The Emakina team is composed of 85 people who provide all the services from the front end designers to the back end integration, account and project management, IT strategy, training and company management.

• Together with copywriters and web designers, our e-marketing consultants translate your marketing basics (brand positioning and promise) into online promotions. They are responsible for website stickiness, promotion redemption, generation of new traffic, increasing your visitor loyalty, development of online press relations, banner or link exchanges and referencing in directories and search indexes.
• Our Artistic Director translates your brand guidelines to the internet and is responsible for overseeing every screen and graphic element, to achieve the high quality design which is Emakina's signature. Our web designers are experts in ergonomics, usability and web technologies. They work together with our Information architects and the IT managers to organize the information graphically, develop a creative and intuitive navigation interfaces which comply with the widest range of operating system, browsers, screens and low bandwith modems.
• Our Web architects define the site nomenclature and client side architecture. Our Web integrators then fill a website structure with content, update pages and graphics on time. They are masters at all the multimedia technologies and software (HTML, JavaScript, Flash, QuickTime, Shockwave…). When maintenance is an issue, to ease our Web integrators work and lighten our client budgets, we develop a user-friendly Content Management System or use en existing package (Spectra, Interwoven...) that respect the publishing workflow of our client.
• Our IT managers are responsible for writing or checking the specifications and IT architecture of each project.
• Our developers then develop the interfaces that connect a website to the database servers and the other existing IT systems of our clients. To develop these middleware applications they use e-business standard languages such as Java/JSP, ASP, ColdFusion and SQL and e-business packages, such as WebSphere, ATG Dynamo, Interwoven, Open Market and others.
• Our project managers coordinate the entire team (consultants, web developers, web designers, producers, partners) collaborating on a project. They are responsible for meeting project costs and deadlines as planned in the project plan. They are also in charge of ensuring that every project, regardless of size, meets Emakina's high quality standards.
• Our e-business consultants, experienced in information systems architecture, will define the most accurate technical architecture for your website. They examine the existing information systems which your website has to interface with, the objectives of the project, all existing components, the budget constraints, the flexibility for change requests, and then they deliver their optimal recommendation.

Based on the preceding documents, the Project Manager can compose his planning schedule and budget, the so-called Project Plan.

Using the functional analysis, site diagram and graphic concept, the Project Manager has a full view of the tasks to be completed - allowing him/her to create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). Each task in the WBS will be estimated in man-days) and the required skill-set is defined in the skills matrix.

1. The mapping of the required skills to resources allows the Project Manager to make a project plan (task, resource, timeframe) which is entered in the planning system of the company
2. This detailed resource estimate (based on an intimate knowledge of the project requirements) make it possible to do a budgetary review: calculation and evaluation with respect to the initial offered budget.

The project planning provides the project milestones (both for the integrator and the customer) and the final delivery date. The revised budget will provide the actual commercial cost of the project.

The budget and planning are reviewed with the customer.

If either budget or planning is not in line with the contract or customer expectations action is taken to rectify this. The action taken will depend on the type of contract (fixed price / 'time & means') and the customer’s requirements (fixed delivery date because of dependencies, fixed features). This may be a reduction in project scope if the customer’s budget and/or time is fixed, or may mean using additional resources if delivery time and features are restricted, or perhaps there can be phased deliveries, in order of importance.

Site structure/diagram (SD)

The analyst will in a first phase create the site structure document. This document describes the tree structure of the site, indicating each of the various "modules", their function, their type (e.g. static, applicative, system managed e.g. by a content management system) and establishing the correct naming convention (in the required languages, if possible at this point in time).

Graphical concept (GC)

Once the overall structure is defined the graphic concept can be created and the functional analysis for the applications documented.

During the project definition phase the Art Director creates the graphic concept - a number of Photoshop screens that provide an overview of the user interface of the website/application.

The graphic concept demonstrates to the customer and tea, the visuals (use of images, color scheme), navigation setup (modules, functions) and the user interface interactions (on mouse-overs, dynamic collapsing menu's). This initial proposal is based on the input from the customer (discussions, vision, corporate style guide, font, color scheme, logo, existing printed material: folders, brochures, documents, flyers). At this stage, sometimes several proposals are presented at the same time, to provide a choice of options – but this depends on budget/time constraints and customer’s demand.

Once the basic proposal has been approved by the customer, normally after some revisions, additional screens are created finalising the concept. Then a full set of screens are created, representing different levels in the tree structure, in different navigational situations etc. to obtain the final client sign-off of the graphic concept.

Functional analysis (FA)

The functional analysis is undertaken by the Analyst. This analysis will include the following tasks :

• Define module objectives and priority (mandatory, need, nice to have)
• Identify features required (both on user and administration side)
• Propose basic interfacing overviews
• Determine which data to collect (field names, field types, field description, constraints, validation rules)
• Identify which systems to interface with (access method, transfer method, data formats, data relations, data mapping)
• Determine what feedback to provide (error handling, in/out screens)
• Outline post- and pre-conditions for the user and linked systems
• Define business logic, workflow and algorithms to implement (mostly through flow charts)
• Analyse existing and required infrastructure
• Scope out changes with regards to the initial customer request and offer
• Determine assumptions and constraints
• Estimate resource requirements (this is done in a team context after and during the review cycles - Delphi method)
• Forecast risks at integrator and customer side (description, probability, cost), and impact & recovery plans
• Identify required input from customer (text, test data, systems access)
• Test scenario and requirements for functional fit of the software.

The objective is to reach the end of the functional analysis phase with a full description of the module and its environment. This phase involves continuous customer review with client sign-off at the end.