Sulzer AG, whose headquarters are in Winterthur, Switzerland, is an internationally operating company with over 120 sites worldwide. To unify online communication of Sulzer AG's individual core divisions, its primary portal www.sulzer.com was relaunched using the contentXXL Business Content Management System, which is 100% based on Microsoft .NET technology. Sulzer was aided in this process by the Swiss IT service-provider Getronics. contentXXL is now being introduced for the portals of the individual Sulzer divisions worldwide; eight portals are already online.
Screenshot of the Website www.sulzer.com
Sulzer was founded in 1834 in Winterthur, Switzerland, and is active in over 120 locations worldwide in the machinery and equipment, as well as the surfacing technology business.The core divisions, Sulzer Pumps, Sulzer Metco, Sulzer Chemtech, Sulzer Turbo Services are globally leading suppliers in their respective customer segments. The central research and development unit Sulzer Innotec supports the divisions as well as third party companies worldwide.Sulzer is a forward looking company and employs some ten thousand people dedicated to creating innovative technical solutions.
In view of the company’s size and in order to standardise its online communication internationally, Sulzer Management AG recently decided to relaunch the company website and to update the websites of the individual divisions.
Requirements
The new portals all had to be created in the Sulzer Group standard corporate design.It also had to be possible for employees in the country specific websites to be able to locally maintain their own sites, while keeping in line with the standard appearance. Contents were to be cross-linked, avoiding instances of redundant information and restricting data volumes.The individual websites should satisfy the demands of a multi-lingual website of a globally operating company and it should be possible to represent them in different languages, at the same time however each page should not have to be translated individually, in order to keep the amount of work required as low as possible.The maintenance and updating of the website should be easy and quick to administer.The seamless integration of CMS in the existing IT infrastructure of Sulzer AG was another deciding factor in selecting a solution.
Selecting Getronics and contentXXL
The large scale of the project and the high requirements of the relaunch meant that great care was taken in selecting a suitable Content Management System. Based 100% on Microsoft .NET technology, the Content Management System contentXXL by contentXXL International GmbH was a clear choice.“The operation of contentXXL is relatively cost effective and the solution is easy to expand on - thanks to .NET technology.The product is subject to a process that guarantees continuous improvement.A new production build can be easily integrated.The impressive list of completed projects, especially for international, renowned companies such as Adidas or Schleuniger AG, speaks for itself,” is how Roland Caviezel, Project Manager in Sulzer Management AG, explained the choice of Content Management System.The contentXXL solutions partner Getronics was selected to provide support during the implementation of the project.
Implementation of contentXXL
Eight Sulzer portals were able to go live in less than one year, including four intranet and four Internet portals.The customer implemented the project himself to a large extent using existing internal resources.In doing so he was supported by the contentXXL solutions partner Getronics."The installation and configuration of contentXXL was very easy, as this process is well documented," was Roland Caviezel's explanation for the great project progress within this short timeframe.
Using templating each of the eight portals totally complies with the Sulzer corporate design. In this way, contents can be maintained individually by the respective employees locally, while the page design according to the company guidelines is permanently ensured.
Approx. 70 employees are involved in the maintenance of the portals worldwide.This demonstrates how important it is to have decentralised, browser-based administration and maintenance of the portals.Using the WYSIWYG editor employees are able to easily update the web contents via their browser.This is performed locally and without any knowledge of HTML.This removes the high cost of time-consuming HTML employee training and additional software.
For a large company it is absolutely essential to its international Internet presence for contents to be available in different languages.This is easily performed with contentXXL using integrated language switching in contentXXL for both the user interface and for the contents.
At www.sulzer.com visitors can now get a comprehensive insight into the Sulzer Group.A complete company portrait is available as well as a detailed overview of the group structure, the group management and the board of directors.Frequently requested contents such as year end results, global locations and Corporate Governance can be accessed directly from a link on the homepage, as well as the company operating figures and the current share price.The latest news and important dates relating to the Sulzer Group are also available on the home page.
Detailed information on the Sulzer Group products and services is given on the website as well as media releases, events and a photo gallery, that contains extensive material on the different divisions.Documents such as previous years’ business reports, mid-year reports and company presentations are available for download in the Download section.The website visitor also has the option to subscribe to one or several newsletters. They can choose here between media releases, investor news and technical news.
In a specially designed investor area, interested parties can get information on Sulzer shares and possible investments.Annual returns, investors' kit, share price and information on share repurchase are the contents here. ´
The Division Sites
By using a dropdown menu on the homepage the visitor can link directly to the sites of the individual Sulzer divisions www.sulzerpumps.com, www.sulzermetco.com, www.sulzerchemtech.com, www.sulzerts.com and www.sulzerinnotec.com. These contain detailed information on the products and services of the individual divisions.The Sulzer Group corporate design is strictly maintained and applied on these pages.
Measure of success
“Our portals are currently recording over 4 million page views per month.The number of monthly downloads already amounts to more than 220,000 downloaded documents.The trend is increasing in all areas.Additional portals using contentXXL are under construction.We are very pleased with contentXXL and with the support of our contentXXL solutions partner Getronics and look forward to working on our future projects with these strong partners," is Roland Caviezel’s evaluation.