to merchants. To help facilitate its growth and enhance its service offerings, the company called in Ramp which successfully took on two critical, business-building projects.
"Ramp helped us evaluate our internal processes and resources and turn them into an external, revenue producing marketing opportunity."
-Russ Horowitz, Marchex Founder First, Ramp created a commercial-grade reporting datamart, a uniquely transparent system which allows Marchex merchants to "serve themselves" to timely and relevant account information from major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN. The customer-facing portals were built using APIs specific to each partner and the reports based off of this datamart easily cater to external users like the ad aggregators.
Then Ramp helped Marchex create a robust, highly competitive Website to facilitate domain parking. In this fast growing market, Marchex needed to deliver superior functionality and responsiveness. With the help of Studio UX, Ramp built a highly user-friendly system which allows large domain name holders to create accounts, park/manage their domains, choose/group domains and view domain level activity and revenue and statistics through a browser-based UI. Marchex is able to calculate revenue for millions of domains parked by their customers, providing a new revenue stream to the company.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Requirements and Implementation Analysis
- Dynamic Cost Analysis
- Agile Development Process
Deliverables
- Software Requirements
- High Level Architecture
- Detailed Software Design
- Operation Guide
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Imprev Enterprise Development and Process Improvement
The industry leader in providing real estate professionals a high quality Web based application for creating marketing materials for print, email, HTML and other electronic publishing outlets, Imprev has grown its market share and product offerings rapidly over the last few years. In order to effectively move from serving hundreds of thousands to millions of end users, the company's CEO, Renwick Congdon, called in Ramp Group to help Imprev create a truly enterprise-level system.
"The Ramp Group team's competence with contemporary engineering best practices sets high standards by example, which helps our entire team cohere and grow."- John Helm, CTO and VP of Engineering, Imprev Ramp Group project manager, James Cooper, has instituted a software development approach using Scrum that allows Imprev's IT department to operate in small batches–much like lean manufacturing–so technical disciplines can overlap and perform simultaneously. "Instead of five or six developers trying to take on different projects, Imprev now has one delivery team working in two week cycles to create small iterations. They regularly provide deliverables to all the company's stakeholders for feedback-this helps the business development and customer support teams achieve their goals and sets milestones for which IT can be accountable," says Cooper.
"We're able to develop new products quickly without disrupting business practices," explains Congdon. "Our velocity to identify, develop and enable products has increased many times over–it's already paying for itself."
"The Ramp Group team's competence with contemporary engineering best practices sets high standards by example, which helps our entire team cohere and grow," observes John Helm, Imprev's CTO and vice president of engineering.
"And it's always great to sit down with Terry Drayton and kick around new ideas-both technical and business," adds Congdon. "He has a way of stirring up the creative juices."
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Requirements and Implementation Analysis
- Development Management
- Business Process Re-engineering
- Agile Development Process
Deliverables
- High Level Architecture Document
- Development Methodology Guide
- Business Benefits of Development Methodology Document
- Incremental Product Feature Specifications
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180solutions Ad Management System
180solutions, a growing and thriving online advertising business, concluded that their current system of phone-based support simply could not keep pace with the rapid pace of their company growth. The company's business plan, which hinged on enrolling large numbers of smaller advertisers, demanded an automated solution, one that 180solutions enlisted Ramp Group to provide.
"This product gave end users unprecedented control over their individualistic campaign spending needs. Flexibility and control was key to driving user adoption."- Robb Nielsen, Partner, 180 Project Lead Ramp Group
Ramp Group designed and built a campaign management application that allowed advertisers to set targets, control how often ads came up, and could even demonstrate projected ROI.
Ramp Group assured 180solutions that to meet this objective, they needed to transition from a phone-based customer support system to a web-based application. User research revealed that 180solutions actually had two different kinds of customers: veteran advertisers who typically launched long-term campaigns, and novice users who were more interested in trial campaigns.
Ramp Group designed and co-built a web-based campaign management system that embraced both types of users, and skillful architecture design and application development completely automated the advertising process. The new process allows advertisers to choose the key words for their target market and to fund their campaigns online. The application even allowed advertisers to control how often ads appeared across demographic and geographic boundaries. The campaign management application could also demonstrate a forecasting of the advertiser's expenditure and provide projected return on investment data.
With Ramp Group's expertise and assistance, 180solutions successfully transitioned from phone-based to an automated support system and drastically reduced support costs. In the three years after the new support system was implemented, 180solutions realized revenue growth of more than seven times their original growth rate.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Heuristic Evaluations
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Visual Design
- Development and Implementation
Deliverables
- Architecture Design
- UI Specification
- Application Development
- Test Planning
- Test Execution
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Concur Website Redesign
"Ramp's value goes beyond any single project they've done for us and our relationship with them provides lasting value. Their strategic thinking and creative execution allows us to combine rapid iteration with long-term vision."
-Michael Hilton, Chief Technology Officer and EVP, Services & Web Strategy, Concur The world's leading provider of on-demand employee spend management services, Concur enables organizations to globally control costs by automating the processes they use to manage employee spending. Concur's end-to-end solutions seamlessly unite online travel booking with automated expense reporting, streamline meeting management and optimize the process of managing vendor payments, employee check requests and direct reimbursements. But its website did not provide potential and current clients with a holistic understanding of the company's range of services or reflect its new image. Ramp came in to help the company understand how customers could get the most from its site, as well as leverage its major re-branding effort.
Ramp's UX team employed its end-to-end methodology to create an intuitive and highly usable site designed to increase lead generation and sales, as well build a user community to strengthen customer loyalty. Ramp's customer research experts identified core customer needs and attributes giving the design team valuable data to work from, while its visual designers created a highly refined and interactive style for Concur's new brand. The team incorporated feedback from user groups which evaluated messaging, imagery, and usability for the site.
Ramp's development team integrated flash, html, css and java script to create an interactively blended and compelling web experience. Concur's new site helps users quickly find information most valuable to them and expands their understanding of the depth of Concur's offerings.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- User Profiling
- Web 2.0 Technology Comparisons & Analysis
Deliverables
- Personas
- Sitemaps
- Wireframes
- Visual & Interactive Design
- Website Development & Test
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Microsoft Exchange
In today's hotly competitive recruitment environment, Microsoft's Exchange Service Group has been searching for top talent. They turned to Ramp Group to create a trend-setting Website that fuses comedy, coding and cartoons-helping them stand out in the crowd by giving potential recruits a taste of their world.
"We didn't want to do just another recruiting-type Website, Exchange is growing ... and we knew we needed to keep infusing the team with new talent. We were looking for interesting ways to recruit."
- Lynne Andersen, Exchange Server Group Business Manager  
Site characters are composites of Exchange Server Group employees "Originally, the idea was just to try something different," explains Jonah Sterling, Ramp Group's creative director. "Then I visited the team on campus, got to watch them work and interact, and bringing out their humor and exposing it suddenly became our top priority."
A trio of Gorillaz-like cartoon characters serves as a composite of the Exchange Service team, inviting potential recruits to take an unconventional and surprisingly candid look into the group. Individual team members also are introduced, each offering insight into their own personal Microsoft experience.
"It just isn't enough anymore to post a job description and hope you can cut through the clutter," said Robb Nielsen, Partner and UX Practice Lead. "We wanted to give people a sense of what it would be like to work on this team. These are highly intelligent, highly talented, very funny people who have lives outside their work–we wanted to help them attract people with the same level of talent and passion."
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- User profiling
- Photo shoots
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Visual Design
- Development and Implementation
Deliverables
- Sitemaps
- Interaction Mapping
- Superframes
- Mockups
- Site copy and content
- Site scripts and scenarios
- Flash prototype
- Fully-developed website
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Daptiv Website ReDesign
As a developer of project management software and web-based project tracking tools, Daptiv™ has demonstrated that hard work pays off. Frequently in the spotlight amid strong competitors, Daptiv engaged Ramp Group to help them showcase their new image and their unique product offerings with a contemporary and compelling new website.
"User centered design is a key tenet in our future product strategy and provides an easily justifiable return on investment." Daptiv, Inc." - Dave Anderson, Sr. Product Marketing Manager 
Sitemaps and wireframes were used to identify primary interactions and page structure and to allow stakeholders and development teams to identify critical components early on. Daptiv had specific goals for their new website: unveil their new identity, remove site navigation and usability obstacles, and expose previously obscured key solutions and information to the consumer. Creating a consistently fresh design, intuitive user experience, and clean site architecture is what Ramp Group does well and we were ready for the challenge.
"It just isn't enough anymore to post a job description and hope you can cut through the clutter," said Robb Nielsen, Partner and UX Practice Lead. "We wanted to give people a sense of what it would be like to work on this team. These are highly intelligent, highly talented, very funny people who have lives outside their work-we wanted to help them attract people with the same level of talent and passion."
Ramp Group visual designers and usability experts skillfully executed a modern website reflective of Daptiv's new name and vision. Additional website functionality accommodated lead generation opportunities for Daptiv to increase their prospective customer base. No longer a stale, complex website that frustrated customers, the new website clearly differentiates the company from the product and showcases the innovative solutions that customers expect from Daptiv.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- User profiling
- Task and Workflow Analysis
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
Deliverables
- Sitemaps
- Personas
- Superframes
- Wireframes
- Mockups
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Corbis Web Site Redesign
Creative professionals worldwide regard Corbis as the distinguished leader for visual media assets, yet their online purchasing experience left much room for improvement, driving customers to phone ordering rather than a convenient, rapid online purchase process. A global company with a diverse customer population, Corbis knew that their Website needed to support localized content as well as the wide range of customer requirements and engaged Ramp Group to devise a strategic solution that would ensure Corbis' future customer satisfaction.
"We engaged with Ramp Group to envision, design and deploy a multi-year customer experience strategy and their full range of services allowed us to do the whole project through a single, integrated vendor." - Joe Barrett, Senior Vice President Global Marketing Corbis 
Ramp Group compiled a 97-page Product Roadmap for Corbis providing both a high-level overview of its plan, and detailed recommendations on reworking every part of the site. Beginning with extensive usability evaluations, the design and development talent at Ramp Group streamlined the site with more efficient navigational architecture, clear and consistent content, and positive merchandising embedded throughout the site. Ramp Group produced interactive site prototypes, which helped Corbis envision the final product. Diligent and thorough testing and project management resulted in the successful release of a completely overhauled Website. Finally, Ramp Group provided a written product roadmap that detailed every aspect of the site redesign from registration to checkout, and identified more than 60 "First, Best or Only" solutions, each exhibiting an approach that was first to market, best of breed, or unmatched in the marketplace.
The final site implementation process spanned four years of strong partnership between Corbis and Ramp Group, culminating in a Website that far surpassed Corbis' competition and a 17% increase in online sales.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Heuristic Evaluations
- Contextual Inquiries
- Task and Workflow Analysis
- Interaction Mapping
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Workflow Engineering
- Usability Testing
- Visual Design
Deliverables
- Project Planning
- UI Specifications
- Technical Feasibility
- Technical Specifications
- Application Development
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Count Me In Administrative Tool
When the entrepreneurial founders of Count Me In see a need, envisioning a high-tech solution is second nature. Using their personal experience of spending hours standing in line to register children for sports teams, they visualized a simplified and more convenient process for all parents by developing an online enrollment service. This application would expedite registration, facilitate team building and scheduling, allow organization-specific brand customization, and scale far beyond the initial solution for youth sports organizations.
"Ramp Group has served as an integral partner in development of our new multimillion tech platform - working side by side to create a truly revolutionary service platform offering." - Joe Petrucci, President, Count Me In From conception through development to implementation, Ramp Group collaborated closely with Count Me to provide strategic guidance and technology solutions. Ramp Group performed extensive interviews with organizations from a variety of industries to develop business requirements and architecture design, which Ramp Group's development team used to build out the infrastructure of the site. User experience was also top consideration. Ramp Group carefully constructed a system where organizations could enroll members using a customizable registration interface and process online credit card transactions securely. Tracking of registrants and reporting was entirely paperless. Ramp Group integrated additional features such as secure email, volunteer recruitment, and donation solicitations. Finally, the customizable home page for each organization often provided the small groups their first and only web presence.
Since enlisting Ramp Group to design their application, Count Me In has emerged as a successful business that processes more than 25,000 registrations a month. Clients range from Nike Sportscamps to the United Nations, as well as numerous local sports clubs and organizations. Count Me In continues to retain Ramp Group for its user experience expertise, as well to provide design and marketing services.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Heuristic Evaluations
- Contextual Inquiries
- User Profiling
- Task & Workflow Analysis
- Interaction Mapping
- Information Architecture & Navigation Modeling
- Workflow Engineering
- Usability Testing
- Visual Design
- Development & Implementation
Deliverables
- Requirements Analysis
- Functional Specifications
- Technical Specifications
- Architecture Design
- Construction Inventory
- Object Modeling
- Data Modeling
- Infrastructure Buildout
- Release Management
- Application Development
- Test Planning
- Text Execution
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Medio Mobile Search Interface
The Challenge
Medio's developers had created a innovative technology to help consumers get easier access to goods and services on their mobile phones through intelligent, location-sensitive search. The company approached Ramp Group to assist with the design of the user experience for this technology - to create the mobile phone interface that would allow consumers to access this revolutionary service. In a relatively short period of time, Medio contacted Ramp Group to enhance a front-end user interface for their technology that was based around intelligent, extensible user-centered design.
Ramp Group helped with the redesign of a user interface for Medio's ground-breaking mobile phone technology. 
Ramp Group's revised interface supported Medio's advanced search functionality, allowing users to quickly locate and buy goods and services on their cellular phones. The Process
Ramp Group attacked the problem head-on using their wide-ranging expertise to enhance the design of a front-end interface for Medio's service that was visually exciting and easy to use. To support Medio's customer and marketing collateral materials, Ramp Group's visual designers drafted a series of detailed charts and illustrations for Medio that clearly depicted the complex technology behind the service and offered multiple levels of detail. The illustrations and a Flash version of Ramp Group's enhanced mobile interface were rolled into a Powerpoint presentation that became the centerpiece of Medio's product pitch to the executive-level management of their customers. Within the short time span of the project, Ramp Group was even able to design and spec Medio's upgraded website where they could attract more market awareness and further promote their products.
The Result
Medio was thrilled with the work Ramp Group provided, and was able to leverage their new user interface designs for a successful sales presentation. As the company continues its push to provide world-class search technologies for mobile users, the company maintains a close relationship with Ramp Group.
Activities
- Stakeholder Interviews
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Visual Design
- Development and Implementation
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Hotmail Media Center
Microsoft saw an opportunity whereby Hotmail users could access their mail on their Media Center Edition PC, but they did not want the experience to be simply an imitation of the Hotmail web experience, but something easily controllable via the Media Center remote (including control of an onscreen keyboard display). The experience needed to make sense in the context of a 10-foot living room experience, and adding another challenge to the mix, Microsoft needed the product designed and developed in time for the Digital Life convention in New York - less than a month away.
10-foot interface controls had to work with the Media Center PC remote control. 
Ramp Group designed and built the popular Hotmail application for Microsoft's Media Center PC with emphasis on a practical method for reading email in a living room environment. Microsoft had the vision. Ramp Group's talented developers and user experience made it happen. Ramp Group deftly and speedily produced interaction maps and then wireframes to lay the groundwork for the information architecture and basic page layout of the product. As soon as Microsoft approved the basic architecture, Ramp Group applied an illustrative visual design by drawing on elements of the MSN Hotmail brand and merging them with the glossier Media Center aesthetic. Ramp Group recreated - from scratch - iconography based on the Hotmail web experience to reflect a Media Center experience. Microsoft stakeholders and Media Center experts approved the screen design proposals for technological feasibility and Media Center compatibility issues.
After a high-speed development process and extensive testing by Ramp Group Consumer Technology team, the Hotmail application development was completed in time for the Digital Life convention. The following month, Microsoft released the impressive Hotmail Media Center Edition application, and it is currently a popular download at CNET Download.com. Ramp Group's impressive speed, design skill, and agility easily convinced Microsoft to engage Ramp Group for future Media Center projects.
Activities
- Task and Workflow Analysis
- Interaction Mapping
- Information Architecture and Navigation Modeling
- Visual Design
Deliverables
- Functional Requirements
- Application Development
- Testing
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