Solve your unique challenges with custom software
Tailor your web-based tools to your organization’s unique mission. Receive a custom portal proposal with strategy, pricing, and a detailed project plan!
Do these roadblocks sound familiar?
Your CRM or website is not meeting your needs.
You need a BETTER SOLUTION to serve your audience online.
You’ve been WASTING TIME on repetitive, manual tasks.
You’re OVERWHELMED trying to manage member data with emails, documents, and endless versions of spreadsheets.
You need ONE CENTRAL, online space that makes it easy to register new members, share industry news, accept donations, and more.
A custom portal is online website software that allows you to...
Serve your target audience with online systems
Who’s your audience?
Whether you’re looking to target a narrow or wide audience, your custom portal can be set up with access control and permissions to protect content and enable features.
How our clients solved problems for these audiences:
Skills Canada: Essential skills training in an educational portal for students
Along with their popular national competition that encourages youth to compete in a trade, Skills Canada offers programs that engage youth in career exploration. One of those programs is the Skills for Success Work Ready Youth Program. This program highlights nine essential skills that help youth get a job, progress at their current job and change jobs. Prior to working with U7, the program was delivered with a set of workbooks in a PDF format. Now, there is a digital learning dashboard that allows for interactive questions and answers, a login system, a centralized location for workbooks, a progress bar to track completion of questions, and analytical data tracking.
CPCA: Increasing industry compliance with an online member portal
The Canadian Paint and Coatings Association (CPCA) is a non-profit that represents Canada’s leading paint and coatings manufacturers and their industry suppliers. Being part of one of the most heavily regulated sectors in Canada's economy, CPCA’s mandate and mission are to enhance compliance and mitigate risk in the paint and coatings industry. With a growing number of members, CPCA was finding it difficult to manage and distribute compliance-related information to its members using traditional methods such as email and spreadsheets. By being able to maintain an online database of resources with a custom portal, they’ve been able to communicate and distribute key information to its staff, organizational representatives, and members in a more timely and systematic manner. The hub has also enabled Canadian businesses to keep track of important issues that are critical to sustaining and growing their business.
Aquasan: Providing access to product safety information with a client portal
Aquasan is a wastewater treatment company with specialists that visit client facilities to carry out a precise and comprehensive analysis of their chemical product needs. They have over 100 products with unique SDS (safety data sheets) that offer information to their clients on how to proceed with the chemicals in a safe and effective manner. With their new client area/portal, clients can now sign in to see their associated company rep, who they can reach out to for questions. They can also see a list of all their products with the associated SDS files.
Focus on your mission and cut out inefficiencies
Receive a custom portal proposal with strategy, pricing, and a detailed project plan!
You may be wondering...
Do I need a portal or a website?
In a nutshell: Websites are for driving traffic, while portals offer useful features to a limited or specified group of users
You need a website if...
- you're creating a public website focused on delivering and managing content.
- you need a front facing site that operates separately from an internal site/systems.
- you need to draw traffic from a broad audience of anonymous users.
You need a portal if...
- you’re looking to create specific audience experiences.
- you need advanced control over what users see.
- you have multiple systems that need to be integrated into one visual design.
- you need advanced user management and permissioning features.
Go ahead, dream big. When it comes to custom portals, the possibilities are endless.
Here are just a few ideas to elevate the way you work...
Why use software designed for someone else? Get the exact features you need with a custom solution, like these past clients...
"The transition to a web-based portal has been extremely beneficial for Local 7. It's empowered our members with information they can access at their fingertips on their cellphones. It also minimized our administrative duties given that members can see their hours, safety cards, change or update personal info and even pay dues."
Christine Stenton, Local 7
“Our calendar of [movie] screenings was a unique challenge to format in a way that would work on screens of any size while being simple for us to update regularly. U7 created a site with almost everything we wanted, and then followed up to deliver everything else we had forgotten to put on our wish list.”
Bruce White, Bytowne Cinema
Is your organization experiencing any of the following painful symptoms?
Bloated admin costs
Error fatigue
Software indigestion
A custom web solution could be the cure.
What comes next?
What’s included in your process?
While we don’t believe in one-size-fits-all solutions, our custom portal and software projects each follow a similar set of steps from our first meeting to the launch day. Here’s what you can expect when you work with us!
Discovery and strategy
The discovery and proposal phase normally includes a discovery call and document, a project plan, and a quote! We often require multiple discussions with prospective clients, depending on how complex the project is going to be.
If you’re onboard, we’ll begin the strategy phase. Together we’ll establish your desired brand strategy, user experience (UX) strategy, and the portal/software architecture.
Design and build
This is the part where the visual elements of your custom portal or software project start to come to life! With the help of our in-house graphic designer, our team will begin sourcing content, creating wireframes and mockups (if needed). Once approved, our design team will hand off all the approved mockups and assets to the development team. The developers will set up the infrastructure and tools required to get started on building your portal/software.
Testing and performance tuning
Testing and performance tuning is arguably the most important step of the whole process, because if your portal/software doesn’t function properly, it isn’t going to deliver the results you need to meet your needs and goals.
As our client, we will ask you to take part in reviewing the dev site (the work in progress) and test it out to see if everything works to your liking. We’ll also do some testing of our own which includes design verification, functionality testing, browser compatibility testing, and more.
Go live, training and onboarding
We made it! Your custom portal or software project is now ready to launch. We’ll flesh out a deployment plan that is specific to your portal/software’s needs and follows all best practices for a secure and reliable experience.
Once live, we’ll train you on how to use your new portal/software and onboard any other members of your organization.
Now let’s get real...
Would we work well together?
We’re passionate about delivering the best custom solutions to the types of clients who would benefit most from working with us. As an agency, we aim to be as transparent as possible in all aspects of our projects, from quoting to go-live.
A custom portal or software from U7 may NOT be for you if...
- You’re looking for a quick fix
- Your budget is under $15000
- You want your project to be finished in 1-2 months
- You don’t have time to be involved in the process
- Your schedule can’t fit in weekly or bi-weekly meetings
- You aren’t open to changing the way things have ‘always’ been done
We aren’t trying to sell EVERYONE on a custom portal – our goal is to work with eager organizations and teams who are READY to transform the way they work, and have time to meet with us to provide feedback and input along the way.
Get a custom proposal
Focus on your mission and cut out inefficiencies! Receive a custom portal proposal with strategy, pricing, and a detailed project plan.
Have more questions?
Past clients have asked us...
