Exponetic

CB Richard Ellis

CBRE is an international real estate services company with a network of international sites. Internally they had initiated a project to redesign and redevelop all of their sites along a common theme. The requirements were to make a website that was as accessible as possible using Oracle's content management system (CMS), whilst working to a very tightly defined and high quality design.

We produced an accessible site while working within the framework of the
Oracle Portal

Internal team

CBRE had an internal team consisting of front end and back end developers yet they decided to approach Exponetic to produce the HTML templates and to help with integration into Oracle. This was particularly challenging given the very high quality design that we had been given and that the content management system often outputted code that was not to the latest standards. This made producing a near pixel-perfect layout to a high standard of accessibility very difficult.

Working process

Initially we spent time with the CBRE team and Oracle’s consultants to gain as much of an understanding of the content management system as we could. From there the first step was to produce a single template for trial integration. This raised a number of issues and the template was revised until it met not only the exacting standards required to output but also the structure that CBRE's development team could work with at integration time.

Following this we identified a number of other key template types that required building. These covered the main areas of the site. Alongside this we delivered training to the client’s developer to enable integration and development of other HTML items to continue to a high standard. This included multiple quality assurance sessions where we reviewed output and advised on best ways to tackle problems.

Final output

The complete network of CBRE sites are currently in the process of being rolled out, starting with the UK portal expected to be completed in the third quarter of 2006.

Extranet sites

When marketing property portfolios, CBRE use a mixture of online and offline media to communicate with potential buyers. We were brought in to help deliver a series of extranet microsites to tight deadlines.

We delivered design, build and deployment services for the Grosvenor Portfolio project (shown above). The project also involved a subtle yet effective Flash animation on the home page and an interactive property location map created with DHTML.