CenturyLink

CenturyLink is one of the largest telecommunications and Internet providers in the world, and a perennial powerhouse in data services across the globe. Their Business Markets Intranet (BMI) is an internal portal that services the sales, support, customer care, and marketing teams within the Business Solutions Group. With its powerful administrative tools, award-winning user interface, and broad reach, the site is truly a one-stop shop for every one of its thousands of users.

www.centurylink.com

CenturyLink came to UpTop with the desire of redesigning its BMI, as the existing intranet had broken links, outdated documents, poor internal search functionality, and redundant and inconsistent content. The BMI is a resource regularly used by more than 4,000 employees, so it was important to the Business Solutions Group that they have a highly functioning intranet portal in order to support daily business and productivity.

UpTop worked closely with CenturyLink to determine exactly what they wanted to change and how they could improve the existing platform, as well as to ensure that the finished product would meet and exceed their expectations. Through continuous collaboration we fine tuned their project requirements, and applied our depth of knowledge and expertise to create an attractive and highly efficient experience.

UpTop looked into several off-the-shelf Content Management Systems, all of which would have been quite expensive to purchase, maintain, and customize in order to meet CenturyLink’s list of needs. Together, we decided that the best approach was to build a custom CMS application in Ruby, an open source coding language.

The decision to build a custom CMS in Ruby enabled UpTop to continuously adapt the product to meet the users’ evolving needs without purchasing expensive software upgrades, or repeatedly incurring licensing fees. While an off-the-shelf solution is often an attractive choice due to its convenience, limitations in maintenance, licensing fees, and customization can often turn into expensive roadblocks later on down the line.

CenturyLink was pleased with the results and the Nielsen Norman Group, a leading voice in the user experience field, recognized it as one of the world’s ten best intranet sites for 2012. The BMI is constantly updated, and remains a core tool for the CenturyLink Business Solutions Group.