Big Santo User Profile - Efficiency New Brunswick

We are proud to introduce this months profile. Efficiency New Brunswick is an organization that stands for the greater good. We at Big Santo & Evolving Solutions love what ENB stands for and we love how they utilize all the tools in Big Santo to power their educational website. Congratulations to Steve Flogeras and the team at Efficiency NB for a job well done!


Organization: Efficiency New Brunswick

Website: http://efficiencynb.ca/

Overview

ENB - Efficiency NB was established in late 2005 as a provincial crown corporation with a mission to offer sound advice and practical solutions to help New Brunswickers use energy more efficiently, make better energy choices, manage energy expenses and lessen the impact of energy use on the environment. We have programs for residential homes, commercial businesses, industry and even communities.

BS - How did you hear about about Big Santo?

ENB - We were referred to Evolving Solutions by another Government Department (Securities) who were already a customer.

BS - How do you currently use Big Santo?

ENB - We use Big Santo to manage the day to day operations of our website as well as to deliver new communications about our business and our programs.

BS - Any other ways you might use it?

ENB - We will increasingly look to develop more interactive elements to our website to ensure we are providing New Brunswickers with the tools and information they need to use energy more efficiently in their homes, businesses and communities.

BS - How has Big Santo solved a business/organizational issue?

ENB - As a new department in an emerging industry, our programs are constantly evolving and we know that communications with New Brunswickers is key. We also that the web is the first place most people look when they want more information about something. We were in the process of upgrading our online presence from a basic 4-5 page site to something more substantial and were seeking a solution to manage our newer larger website. The Big Santo platform is simple enough for anyone to pickup almost immediately and yet powerful enough (through 3rd party application integration and through a full code editor) to allow us to build basically anything we can dream up and go well beyond the basic toolset.

BS - What do you like best about the product?

ENB - The Big Santo Platform follows the same business model as the 37 Signals applications "Not too little, Not too much". The simple and intuitive interface and building tools let us focus our time on using our website as opposed to building our website.

BS - What features do you find most helpful?

ENB - For me personally, the best feature is the content containers. They let me build custom little bits for our website in places where our standard templates and CSS don't work. They are like being able to develop little widgets for use on the site and are limited only by our coding skills.

BS - What improvements to Big Santo would you like to see?

ENB - The only feature I see as missing is a preview mode. While the visual editor is pretty good, it really doesn't give a view as to a page will look like once it is published. For new prototype pages this is not a problem, but for the homepage, sometimes there is no room for trial and error. A preview feature would let you see the page as it will appear before you commit to the update.

BS - Any specific features you would like to see?

ENB - While this skirts the line of 'Not to much', we would like to see some type of permissions or workflow built into the interface to accommodate an approval process for changes made by 'junior' editors.

BS - Any other tips/tricks/words of wisdom you would like to share with others users/readers?

ENB - Don't be afraid to play around with integrating tools from other online applications (Jotform, Sprout Builder etc.) as well as open source script and code from the countless sources online. One of the best features of Big Santo is the ease and speed with which you can mockup a standalone prototype page (just choose 'don't include in the menu') to test out new ideas.