Why Silverstripe?
At Symbiote we focus on people and the things we can do with technology to simplify their lives. We use Silverstripe because it’s powerful, versatile and easy to use. Our customers enjoy being in charge of their own sites, while knowing that future opportunities will be simple to incorporate.
What is Silverstripe?
Silverstripe is an open-source software system that allows organisations to create, manage and share their content, images, videos and other information over the web. While normally used for building publicly available websites, Silverstripe is just as suited for organisations sharing content privately with their own staff using intranets, or providing subscriber-only content.
Here at Symbiote, we’ve been building and delivering websites using Silverstripe since 2009. We keep on using it because it continues to grow and improve, without losing its key advantages of flexibility and simplicity.
Our customers love using the simple, user-friendly Silverstripe content management system (CMS) to create and maintain their intranets or public websites. They can quickly become experts, creating attractive websites that look good and work perfectly on any computer or device. They can also set up varying levels of permissions or workflows behind the scenes, so their staff can only see and do what they want them to.
Building with Silverstripe
Our developers love that it’s extremely powerful and it has an enormous library of functions maintained by a huge world-wide open source community, who use, improve, create and share source code. (Not wanting to blow our own horn, however, we’re one of the largest contributors of code to this open source community.) Silverstripe is flexible enough to work with a client’s existing systems and databases, and can easily be adjusted as an organisation changes, adds new websites or merges them. There aren’t any license or support costs for the software either.
The real power of Silverstripe lies in the huge number of modules and plug-ins available to turn an ordinary ‘brochure-style’ website into a smart website. We can add secure, sophisticated features so site users can be part of an organisation’s workflows, solving their own problems, interacting with the organisation, customising the site to show their favourite functions, paying accounts or providing information.
We’re experts at bringing together complex and varied backend systems, including mission-critical legacy systems most organisations rely on, so staff and customers can get all the information they need in one place. We create data channels or use APIs for clients who want quick, highly-secure access to banking and payment systems like Cybersource, or for large scale CRM (Customer Relationship Management) systems and sales pipelines including Salesforce.
How do our different clients use Silverstripe?
An educational institution
Marketing
One educational institution (name kept confidential for now) we work with uses Silverstripe to combine information and images from several of their databases to create pop-ups and engaging web pages to encourage prospective students to investigate courses, get in touch or enrol online.
Their Silverstripe installation links to various databases within the organisation, so staff can create, schedule and publish up-to-the-minute pictures, videos and information about their institution and courses. They also use simple authorisation workflows to restrict and monitor which staff members have access to create, approve or publish content, depending on their level within the institution.
Online enrolment and payments
Silverstripe is used to create web pages that give students a quick, secure way to enrol in courses and make payments online, no matter what kind of digital device they’re using. After enrolling, students receive automated follow-up confirmations and other information to make them feel welcome and prepared to start their studies.
Our clients use Silverstripe to make their student intake process efficient, personal and friendly.
A public transport provider
Customer information and online payments
We used Silverstripe to give the Department of Transport in Victoria a user-friendly way for travellers to securely check their myki (tap-on travel cards) account information and balances, and make payments to top-up their cards. They’d previously needed to go to several different locations to do these things, so having everything in one place was a significant improvement.
We developed an API (Application Programming Interface) to connect various applications and myki subsystems with the customer-facing PTV Website and PTV Mobile App. This API performs tens of thousands of transactions a week.
DoT use Silverstripe to maintain all of the information their customers see on the website and on the mobile app. It also acts as a central point of truth for their staff who answer customer questions about services across the region.
A government agency
Running community consultations for a large number of government agencies
The NSW government needed a way of advertising and running community consultations to get people’s thoughts and opinions on things like proposed infrastructure projects or changes to legislation.
Silverstripe enabled them to set up their Have Your Say site. They could easily create new staff user accounts on demand, with suitable levels of access, so different government departments could create, upload and manage their own online consultations.
The intuitive system allowed them to manage the site themselves, without a developer, and run and monitor large numbers of community consultations concurrently.
We designed the part of the website that community members would see after determining what was needed. We made sure that it looked professional and was easy for members of the community to use. We also tailored the Silverstripe CMS so it was simple for staff to maintain. Silverstripe has the flexibility to be easily adapted if they later change their consultation process, or want to create and manage entirely new sites.
Interested in a smart website?
Talk to us if you’re interested in how Symbiote can help to simplify your business processes by setting up a smart website that allows your staff and customers to quickly and easily get the information they need and interact with you in a range of ways.
