Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory first brought M&I onboard to redesign the shopping cart feature of the RMCF website for usability and ease. Impressed with the final result, Jay Haws, Vice President of Creative Services at RMCF brought an idea to M&I for an application that would allow franchisees to design and print marketing materials within a secure platform. RMCF’s franchise numbers were growing rapidly and they needed a better way to support the individual franchise owners and their specialized marketing needs.
With Haws’ input, M&I built GraphicsMaker, a platform that allows franchise owners to log in and work within a predetermined set of templates to design promotional materials. This responsive web application was built on ASP.NET MVC and Microsoft SQL, and allows franchisees to create their own banners, store displays, and other materials. While able to customize the text to reflect their own in-store promotions, but thanks to the visually appealing templates, the branding would stay consistent with the RMCF vision.
“GraphicsMaker is popular because it gives them the tools they need and there’s an instant gratification there. We noticed a dramatic decrease in our outside expenses for custom marketing services. It’s so intuitive for the franchisees that application support has been negligible.” —Jay Haws
GraphicsMaker allowed the Franchisees to have more feelings of ownership, while cutting wait time for promotional materials dramatically. It had the added benefit of bringing the time spent designing templates down by approximately 50%, and it became clear that as the partnership between RMCF and M&I expanded, there was little that couldn't be accomplished.
They earned my respect because I threw stuff at them that had never been done before and they would figure out how to do it… That’s the kind of partner you want to work with. Jay Haws Vice President of Creative Services
After updating the GraphicsMaker platform in 2015 to be even more responsive and user-friendly with an improved interface, RMCF has continued to expand their partnership with M&I to include more in-depth projects. In addition to a current redesign of the RMCF website, M&I has successfully streamlined the web presence of RMCF’s newest acquisition, a suite of frozen yogurt brands, in order to make them cross-browser compatible and mobile friendly. Over the years, the partnership has continued to flourish and grow with the RMCF brand flourishing with the help of M&I's innovative technology solutions.
“They’re very responsive. They have talent, they’re professional. They come down to my level & speak plainly about very technical stuff. If it's over my head they know how to explain it, and they get it the first time.” —Jay Haws, Vice President of Creative Services
Technical Specs
- ASP.NET MVC
- Microsoft SQL Server
