The Client

Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI), a division of VeriSign, Inc. (Nasdaq: VRSN), headquartered in Mountain View, California, is the world's largest provider of Internet trust services, supporting businesses and consumers from the moment they first establish an Internet presence through the entire lifecycle of eCommerce activities. Serving the largest base of business customers on the Internet, NSI offers domain name registration services, authentication, validation and payment services to deliver on its mission to enable everyone, everywhere, to use the Internet with confidence.

NSI serves as a gateway to establishing an online identity and Web presence, operating the definitive database of over 28.2 million Web addresses in .com, .net and .org on a powerful platform that is the world's de facto standard in Domain Name System (DNS) registry services. Responding to over 1.5 billion DNS look-ups daily, the powerful platform serves all of the world's domain name registrars and helps position NSI as a leading provider for secure high-volume transaction services.

The Business Challenge

The overall business challenge at NSI was to improve business operations and increase market share in relation to DNS. McFadyen Solutions worked with NSI to design a online experience that allows domain name registrants to manage their domains as autonomously as possible, while at the same time offering new add-on products and services. Within the old system, domain name registrants depended heavily on phoning and emailing Customer Support to make changes and check the status of their domains. The heavy Customer Support usage had become an operational burden and heavy overhead for NSI. After identifying the opportunity for process enhancement within the Mass Markets Division (managing retail domain registration sales), the Enterprise and Service Provider Division (managing domain registration sales through a service provider partnership network) was pinpointed as an area in which similar enhancements and process improvements could be realized.

In addition to the challenge of expanding the potential for sales and improvements to business operations for traditional domain name registration, McFadyen Solutions helped NSI build new channels for sales through the addition of a .tv domain product.

Return on Investment

The first step in enhancing NSI's DNS process was to reengineer the existing DNS account management system. With the new, enhanced account management system it is possible for retail domain registrants to independently manage their domains.

The graphic interface was modified from the original pull down-screens for each domain name (the same person or company typically register for multiple domain names) to data organized in a fashion in which the registrant can see all the major information related to each of their domains at a glance. The up-sell features that are incorporated into the new interface, such as email forwarding, have proven as a great tool for increasing revenue for NSI. The "Forget Password" feature enables users to retrieve login information immediately and independently when they forget or misplace it. These enhancements have greatly reduced the customer service call and email volume, decreasing costs and enhancing operational efficiency for NSI.

With the great return on investment in their Mass Markets Division, NSI made the decision to work with McFadyen Solutions to reengineer operations in the Enterprise and Service Provider Division. NSI has a network of commercial partners who are domain name resellers, Microsoft and Half Price Hosting are two prominent examples of these partnerships. Prior to the new site enhancements, commercial partners managed changes to their client account such as domain name registrations, expirations, and registration extensions via phone calls and emails to Customer Support. McFadyen Solutions worked with NSI to build an online Customer Support Center which allows commercial partners to manage their client account independently of Customer Support. These partners can now handle all the routine account modifications online, decreasing their wait time for changes and decreasing the Customer Support volume necessary at NSI.

An add-on and new sales product, which has had a positive impact on both of these sales divisions at NSI, is the .tv domain product. McFadyen Solutions helped add the capability for registering domains as .tv in addition to com, .net, and. org. Interested domain name registrants can now search, verify, and register .tv domain names in over 60 languages.

Technical Challenges

McFadyen Solutions's development methodology is organized in a manner that focuses energy on getting the job done quickly and with the highest degree of technical quality. McFadyen Solutions's challenge was to gain knowledge of existing systems at NSI in order to enhance operations while maintaining functionality with backend systems. McFadyen Solutions utilized Dynamo's advanced features for rapid deployment.

One of the major tasks and challenges of improving the DNS was creating a system for domain name renewals. McFadyen Solutions helped NSI redesign the entire renewal flow to create a more efficient and easy experience for customers renewing domain names online. The flow includes options such as auto-renewing domains, upgrading domain bundles, select varying renewal timeframes for the different domains, auto-forwarding, and emails. Much of the task was simplified by the use of custom droplets/servlets that were written to integrate with Dynamo server pages.

One feature that NSI's reseller partner network expressed interest in was the ability to renew large number of domains online. NSI recognized such interest and wanted this feature to be available within a three-week timeframe. McFadyen was able to design and develop such application within this tight timeframe. McFadyen also helped measure performance and deploy the application. McFadyen Solutions used Dynamo EventQueue to manage the extensive use of multi-threading.

McFadyen Solutions worked with NSI to develop a channel for new and add-on sales via .tv domain registration. McFadyen consultants modified existing pages so that they search the ".tv" registry to search for existing domain names as well as available ones and then allow the user to register existing domain names.

Based on the success of projects completed by McFadyen Solutions, the team presence of McFadyen onsite at NSI has doubled. A future redesign of the entire NSI site is on the horizon and McFadyen Solutions will likely play a major role in this endeavor.