Sodablue Partner Enables Website Continuity For Company In Transition

Challenge
Keeping the corporate Web presence aligned with the company's goals during restructuring and emergence from bankruptcy, while faced with ongoing changes in staff, budgetary resources, and business requirements.

While preparing for its Chapter 11 proceedings, Global Crossing needed immediate Web management assistance from someone who was adaptable and had a broad set of Web skills and experience, and who could identify staff responsibilities, train existing staff, and "apply some elbow grease" to plug gaps without additional hires. Excellent communication, team, and management skills were essential.

Result
Initially hired as a consultant to assist with implementing a new website design, Kari Thorstensen established a long-term relationship with Global Crossing, providing managerial and technical skills needed to keep a stable Web presence. Kari kept the corporate Website up-to-date and running at optimal performance throughout the bankruptcy and bankruptcy-emergence periods.

While Global Crossing was under Chapter 11 protection, Kari identified resource gaps and trained staff to fill those gaps or plugged the holes with her own skill sets. She also worked cross-departmentally with the communications staff to develop and post new content, keeping customers, media, analysts and other constituencies informed of the bankruptcy proceedings and their effects. Kari also identified, evaluated, and condensed multiple externally-facing sites into a single corporate site, providing ease of maintenance and a single point of interaction for Global Crossing customers.

As Global Crossing prepared to emerge from bankruptcy, Kari developed a post-emergence strategy for its Website. She identified company goals and priorities through executive interviews, conducted a competitive analysis, and facilitated a stakeholders' planning session. The resulting Web development plan optimized the corporate site to help meet company goals while remaining within budgetary and resource constraints.

One of the primary post-emergence goals for the company's Website was to move from customer-retention mode to customer-acquisition mode. Global Crossing is an international company with multiple product lines, and the new Website needed to enable potential customers around the world to directly contact the appropriate sales representative about specific products. However, simply providing an all-inclusive list of international access telephone numbers on the Website would result in a cumbersome and potentially confusing user experience.

Kari researched possible solutions and recommended a click-to-talk implementation, in which customers fill out a brief online form to request a call, which they receive almost immediately from the appropriate agent. The matching and routing between customer and agent takes place on the backend, delivering a clean and satisfying onsite experience. Kari led the vendor selection, developed the call routing process, and implemented the services.

Kari demonstrated her wide range of Web skills by maintaining the corporate site's XML code, training staff in online publishing, and working with the design team on Global Crossing's re-branding. She also guided the company through an architecture and usability study. Upon completion of the study, Kari implemented the new architecture and developed a Web strategy to better serve the improved site. She also provided usability guidance for the company's intranet and extranets.

About Global Crossing
Global Crossing (NASDAQ: GLBC) provides telecommunications solutions over the world's first integrated global IP-based network. Its core network connects more than 300 cities and 30 countries worldwide, and delivers services to more than 500 major cities, 50 countries and 6 continents around the globe. The company's global sales and support model matches the network footprint and, like the network, delivers a consistent customer experience worldwide.

Global Crossing IP services are global in scale, linking the world's enterprises, governments and carriers with customers, employees and partners worldwide in a secure environment that is ideally suited for IP-based business applications, allowing e-commerce to thrive. The company offers a full range of managed data and voice products including Global Crossing IP VPN Service, Global Crossing Managed Services and Global Crossing VoIP services, to more than 40 percent of the Fortune 500, as well as 700 carriers, mobile operators and ISPs.

About Kari Thorstensen
A co-founder of Sodablue partners, Kari Thorstensen brings a wealth of Web and business knowledge to her customers. Kari's experience encompasses contractual work with clients such as Global Crossing, Microsoft, and Her Interactive. Kari's main interests lie in market research, product development, user interface design, and project management.