Horizontal Integration is one of the largest Midwest Sitecore Certified Implementation partners with over 15 enterprise class web site implementations on the Sitecore framework at Fortune 100 organizations and some of the fastest growing e-commerce companies in the country. Horizontal Integration has been working with Sitecore since its inception in the North American markets and led clients through several implementations and upgrades on the Sitecore platform. Horizontal Integration has deep expertise with the Sitecore technology stack and brings to bear best practices and a wealth of experience with installing and extending the Sitecore toolset to help clients meet objectives on a wide range of web properties (intranets, extranets, consumer sites, and ecommerce platforms) with highly complex and sophisticated integrations with core backend business systems.
Based in Minnesota, with over 60+ multi-disciplinary professionals working at a diverse range of companies on a wide range of client initiatives on the web, Horizontal Integration is a full service digital agency delivering end to end web consulting services to its clients across the country.
Our service portfolio covers the full lifecycle from concept to execution that includes brand strategy and online user experience strategy, user experience design, creative design and the technical development and systems integration of web solutions on the Sitecore content management platform.
Our engagement model is flexible. Our clients can choose to have us manage the entire lifecycle. We can be a key partner on the Sitecore implementation piece managing the complete implementation. We can also provide jumpstart assistance to help client IT organizations get off the ground with Sitecore.
Horizontal Integration has been recognized by INC5000 as one of the fastest growing firms in the country, #4 among the Fastest growing 50 firms in the Minneapolis/St Paul Market and ranked as the #2 Best Places to Work in Minnesota 2008 & 2009. Our team of Sitecore Certified professionals is considered a premier Sitecore Certified Solution partner in the Midwest serving clients across the country.
Sitecore is not just a web content management tool but rather a web framework. It's bottom-up strategy of creating reusable site components in a single repository that can essentially be selected, assembled and syndicated across multiple sites Sitecore creates a high level of efficiency in web development and delivers a powerful framework for building highly sophisticated and compelling next generation web solutions.
Sitecore makes it effortless to create content and experience rich websites. Sitecore helps you achieve your business goals such as increasing sales and search engine visibility, while being straightforward to integrate and administer. Sitecore lets you deliver sites that are highly scalable, robust and secure, and is built to simplify your life, automate your processes, and let you deliver results faster.
As the saying goes in the software industry, "Adoption Equals Success". It means that no matter how powerful a CMS technology is, if the business users can't use the Content Management System, the project is likely to fail. That's why Sitecore has dedicated itself to developing a world-class end-user interface that is simple and intuitive, yet powerful. The Sitecore user interface(s) are architected with usability best practices in mind and is completely coherent with the Microsoft 2007 interface. If you know how to use Microsoft Word, you will feel right at home with Sitecore CMS. Sitecore CMS presents users with an Office 2007 style "ribbon" interface, so you'll be immediately familiar with its editing environment. You'll be editing your site and up to speed in no time.
Sitecore is completely built on Microsoft .NET 2.0 technologies, so sites built with Sitecore integration will run in any browser and on any browser-based device. The Sitecore user interface is a 100% web-based application and works in any browser application – Internet Explorer, Mozilla, Firefox and Mac. The current release of Sitecore has a UI that shares the Microsoft Office 2007 theme (ribbons) and is Ajax enabled to give a very high level of usability. Dynamic delivery, intelligent caching and ASP .Net 2.0 delivers pages very quickly. The product is 100 % compliant with the Worldwide Consortiums open Internet standards, for example SOAP (web services), XML and uses the extensible application markup language (XAML) concept. XAML is Microsoft's presentation and display technology which replaces pure HTML development of user interface design and has show to reduce development time as much as 50 % over standard HTML UI design
One of the greatest challenges in any CMS project is integrating with external systems for content delivery. Sitecore CMS provides a full data integration and abstraction layer ( Sitecore Data Providers) that will allow you to connect to any database, web service or other external systems and access that content as if it were native Sitecore content. In essence, Sitecore “virtualizes” external repositories to act as Sitecore based content which allows you to easily utilize and deploy any content throughout your organization.
Sitecore's workflow engine includes versioning, controlled approvals, incremental publishing, notifications and reminders, and archiving capabilities and for Outlook users, notifications conveniently within their inbox. The customizable workflow provides tremendous flexibility and is also highly extensible, allowing you to integrate with third party systems. It's optimal when supporting both internal and external translation processes. The document comparison feature allows enhanced version control content, allowing editors and approvers to see exactly what has changed. This feature is also useful when managing content translation processes, highlighting exactly what content has changed and needs to be translated from its source language. Having strong workflow processes ensure your content is the highest quality it can be, and your site delivers the most compelling user experience it can.
Build it so they will come. Ever wish you could see your site as the search engines see you? Well you can, using the built in Sitecore Search Engine Optimization module. SEO strategies are an integral part of every marketing mix, and getting it right only once isn't enough. You have to keep getting it right. That's why Sitecore created the SEO module. You'll see how your site will be seen from the search engine perspective, and where you can adaptively optimize your site to keep your organic rankings as high as they can be. SEO is now “truly” organic and integrated into the content creation and management process.
Sitecore's Online Marketing Suite provides you insight into your visitors, including GeoIP and website experience information that helps drive faster conversions. You'll be able to easily track and understand the website impact of your online campaigns, quickly create profiles, personalize content and take action with analytics immediately and easily with your existing team. This replaces processes that previously took weeks or months. Now what you always wanted to know is easily done – with Sitecore.
Award-winning architecture enables you to manage and deploy an unlimited number of sites and share content, code and processes across any of your sites.
Sitecore is designed to drive the largest sites on the planet. Having a site powered by Sitecore gives you confidence you can deliver compelling user experiences at lightning speeds using a combination of high availability options, intelligent caching controls, and the power of ASP .NET 2.0.
Sitecore natively delivers URLs that improve organic search results. URLs are Google-friendly to help improve the ranking of the site. This, combined with a simple alias or vanity URLs leads visitors directly to the information they require. Other third party search engines can also be easily integrated.
Sitecore lets you use the tools you want to use and provides unparalleled support for .NET developers. You can work directly in Sitecore or use external tools such as Microsoft Visual Studio. By providing capabilities such as code-completion enhancements and integrated debugging tools, Sitecore makes developer's lives easier by reducing errors and increasing programming speed.
The world is getting smaller every day as more and more companies go global. Sitecore allows editors to work with the CMS in their native languages and allows you to build websites in any language. Sitecore also lets you to coordinate the management of the many language versions of your website, as well as the translation processes as content changes. With its European origins, internationalization was a natural requirement and not an afterthought.
Use simple, built-in tools to engage your customers using online newsletters, customized forms, blogs, bulletin boards, and forums. You can automatically repurpose content into any format you need, from PDA viewing, to RSS feeds.
Sitecore offers an incredible level of security, enabling you to manage content down to their component and element levels. It also provides a sophisticated permission management system to grant rights to users, groups and roles. Sitecore also supports external authentication and authorization systems, and was engineered to plug into existing systems such as CRM solutions to power visitor authentication as well as easily integrating into Active Directory for user management.