Analyst Success

Client Information

Launched by The American College of Financial Services, a top provider of the CFP^® Certification education. The Analyst Success site was designed to help prepare more individuals to take the CFP^® Certification examination via an Online learning experience. Leveraging Drupal, Commerce, and LMS technologies to help increase success rates among students.

Project Overview

Company Background

The American College of Financial Services is a top provider of the CFP^® Certification education and prepares more individuals to take the CFP^® Certification examination than any other educational provider, with the examination pass rates routinely surpassing industry averages. Students of The American College of Financial Services are domiciled in all 50 states and 19 foreign countries. The American College Foundation holds an endowment of more than $29 million, as of December 31, 2008. This includes approximately $6.5 million of the cash value in College-owned life insurance contracts.

Top Challenges

01. Limit access to the courseware to active students, and members of the site.

02. Single Sign-on functionality across multiple systems, and on different platforms.

03. Tight deadlines, a failed launch, and poor coding standards.

Top Solutions

01. Leveraging Drupal 7's commerce license and commerce subscription modules along with custom logic we were able to develop a seamless system to allow both members of the site, and active students at The American College easy access to the course material.

02. Leveraging SimpleSaml and Drupal's Single Sign-on functionality we were able to develop a system that communicated authentication status to the LMS, and was able to authenticate users against the College's central student database.

03. Implementing Agile practices, adding tools to ensure Drupal Coding standards, and training the team to use the available tools helped create the perfect environment for success.