CPA Education Resource Website

Technologies Used

Introduction

A national organization that assists upcoming CPA candidates has a program that educates high school and college students about the process of becoming a CPA. This was powered by a website based on the Django framework. In addition to maintenance, the website had an important goal that had not been achieved yet at the time we took on the project: Giving signed-up students a student membership after confirming enrollment in a qualifying educational program.

Solution

Parthenon worked with staff to create a SOAP-based API that synced the student profiles to the Oracle-based systems of record. The asynchronous process guaranteed delivery and avoided problems associated with previous attempts such as overwhelming the Oracle API's slow-moving middleware. The system became the central component not only for signups to the website, but also inputs from state chapters of the organization that had their own lists. We also added a forum that our predecessors had had difficulty in adding in the past, and made the site's navigation system compatible with mobile devices.

Final product

Two years later, we revamped the website's look and feel in order to further improve the website's accessibility and mobile look and feel. Parthenon implemented a widget-based user experience, influenced by Material Design, that allowed staff to reuse much of the existing site mechanisms and content without extensive retrofitting.