Level Five offers a wide-range of services that include business strategy, software development, and technology implementation. To maximize our clients' return on investment, we leverage our business and technical expertise throughout the entire business lifecycle.
Technology exists to enable organizations, but only when the two are paired appropriately. To help identify the best possible technology solution for your company, we first perform competitive and SWOT analysis. This gives us a solid reference point from which to begin the process of performing current state IT systems, feasibility studies, and stakeholder interviews. This due diligence often enables us to identify solutions to problems beyond the stated need, and helps us provide the best technology recommendations.
Our agenda is simple; identify, provide and support the best possible IT solution for your company. The best solution, however, isn't always easy to identify. We perform an extensive technology audit and make governance recommendations based on our analysis of the results as they relate to your long-term technology strategy and budgetary considerations. We also consider best practices for the integration of new applications and database architecture with your legacy framework.
For a project to succeed, it needs the support of the entire organization. Because the refusal of just one business unit to use a new system, process or application is enough to guarantee its failure. When we define the roles and responsibilities of the users who will be most affected by the project, we can address the needs and concerns of everyone involved and foster enterprise-wide support for its success.
Our brand governance approach establishes guidelines for asset handling, naming management, workflow and approvals. Our extensive brand management and agency experience coupled with our technology expertise enables us to develop code standards that specifically address vendor collaboration and file sharing protocols. We deliver solutions that support and enhance the integrity and value of your brand.
We view your portfolio of web properties the same way a financial manager views a securities portfolio; you can’t achieve your goals for the future if you don’t have an accurate assessment of where you are right now. We provide that assessment by performing a comprehensive audit of your web properties that will give you a detailed URL inventory. We also provide tools for managing naming brand approvals, vanity URL scheduling and QR code generation that will give you much-needed control over your online presence.
Development Operations or "DevOps" is a set of principles, methods and practices for communication, collaboration and integration between software development and IT operations. It has developed in response to the emerging understanding of the interdependence and importance of both the development and operations disciplines in meeting an organization's goal of rapidly producing software products and services. Our deep experience with all levels of Development Operations allows us to provide strategic solutions, service and tools to enable our clients to maximize their technology investment.
Site evaluation is an audit of the existing web property that establishes an objective baseline representing the reference point for architectural improvements. Upon completion, we will know how the current site is structured, its content types, potential repeatable design patterns, site technology, and possible integration points. We will also gain a basic understanding of the existing visual language and areas of potential usability deficiencies. Though the heuristic review is somewhat subjective in nature, it is based on standard usability practices. Minimal client interaction is needed for the completion of this stage.
To determine how efficiently an enterprise application, website, or system is being utilized by those who need it most, we analyze the process from many perspectives. We perform on-site observations and user testing, heuristic evaluations, analyze task flows, and generate user profiles and use cases to pinpoint the features and functional requirements of the project.
Justification for investing valuable resources into developing your company’s website can be made by thoroughly analyzing site traffic data. We can optimize site traffic by developing user-centered content, improving meta data, leveraging social media and reference sites, and improving the quality and number of backlinks.
Social media allows you to directly and immediately interact and correspond with your customers in meaningful ways. Our social media team can be an invaluable asset for clients who need help navigating this form of communication. We provide editorial scheduling, monitoring and metrics, optimize your branding presence, and can even develop content. The opportunities for building your business using social media as a relatively free marketing tool are endless.
Social media allows you to directly and immediately interact and correspond with your customers in meaningful ways. Our social media team can be an invaluable asset for clients who need help navigating this form of communication. We provide editorial scheduling, monitoring and metrics, optimize your branding presence, and can even develop content. The opportunities for building your business using social media as a relatively free marketing tool are endless.
We’re passionate about improving the way in which people interact with our enterprise software, websites, and applications, and we take a user-centric approach to planning every project. Whether it's an internal-facing application for managing brand assets or an external-facing e-commerce site, we're experts at designing interfaces that are intuitive and easy to use.
As a rule, a company should produce something that has value to someone else. If not, it won’t last long. Developing content for your website should follow the same rule: by creating user personas, we can identify what your users want, need, and require, then provide content that effectively delivers that message in a brand-appropriate manner.
If a killer app lacks an intuitive, easy-to-use interface, it’s just another app. By analyzing user task flows, IT architecture and business requirements, we can begin framing conceptual interaction models based on what’s important to the user. This process allows us to present data in a way that makes sense to them, which increases usage, buy-in, and overall project success.
Whether it's web creation and implementation, online media and analytics, or brand strategy and consultation, visual design consistency is a vital component of the process. We place just as much importance on designing an amazing front-end experience as we do building the back-end architecture that supports it. The technical savvy our designers bring to the table allows us to create sophisticated-yet-usable interface solutions.
Icons and illustration should support the overall brand, and when needed, help, not hinder navigation through a web site. Level Five has the ability to create these specialized graphics in a variety of styles which include the use of traditional illustration techniques, within the defined brand.
Branding and Identity Systems help form the perceived image of your organization. The foundation of branding should reflect the values and aims of the organization as a whole while maintaining consistency in appearance in order to facilitate brand recognition. Identity systems such as logos, stationary, marketing collateral, and elements for online and offline messaging are the visual building blocks for a brand.
Brand guidelines are flexible rules and frameworks that allow for creative modification of brand elements while retaining overall brand continuity. We work to create clarity for brand users and define a brand element hierarchy that is usable across various platforms.
Design patterns are repeatable solutions for common problems in interface design. With use of the brand manual and defined design patterns, future brand iterations are able to be constructed/repeated more easily.
Smart devices are quickly becoming the main vehicle people use to access the internet. If your enterprise is based on an e-commerce model, then optimizing your website to accomodate mobile devices is imperative to the future growth of your business. We help our clients design mobile versions of their sites, which requires even more focus on user experience and detailed content analysis.
Identifying problems isn’t helpful if you can’t identify an effective solution. Our capabilities include Design for service, Wayfinding systems, Gesture interface and Voice interface.
Our development team is skilled at seamlessly translating the user interface created by our designers across multiple browsers. The result is a highly usable site that is represented consistently across the web, regardless of browser platform. By developing page templates according to standards-based semantic HTML/CSS, we produce scalable sites that are easily maintained, navigated, and expanded. Our developers have extensive knowledge of Javascript, jQuery, and AJAX, and have experience developing with Flash, Flex, and Actionscript as well. Our clients often request working prototypes for proof-of-concept projects, which we can take from the idea stage to full implementation.
Our developers are the best in the industry when it comes to coding in Java, .NET, PHP, and Ruby. What truly sets them apart from everyone else, however, is their ability to seamlessly integrate content management solutions, both custom and commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS), with existing legacy architecture, which relieves many of the pain points typically associated with custom application development. This enables us to provide you with a truly “platform agnostic” content management solution. We are also capable of developing applications that can be easily integrated with existing web services, giving you access to an almost limitless array of functionality.
Smart devices are quickly becoming the single most utilized tool for accessing the internet. If your enterprise is based on an e-commerce model, then incorporating responsive web design into the development of your website is imperative to the future growth of your business. We can develop both desktop and mobile versions of your site, which will give your users a consistent experience regardless of the interface. From their desktop to mobile devices running on iOS and Android operating systems, kiosks, and digital displays, we can design interfaces that consistently and accurately deliver the content you’ve created.
When we develop an java-based application, we make every attempt to create well-designed, standards-based object models that can be reused in future applications. The library of reusable components we have developed allows us to develop quickly while maintaining high standards of quality.
Our experienced database management team has a strong background working with Oracle, MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQL Server. We perform in-depth database modeling and analysis in order to find ways to optimize existing system performance. This method provides support engineers a better way to plan for data migrations and transformations, and to adapt code for future use as business requirements evolve. The end result is a database that is architecturally sound, easy to maintain, and expandable.
Managing content on a website, in a web-based application, or other legacy architecture is a challenging task. It usually involves data transfer through multiple channels and applications, each one processing and manipulating information in different ways. We deliver solutions that are specifically designed to efficiently manage how that information is routed, processed, and displayed. For clients interested in upgrading to newer technology or migrating to a completely different platform altogether, we can evaluate COTS eCommerce solutions to help them identify technology that best integrates with their legacy architecture and addresses their business goals, budget, timeline, and anticipated future growth.
Level Five offers a strategic set of services that will define a long-term, sustainable business strategy as well as the process solution to achieve that vision.
Level Five offers an array of customized application and product development services that provide the optimal solution to any business process problem.
Level Five offers a wide range of technology expertise. We ensure our client success by providing the best approach across all aspects of technology implementation.
