Overview

The Almond Board of California administers a grower-enacted U.S. Federally Mandated Marketing Order under the supervision of the United States Department of Agriculture.

Established in 1950, the Almond Board of California’s charge is to promote the best-quality product and increase production of almonds, California’s largest tree crop. The Almond Board of California seeks to expand the domestic and international markets for almonds through generic public relations, advertising, and other marketing activities. It also tracks almond industry statistics and annually publishes the Almond Almanac.

The Almond Board consists of ten charter members: five almond growers and five almond processors. All members serve without compensation, donating time, effort, and energy for the good of the industry. A staff of professionals works with the Almond Board-appointed committees to carry out directives.

Challenges/Goals

The Almond Board communicates regularly with Almond Consumers, Almond Growers, Almond Handlers, Food Preparation Professionals, and Health Professionals on the benefits of almonds. Some of the information presented is common across two or more of these groups and the rest is specific to the needs, wants and desires of the group individually.

The Almond Board required a website that could speak to each of the five groups individually, as well as share content amongst groups. In addition, all of the content needed to be managed from the same administration interface and the solution needed to be fully content managed with version control, publishing capability and audit logs.

This interface required additional levels of security and governance so that individuals within the Almond Board could submit content to their respective areas of expertise. The main challenges faced during this project were to adapt the approved visual design and Adobe Flash elements, which were developed by an external marketing agency, to work well within the Content Managed SharePoint 2007 framework.

Solution/Approach

We worked very closely with the Board’s marketing agency to modify the visual designs so they would not lose any of their impact but would integrate nicely into SharePoint 2007. Our primary aim with the visual design modifications was to ensure that management of the site would remain simple and straightforward for the Almond Board after the project was complete.

We initially launched sites for Almond Consumers, Food Professionals and Health Professionals in the United States. Using these sites as a training platform for Almond Board personnel, we prepared and launched the two additional sites for Almond Growers and Almond Handlers.

We developed all five sites within the same framework and visual design so that first time visitor can easily choose the correct site for them (Consumer, Food Professional, Health Professional, Grower, or Handler) – and once doing so – have that choice remembered so return visits would bring them directly to the appropriate site.

Results

Based on the success of the Almond Board websites here in the United States, Synergy was awarded the project to convert the initial three sites (Almond Consumer, Food Professional and Health Professional) into a template system. The goal was to launch similar sites in the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain & various Asian countries.

The Almond Board website was awarded a Top 10 SharePoint websites by TopSharePoint.com in 2010.