eRepublic’s Navigator products have now been completely re-designed and re-developed from the ground-up on cutting edge technology and successfully launched to a user base of 6,300+ users.  Both Navigators are SaaS products – Software-as-a-Service and require a paid subscription for access.

Here is a short video giving a quick peek at the Navigators and the exciting new CMS contextual editing feature:

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/8400033 w=500&h=287]

Digital Government Navigator

Navigatorgov.com serves clients of the Center for Digital Government – sales organizations who are targeting the state and local government IT markets.

Some of the product features include:

• Custom delivered pre-RFPs, bids and awards to each user by email.
• Current contact data for decision makers.
• DealWatch to keep a close eye on your most important opportunities.
• Detailed budget data.
• Huge grant database.
• CIO Interviews.

Digital Education Navigator

Navigatored.com serves clients of the Center for Digital Education – sales organizations who are targeting the state departments of education, school districts and higher education IT markets.

Some of the product features include:

• Pre-RFPs, RFPs and awarded bids.
• Access to thousands of grant opportunities.
• Education IT budgets/spending.
• Contact information for thousands of decision makers.
• Daily automated news alerts.
• Executive teleconferences with education IT leaders.

Project Scope

The development of these new Navigators was the single largest IT project in the history of the company –

• Over 4,000 man hours of effort over 10 months.
• 80,000+ bids migrated to the new system.
• 2,900+ jurisdictions created for Navigatorgov.com
• 15,000 institutions created for Navigatored.com
• 4,600+ agencies created.
• 8,000 contacts created.
• 4,000 news and blog posts migrated to the new system.
• 45,000 user settings migrated to the new system.
• 6,500 users setup in the new system and in SalesForce.
• 200+ accounts setup in the new system and in SalesForce.
• 183,000+ user login records migrated for usage reporting.
• Integration with SalesForce for the management of Navigator accounts and users.
• Integration with SalesForce for handling all Navigator user support requests and custom research requests.
• Integration with our Clickability.com platform for displaying Navigator relevant news, blogs and CIO Interviews.
• Integration with a remote database for the display of grants.

All design and development was done in-house with a technical team that grew to:

• 2 project managers
• 6 web developers
• 1 web designer
• 1 quality assurance specialist

If the project had been out-sourced, the cost of the project would have topped $500,000.

New Product Features

These new Navigators have been built using cutting edge technology which provides a stable and flexible platform for extending the feature set as needed.

Here are highlights of the new features in this release:

• Brand new design that allows easy access and discovery of all data.
• More powerful and advanced search to zero in on relevant data.
• Interactive U.S. Flash maps that instantly provide high-level data for each state and to drill-down for more detailed information.
• Ability to manage all Navigator accounts and users from SalesForce which allows a seamless connection with all sales activities.
• Ability to manage all Navigator support and custom research requests from SalesForce which keeps customer service information connected up all other customer data.
• A new collaboration area such that vendors can connect with other vendors to provide complete solutions on specific bids.
• Ability to selectively publish news, blog and CIO Interview items from the company’s web content management platform – Clickability.com.
• Ability for end-user account managers to view profile, login and usage data for all users in the account (e.g. IBM).
• Ability for an editor to edit any Navigator content item directly on the website (also known as contextual editing).

For a more detailed technical overview, see my post Navigator Alchemy.