WorldConnect's new system is up and running, and their team now runs their day on it.
This one is unforgettable for Jen and me because of who WorldConnect is. They are a 19-year-old company. Ma'am Catherine Altarejos started it in 2007 on the ground floor of their family home in Daraga, Albay, and today it has thirteen branches. A company that old could have kept doing things the way it always has. Instead, they were the ones who pushed to revamp their system. Our job was to bring them up to modern standards without losing the history of the company, so the new website keeps their story, down to the photos of the first office and the walls of framed visas, while the portal moves their applicants, officers and departments onto one system.
Every department now has its own space in that portal. Marketing keeps its leads there and builds pathway proposals for students who haven't picked a school yet, using the partner schools Admissions keeps up to date. Admissions and Documentation carry each case from the offer letter to the visa. Finance verifies payments and handles refunds and payroll, and HR runs leave requests, onboarding and certificates of employment. Applicants follow the same case from their side, upload their documents and message their officer, and management sees all of it on one dashboard they can filter by branch. Even the website's events, success stories and home page photos are edited from the portal by their own team. A lot of this used to run on Excel sheets and paper, and most of it now lives in one place.
Shan (Ma'am Cathy's daughter and who Jen and I believe is the company's resident tech visionary) was a huge help. She is very conscientious, to the point that she made her own mockups so Jen and I would have the same picture in our heads that she did, not just of what she wanted but of exactly where she wanted it. She is also very articulate, and because of that we were able to push the UX interactions to a level only a few of our clients get to. Things like the screen dimming behind a small celebration when an applicant's visa is approved, or a notification taking you straight to the item and highlighting it, came from her describing exactly how they should work.
Pat Molaer designed everything in Figma, and Jen and I translated it to code. The design language he built for the home page also became the guide for the company's internal system, so the website and the portal look like they belong together. Thank you Pat! Iba talaga pag may artist!
Our title is a little play on WorldConnect's own tagline, "Your visa to a better future." 😄 Minsan nakakalula to imagine all the people they have helped create a better life for since 2007, and with the new CRM portal we developed for them the hope is it provides a nice tech foundation they can use to scale their operations more and bring life-changing chances to those who need it the most.
The new www.worldconnect.ph went live on November 10, 2026. Go take a look!
Thank you very much Ma'am Catherine for trusting us with your company's next chapter.
Thank you Shan for the mockups and the patience, and thank you Pat for the designs.
And thank you to the whole WorldConnect team for testing everything.
WorldConnect turns 20 next year, and now with a new CRM to pair with that legacy! 🎉