Lodestar Business Consulting

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission:The Windows Phone site is the ultimate destination for Windows Phone customers. For the past seven years Lodestar has supported the Windows Phone team in delivering a great pre-and post purchase experience.
Solution: Services have included Silverlight rich media experiences for demos and purchase, custom content management systems for managing phone information, CRM development and production including customer profiling, newsletters and analytics, internal SharePoint sites, integration with internal User assistance systems, and partner facing portals.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission: The Windows Embedded site targets multiple audiences (OEM, ISV partner, customer) in a dozen languages with a wealth of information. Content ranges from pre-purchase business decision maker information to post purchase technical documentation. The site contains over 25 different applications delivering dynamic and relevant content pulled from various sources.
Solution: Lodestar manages all site development. Services include site custom templating in the Microsoft.com CMS, application development utilizing Web services, SQL Server, RSS feeds, rich and context specific scoped search through integration with Bing, and CRM including customer/partner profiling and lead management.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission: The Communications Sector Portal is an internal Sharepoint portal for the Communications Sector division. This portal features a customer sharepoint design, and contains thousands of documents and several applications serving the internal communication needs and business processes of this division.
Solution: Services include information architecture, site design, template development, content development, content migration, and custom sharepoint applications.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission: The Executive Briefing Center delivers thousands of briefings per year to Microsoft customers and partners. The WWBN (worldwide briefing network) is a workflow application coordinating all aspects of the briefing process from initial conception through execution and surveys.
Solution: Lodestar created and has maintained the site through 11 years of upgrades. The site guides Briefing Center staff and participants through a dozen different, complex tasks related to managing a briefing. The site integrates with a wide variety of Microsoft IT systems including Dynamics CRM, Exchange, Personnel, Building Access, and SharePoint.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission: The Microsoft Mobile site at m.microsoft.com is the mobile equivalent of www.microsoft.com. This site allows any business group at Microsoft to deliver a mobile optimized experience to thousands of different types of handsets and browsers, ranging from low end feature phones to high end smart phones.
Solution: Lodestar was the primary architect for the mobile platform’s content authoring, publishing, site metrics, and rendering processes. Lodestar also performed all platform development for the content delivery processes using complex integration with IIS and ASP.net. Lodestar continues to perform mobile application development for a number of business groups on this platform. Specialties include mobile enabled CRM, rich media experience, video encoding and playback using Showcase, and integration with phone location services and Bing maps.

Company: Microsoft Corporation
Mission: The Communications Sector Partner Portal is a partner relationship program that nurtures the relationship between Microsoft and it’s Operator Channel partners. Partners profile themselves using a customized version of the MPN profile process, profile their solutions in the new Pinpoint marketplace, and market their solutions through custom marketplaces designed specifically for the Operator Channel business group.
Solution: Lodestar has created and maintained the partner portal through six years of site evolution. The portal leverages existing systems from the MPN (Microsoft Partner Network) and Pinpoint, but allows partners to provide the additional business group specific information required for effectively marketing their solutions in the Operator Channel space, and delivers a customized partner directory experience to end customers.