We’ve been posting about the 10 finalists from the Dell/NFIB Small Business Excellence Award program. Our next finalist is deeply immersed in technology but has used that immersion to help clients with easy to use applications that help tell their own stories.
Any business or organization needs the Web today to tell a story, and we know that content-rich applications help tell a story the best. Unfortunately the next thing we all learn is that managing that content and keeping it fresh can quickly become very expensive or very time consuming. That’s exactly what GroundWork Design, based in Richmond, Virginia, helps clients address.
The team at GroundWork specializes in developing applications for the Web that help clients like The Julliard School and the University of Miami bring their campuses and experiences to life via rich multi-media.
They have a unique approach that in the end helps their clients. They first take all forms of content about a company or organization and then ensure they build applications that can help mange that content and grow with it. The overriding goal is to ensure that any tools developed for clients are easy to use and powerful enough to be self-sufficient. Finally they put their client firmly in control. Using video, visual thinking diagrams, and more, they help demonstrate to clients the complete scope of their own content, and what is possible with it.
What I found really interesting is the smart use of technology to connect with clients to manage some technology-intensive applications. GroundWork’s team is rarely in the same room with clients and yet labor-intensive projects are completed successfully and clients are satisfied because of Groundwork’s smart use of technology to guide clients through the entire process.
They are also using these tools to stay in touch with each other and with partners. Each project for a client has a method to keep track of time and files and they create a customized project page for each client. If you think about it, they are managing files that are often hundreds of gigabytes in size so interconnection is critical to their process. Employees also have access to VPN and remote desktop technology to accommodate working from home or extended hours on a project.
You can learn more about the company on LinkedIn, Facebook. Congratulations to Groundwork!