Website and Secure Investor Portal for a $1B+ Healthcare Venture Fund

OBATA redesigns Ascension Ventures’ digital presence and builds a secure financial reporting portal — creating an integrated communications platform for a healthcare venture firm managing more than $1 billion in capital.

Ascension Ventures: Digital Communications for a $1B+ Healthcare Venture Fund

Ascension Ventures is a strategic healthcare venture fund managing more than $1 billion in capital across medical device, healthcare technology, and healthcare services sectors.

As a capital management firm, their digital presence serves two distinct audiences: prospective partners evaluating the fund, and existing business partners who need a secure investor portal for reliable access to quarterly financial reports. Their existing website and partner portal — unchanged since 2014 — were no longer equipped to serve either audience effectively.

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

“We’ve worked with OBATA for many years through multiple website redesigns, annual reports, and a secure portal for our partners to access information. The high quality of the work product speaks for itself. It’s an added bonus that the team is great to work with — responsive, customer-service oriented, and knowledgeable.”

Chief Administrative Officer, Ascension Ventures

NEW WEBSITE GOALS

The goals for the website redesign and development were threefold:

1. To refresh the website with an updated and contemporary visual design, and
2. To incorporate responsive design and infrastructure so that it functioned on mobile and tablet devices
3. To seamlessly integrate a secure web portal for Ascension Ventures’ business partners to access into the website.

A Digital Communications Strategy Built Around Partner Access

Site Architecture

The site architecture remained the same. Ascension Ventures provided new and updated content for the website.

Technology Strategy

Ascension Ventures also needed a secure and user-friendly solution to deliver quarterly financial reports to its partners. After considering their budget, requirements, and timeline we decided that the best approach would be to create a custom client portal module with a separate CMS.

The previous partner portal was built with obsolete technology, Microsoft ASP. We rebuilt the portal in the newest PHP version — a custom solution, built from scratch to meet their needs.

We provided technology recommendations for website hosting.

SEO Strategy

SEO improvements were implemented throughout the site including on-page, off-page, and technical — making it easy for search engines to find and index the site.

Design and Development Aligned to Institutional Standards

Design Prototyping

OBATA provided various design iterations following Ascension’s brand guidelines for color palettes. The concepts focused on medical innovations and advanced technologies. With the right photo, video and messaging combination, the website helped convey the value of Ascension Ventures’ investments.

Home Page Design

A video slider incorporating medical stock footage was added to the home page to add a more contemporary and dynamic feel to the webpage. We added a blue tone to overlay the color footage to bring continuity to the desperate stock footage and align with the Ascension brand.

New Photography

Ascension also wanted new employee portraits shot for the website. OBATA photographed each team member on-location at Ascension facilities. Then edited and optimized selected images for the website.

Full stack development

Taking into consideration the project goals we decided to redevelop the website using WordPress CMS.

Ascension Ventures also needed a secure and user-friendly solution to deliver quarterly financial reports to its partners. After considering their budget, specification, and timeline we decided that the best approach would be to create a custom client portal module with a separate CMS.

The existing app module was used as a framework that we expanded per Ascension’s requirements. We completely rebuilt the partner portal – switching from ASP to PHP with a completely new user interface and notification options.

The new app module allows administrators to securely upload and store documents and send email notifications to their partners. Depending on their access level, partners can easily access and download all pertinent documents.

The Partner Portal is fully integrated with WordPress making it a seamless experience for users.

Quality Assurance Testing

During our QA of the website and portal, we discovered that notification emails were not working within the various partner organizations. Our development team worked closely with Ascension’s IT group to understand the problem and then troubleshot and quickly tested a new solution to resolve the problem and work as intended.

Outcomes: Secure Reporting and a Credible Digital Presence

Launched in December 2022, Ascension Ventures is satisfied with the new website. Even more, we delivered a custom business solution to meet their business needs.

Outcomes:

• The app is working as intended, allowing the company’s business partners to securely submit and review financial reports

• The website redesign is a contemporary model design, with a straightforward navigation structure

• The website works across all mobile devices

Organizations partner with OBATA for digital communications solutions that serve both external stakeholders and institutional partners. OBATA’s digital work is part of an integrated communications practice spanning investor reporting, ESG communications, and brand strategy.