Daruma Tech Expands Reach in Transportation Space Through Website Deal with Johnson City MTPO

BOCA RATON, FLA—Coming on the heels of two successful mobile apps for South Florida commuters and comprehensive new websites for the Palm Beach Transportation Planning Agency and Broward County Metropolitan Planning Organization, Boca Raton-based software developer Daruma Tech has expanded its reach in the public transportation arena through its website development and rebranding deal with the Johnson City (TN) Metropolitan Transportation Planning Organization (MTPO). 

The Johnson City MTPO is a federally funded agency charged with transportation planning for the region, located about 60 miles north of Ashville, North Carolina. Its responsibilities includes both public transportation and infrastructure projects. Because the agency interacts with a wide range of stakeholders, from government officials to contractors to members of the general public, and must regularly exchange time-sensitive information with all of them, a responsive, robust, and intuitive website is mission critical for its operations. The site also must be able to receive and archive documents and data from, and retrieve them for, both front- and back-end users, a technically demanding set of requirements. 

Until recently, the organization relied on a site built and maintained in house. But according to Mary Butler, the senior Johnson City MTPO planner who’d taken on the daunting task of building and maintaining the site, the demands of keeping it up to date by herself, along with her responsibilities as a planner, had become unsustainable. “This is not something I’d been trained professionally to do,” she said. “So I told my boss I needed help building a new website, because this was out of my wheelhouse.” 

After a competitive bidding process, the organization selected Daruma Tech to develop the new site. The results, Butler said, have been a game changer. Besides being easier to use for back-end users, the site includes new features, such as an introductory video montage to welcome site visitors and a blog section. “The video was definitely something I couldn’t do,” Butler said. “And we didn’t have a blog feature before. That has encouraged us to write articles about some of the big projects out in the area that people would be interested in.” 

As part of their engagement, Daruma Tech also spearheaded new branding and logo design for the Johnson City MTPO. “We’ve been around since 1982 and we’ve never really had our own logo,” Butler explained. “Everything’s just been text that we’ve stylized, but not an actual logo.” Daruma Tech guided the Johnson City MTPO team through a collaborative process of finding the best image for the organization. “They came out with some different options, and we kind of took a little bit that we like from several different options,” Butler said. The final design, she added, incorporates a local mountain range immediately recognizable to area residents. 

The Daruma team, Butler added, was a great partner for their project. “They were easy to work with. We would tell them what we were thinking of, and they just ran with it,” she said. “And they were very responsive to our feedback.” 

Daruma Tech has continued to stand behind the Johnson City MTPO team, since they’re now hosting the site – a service that Butler said offers a lot of peace of mind. “Before we had another hosting company, and we weren’t getting much support,” she said. “I’m excited to have a web developer I can go to for support. Now I mainly just have to go in and type information or upload a picture—I don’t have to do a whole lot of technical things.” 

“Transportation agencies such as the Johnson City MTPO have a diverse range of stakeholders and a large number of overlapping, time-sensitive projects,” said Susan Erickson, vice president and co-founder of Daruma Tech. “Their website is not only their central information hub, but their public face. And from our work with larger similar agencies, we can anticipate how users will see and interact with the site, as well as how demands on the site may evolve with local transportation needs. And we’re excited to be part of this journey with them.” 

For more information, contact Rick Griswold: 561-990-1625.