Insights

Noblesville, IN, September 15, 2009 – BlueSky Technology Partners, one of Indiana’s fastest growing consulting companies, was the recipient of the best B2C Deployment award for a Systems Integrator during the 2009 IBM WebSphere Commerce Leadership Summit held in Toronto, Canada, from September 14 – 17.  The awards ceremony was held on September 15 when BlueSky was chosen the winner by an IBM executive committee chief for the e- commerce site deployed for Kotulas, a brand of Northern Tool & Equipment (NTE).

The eCommerce site www.kotulas.com was selected by IBM over other well known brand sites that were nominated in the category.  BlueSky attributes its success to CodeBlue Frameworks, BlueSky’s pre-built WebSphere Commerce assets and methods.  Using these assets and methods allowed the team to achieve the desired business results and served as the catalyst for IBM’s selection of BlueSky as the winner.

In 2008 NTE’s brand development group for Kotulas was challenged with the need to test-bed their new brand initiative on a limited budget and an aggressive time table.  The new initiative for Kotulas was a completely new concept for NTE as it went after the market for selling unique gifts and gadgets.  NTE has been working with BlueSky for several years on various WebSphere Commerce initiatives.  To meet the challenge facing the Kotulas brand team, NTE leveraged BlueSky’s lean WebSphere Commerce solution called CodeBlue Frameworks.  CodeBlue Frameworks leverages pre-built frameworks and the out-of-the-box functionality of WebSphere Commerce to deliver a solution in a short timeframe and for limited budgets.  NTE and BlueSky agreed that CodeBlue Frameworks was the perfect fit for NTE’s initiative, and two months later NTE launched www.kotulas.com.

The CodeBlue Frameworks solution for Kotulas delivered the core capabilities of WebSphere Commerce including marketing functions such as eSpots and promotions; integrations to pricing and inventory; and customizations to tax, freight and promo/key code interfaces.  The initial launch leveraged the out of the box search capability that comes with WebSphere Commerce.

Kotulas.com proved to be a very successful venture for NTE as they were able to achieve their 12 month revenue goals ahead of budget.  Since achieving the better than expected ROI, NTE has reinvested in the site to include social media forums, ratings and reviews, and additional Web 2.0 features.  The CodeBlue Frameworks solution built with WebSphere Commerce gave them the architecture capable of extending capabilities over time.  NTE has risen to # 74 (based on their on-line sales revenue) of the 500 largest US-based e-retailers by Internet Retailer and #2 in the Hardware/Home Improvement web retailers category.

“BlueSky is honored to have won this prestigious award by IBM,” states Todd Irwin, CEO, BlueSky Technology Partners.  “I’m even prouder of the achievement since the nomination for the award was provided by our client Northern Tool.  Anytime your client provides you this type of acknowledgement it means the world to a consultancy.  We’re very proud.”