The Client The Challenge The Solution

Harvard University is known around the world as one of the foremost educational institutes on the planet. Found in 1636, Harvard is the oldest college in the United States. With a university-wide endowment of over $20 billion, it is the wealthiest school in the world, and second only to the Gates Foundation as largest not-for-profit organization. Based in Massachusetts, BTG has always had close ties with the university, recruiting many of our consultants and developers from the school. Additionally, BTG's management team consists of college alumni. When provided the chance to assist Harvard with their ever-burgeoning technology needs, BTG was happy to be of service.

BTG's consulting engagement with Harvard University included projects occurring in various areas of the client's large organization. Overall, BTG was commissioned to provide first-class web development and strategy consulting to each of these self-contained projects, engineering unique solutions to fit the custom needs of each smaller project, while fitting each solution within the larger technology strategy of the university as a whole. Throughout our work with Harvard University, BTG has tackled various technology challenges, requiring the use of different types of resources and personnel within our organization. This has included:

1. Long-Term Web Strategy Consulting – Working with the university's Undergraduate Council, the college's governing body over student affairs and quality of life, BTG helped to devise a long-term strategy and implementation plan for the council's web presence.
2. Cutting-Edge Web Development – BTG was commissioned to assist the Harvard Department of Fine Arts, one of the world's leading centers for visual design, with developing a website for their renowned Aga Khan program.
3. Ongoing Technology Management and Support – BTG continues to provide technology management and on-call support services for Harvard University and the project areas that have been the focus of our team's efforts.

Long-Term Web Strategy Consulting
The Harvard Undergraduate Council came to BTG in need of direction. The Harvard student body did not have an effective way to interact with the Undergraduate Council using the UC's existing website. Site traffic was down and student dissatisfaction was on the rise. The Harvard UC came to BTG strategy consultants for answers.

BTG began by analyzing website traffic patterns, monitoring “conversations” that visitors had while visiting the UC's homepage. Our consultants identified weak spots of the current website including dead links, page drop-offs, and unvisited areas. BTG used the findings of our in-depth website analysis to create a summary of the shortcomings of the existing Harvard UC website. Our conclusions summarized what was wrong with the current site and how to fix these deficiencies at minimal cost and time expenditure. Our strategy consultants provided the Harvard UC with a snapshot of why their constituency was not using their existing technology, backed up by our analytical results and professional insight. We then created a strategic plan to correct these issues, quickly and cost-effectively.

Cutting-Edge Web Development
The Harvard Department of Fine Arts is one of the leading centers of art history, criticism, and visual design in the world. Over the generations, the department has been formative in developing a national consciousness and awareness of the visual arts, as well as including many of the foremost art historians, critics, and theoreticians of our time. The Harvard Aga Khan program is an elite and selective subsection of the Fine Arts Department, focusing on Islamic art and architecture and its scholarship. The Department of Fine Arts came to BTG to develop a new website for the Aga Khan Program at Harvard, to showcase the works of their collection and the projects of their in-house scholars. BTG considers all websites that we develop online real estate for our clients. Our team acts as architects, designing and implementing these Internet homes for our clients' organizations. Keeping in mind that the Harvard Department of Fine Arts has commissioned actual architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright and Le Corbusier to build organizational buildings in the past, BTG approached our work with Harvard with the same dedication, creativity, and commitment to success that we bring to all our projects.

We began work with the Aga Khan program by creating design compositions and motifs to serve as the guiding vision throughout the project, using BTG's InSite Methodology. Using BTG BlueLine technology, we were able to show and test various design versions with our client, prior to committing to a single compositional direction. The eventual design motif was created to express the minimalist aesthetics so prominently espoused by the Harvard Fine Arts Department as early as the 1960s. Similarly, the geometrical layout of the design echoed the Islamic works that would be showcased throughout the site.

Once a cohesive site motif had been formulated, BTG's developers proceeded with writing copy and formulating all pages of the overall site. In doing so, our staff worked closely with the organization's management team, effectively redrafting and streamlining their standard organizational copy for the web. The Aga Khan program was presented with their completed website within just a few weeks, from start to finish, thanks to BTG's methods of efficient and effective web deployment.

On-Going Technology Management and Support
Following the successes of BTG's numerous projects with Harvard University, BTG continues to provide support services for the client's many organization subsections. These include general technology consulting, strategic planning, and project development. In addition, our team provides on-going hosting and web content management for Harvard site's developed and maintained by BTG.

As a result of our effective and well-received work with the world-famous institution, BTG is proud to be among Harvard University's exclusive collection of qualified vendors and third-party companies, for future services and projects.