Alliance Software Strengths & Weaknesses

This is a promotional website, and we're hoping you'll contact us for a quote. However, we, like all firms, if we're honest, have our areas of strength and weakness. So here's our attempt at an honest review. Our hope is that the right clients will contact us and those suited to other development firms will also be served well.

Developing websites requires a range of skills. Indeed, as an industry that barely existed a decade ago, most people working in web development came from 'somewhere else', the most common being:

• Graphic Design
• Software Development
• Marketing Consulting / Sales

A great way to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses of a prospective web developer is to ask what their background is. The background of most of the Alliance Software staff was in software development. Indeed we screen for technical skills foremost when recruiting.

Interestingly, it's the experience of the company founder, Ben Stickland as a Marketing Consultant that's lead to the majority of being in the development work for online marketers. The result is that our primary strong points are in technical development and online marketing.

So here's a list of the relative strengths and weaknesses of Alliance Software

Strengths

• Proven Capacity for Complex Application Development - with successful developments in areas as obscure as commodity trading (for grain growers, not speculators), a national business directory, industry specific sales portals, highly customised booking systems, criminal data management, affiliate based event management tools, and our own desktop keyword research tool (Market Samurai), we offer the experience and technical skill to build and maintain whatever you're thinking of.
• Smart People - Our online testing process ensures that only gifted developers ever get to the interview process with Alliance Software. The result is we employ a broad range of staff (some of whom could be described as quite 'geeky') each of whom is talented and fiercely intelligent.
• Capacity for Long Term Service - with 10 years in business and an established customer base you can be confident we'll be here to service your needs and support you for the long term. Indeed we strive to forge long term, mutually beneficial relationships with clients.
• Deep Understanding Of Online Marketing - in the same way that developers who worked in an insurance firm for years would gain an understanding of insurance, a number of our largest clients are professional online marketers. The result? Our staff have proven experience in online marketing. This was showcased in in mid 2008 when we launched a spin off business "Noble Samurai", with it's flagship product, Market Samurai selling over 10,000 copies in it's first year online.

Weaknesses

• Not Setup to Handle Small (Sub $5,000) Projects - some firms specialise in quickly turning out simple cookie-cutter websites. We don't, our speciality is in custom built websites tightly tailored to customer requirements.
• We're Selective About What Sites We Will Build - the value we can add to you as a customer comes not just from building what's requested, but from brainstorming creative ways to promote or improve your website or business generally.
  
  As such, we decided early on, that we wouldn't take on projects that we don't "like". Jobs we've rejected recently include adult sites, gambling sites, development of twitter spam tools and a few fringe (read snake oil) 'self help' sites that in our view, probably don't help people much at all.
  
  We completely acknowledge our criteria is arbitrary and we're not looking to offend at all (we say no nicely), but if we don't believe in what you're doing, you don't want us working on your project.
• Print-oriented Graphic Design - whilst we do have two talented graphic designers on staff, and have produced several print jobs (including DVD packaging, full-color tri-fold brochures and business cards), we do not offer a full range of print-oriented design services commonly provided by developers with a graphic design background.

If based on the above, we're a good fit for your next project, click here for a quote.