A Recipe for Success

Setting up the customer facing elements of your Active SoftSwitch service is as easy, or as hard as you want to make it. This article explains what we can do for you and how we do it. We thoroughly recommend that you take the path of least resistance when setting up your service to get into the market as soon as possible. Websites can always be further developed over time, should you wish. 

To improve your speed to market we have evolved a large number of “Recipes”. These are templates which we have preconfigured with all the relevant integrated widgets and apps appropriate for the type of service you are offering. For example a B2B Centrex recipe will be quite different in structure from a residential service recipe, or a recipe for a conference calling site.

We take the recipe most relevant to your order and then modify it to match your exact requirements and create your website and add some example pages and content. That’s when you can begin to think about the styling and colour palette and so on and add your own unique content, logo, branding and images. By the end of the process your site will look and feel unique.
This service is free and part of the set-up fee and more than 50% of our partners launch in this way.

Event Sequence

1. You sign up for Active SoftSwitch service and pay the set-up fee.
2. ICC sets up the Telco/Unified Massaging partition and back office functionality.
3. ICC load a customer facing CMS website, based on a suitable recipe for the Service.
4. ICC enable and test the relevant modules, apps and add-ons.
5. ICC adds the required website pages and pre load examples of content. 
6. Partner selects a colour theme.
7. *Partner can further modify the look and feel using CSS Layout options
8. *Partner adds the Logo and all unique graphics and content elements. 
9. Pre-Launch testing. 
10. Launch.

(* See further options below)

Recipes Summary

Using one of our pre-configured, customisable recipes, with its pre-loaded modules and specific pages and registration forms, already tailored for your market, undoubtedly speeds up time to market and saves cost.

Pricing

Your CMS website set up process using “Recipes” is already included in the set up charge.

Other Set-up Options and Services using TMS.

Adding a little extra polish

Stages 7* and 8* in the events schedule above, denote the point at which you can modify the fine detail of your site layout, themes, colour palette, styling and many elements of the service appearance and of course add in all of your own unique graphic and content elements to create the polish on a site that reflects your brand and matches your taste. If you are familiar with CSS and basic HTML this is an excellent opportunity for you to add the shine.
If its unfamiliar territory for you, we are here to help of course and we would do this by means of our Tailor Made Software service, details are below. Alternatively you could choose to use an external design company to do the polishing, but in both cases you will incur additional costs.

Using a Third Party Template

It is also possible to integrate a completely different template from a 3rd party website (for example http://templates.entheosweb.com/VOIP.asp or, http://www.templatemonster.com/category/voip-website-templates or a similar source.
Unfortunately all the integration work already done within our recipes would need to be replicated onto your 3rd party template and this will take time. Again, this can be undertaken as a Tailor Made Software development.

Existing Site Integration

For customers migrating from an existing site that they wish to “copy”, the same applies. ICC will undertake this work as a Tailor Made Software development. We cannot guarantee to reproduce an identical website as this process is NOT simply an HTML copy/paste exercise, here's why; ICC only produces websites in Bootstrap so that it looks great on all devices. As Bootstrap contains its own version of HTML and CSS it is NOT an HTML cut and paste exercise, we will literally have to rewrite the code so we can only promise to re-create the look and feel of the original site.

The Pareto Principle has never been more appropriate as we will undoubtedly achieve 80% of the benefit of the copying process, within the first 20% of the time we spend on it, so we commit to regularly review the work and be guided by you on exactly how close to the original you need the copy to be.

Finally, ICC’s designers can only change the feel and look of the modules using Style Sheets. Should you wish us to modify the structure and functionality of any of the modules, this would require additional development.

Other Options Summary

The three add on options above are all available using our Tailor Made Software service which is charged at £40 per hour. Typical charges for completely bespoke website development NOT using a recipe, are between £5,000 and £20,000. All Fees are based on a written specification and must be 50% prepaid to activate the project.