Griffith Laboratories

Background:
Griffith Laboratories is a global manufacturer of food products with production facilities located across the globe. They were founded in 1919 and provide a wide range of taste and texture components for food industry customers throughout the world. Their products include seasoning blends, dry mixes, coating systems, dough blends, crumbs, flavors, sauces and food bases.

With staff located across the world, Griffith Laboratories wanted to provide them with the ability to get updates in place right away even if the time differences mean it is 3am at the corporate headquarters in Chicago, Illinois.

Solution:
The role played here started in the sales phase as well as working with the client to select a content management system. Development started with the creation of templates within the Microsoft Content Management Server program. The Microsoft .NET language was used extensively to implement the API provided by the software into a framework and usable set of templates. The templates include general purpose ones for the homepage and interior pages but includes a variety of specialized templates for showing Windows Media Format movies and a customizable set of "contact us" pages. Also, a .NET based application for job applications was integrated into the content management implementation. Once the framework was completed, a Production team imported the content from a previously existing static site. Finally, staff at Griffith Laboratories were trained as authors and administrators of the content management system. After the english only site was launched in the CMS, a multilingual version was started, to offer the site in seven languages (English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, Chinese, and Thai). The challenge of this phase was working with the asian languages. This site created while under previous employment, having left after the completion of a fully functional and fully translated beta site.