The Client

Founded in the spring of 1924, the founders of MFS invented America's first mutual fund. Today, MFS' products encompass the entire investment spectrum, including small-company, blue-chip, and foreign stocks as well as government, corporate, municipal, and foreign bonds. MFS manages over $163.7 billion in assets for more than five million individual and institutional mutual fund and annuity investors worldwide.

The Business Challenge

MFS also wanted to integrate disparate information from many independent sites (set up to serve clients using specific services) into one main MFS portal web site. MFS had many different programs and services for their clientele, among these are separate service plans for US/Non-US investors and investment professionals. The goal was to leverage Dynamo to incorporate personalization tools into the MFS portal site so the user experiences were customized to individual needs.

Return on Investment

The overall benefit of solution to MFS is the integration of all services into one portal environment. Benefits of this integration include the personalization for customized user experiences. Personalization functionality helps MFS keep their customers better informed of the types of funds and current transactions that most affect them. This technology keeps MFS up to speed with competitors, ensuring the retention of current clients and draws the attention of prospective clients.

The Technology

The Visual Source Safe database contained the documentation required to configure a computer to be operational with the Dynamo and Interwoven setup. The Interwoven directory was a mounted drive using a Windows network. The Dynamo document root was configured to run with the Interwoven directory as the document root and thus have the correct content served on the local Dynamo server. The process involved every developer downloading their relevant JHTML/HTML files from the Interwoven server and all source code from VSS. Compile scripts were run using Jmake to compile the code to ensure that the environment was consistently stable and worked with some degree of coupling. Automated processes were run on both the Interwoven and VSS databases to check their integrity and also some manual administration done from time to time to check if files were being modified outside the system. Every file had to compile before being submitted.