Management Summary
Siemens Mobility now offers its customers a comprehensive online guide to the industry and its entire portfolio, including news, conference info and dates, and career opportunities. The entire project is based on the CONTENS Web content management system, just as the Siemens Mobility' multi-lingual intranet is built on CONTENS software. Some 24,000 Siemens Mobility employees worldwide use the intranet every day as a standardized information and communication platform.
Situation
The goal at Siemens Mobility was to come up with a convenient, standardized solution for their intranet and Internet presence. The solution was also designed to support the growing demands on Siemens Mobility' online communications, both in a technical and visual sense.
Essential requirements included the creation of static and dynamic pages as well as the easy integration of already existing applications. For high acceptance the decision makers set great store by a user-friendly interface and intuitive user guidance.
Solution
While looking for a standardized content management platform, many signs pointed to CONTENS.
There are now more than 50 sites being centrally administered, saving both time and money. Roles and authorizations are allocated in such a precise, easy fashion, that each editor has his or her own set of rights. This means that you can find out at any time what functions any of the over 500 editors has access to, and the rights that go along with them.
The IT department at Siemens Mobility wanted the ability to create static pages in order to offer its intranet and Internet users the highest possible performance, despite superior multimedia content. Besides the Internet site, which gets the most visitors, the lion's share of the 16,000 other pages which comprise the intranet, are also static. A further advantage of static pages is that each Web page can be indexed by a search engine, thus making content much easier to find.
For displaying dynamic pages, a solution was drafted to integrate already existing Web applications. Individual applications are linked to CONTENS without the need for much programming, and users are immediately connected to content straight from the database with the use of search and filter functions. The ability to seamlessly integrate already existing applications was another factor in the decision to go with CONTENS.
CONTENS' intuitive interface enables editors to start publishing new content straightaway and edit already existing content without any trouble at all. Content from all the pages is clearly structured in elements positioned on each page.
Content can be used multiple times on websites and is individually displayed, depending on where it's needed. The rights administration system is also set up so that only those editors, who have rights in both areas, can change content that is used on both the intranet and Internet.
Content is automatically displayed in accordance with the Corporate Design, without forcing the editors to worry about changing its appearance. Integrated output templates ensure that content always looks right and is positioned in the right place. If content is moved to a new position, its appearance gets automatically updated to fit its new position.
CONTENS' intelligent template design gives every site a standardized structure. Newly created pages are automatically integrated into the navigation and sitemap upon publication.
The Siemens Mobility Division has been relying on CONTENS since 2004. Following the complete relaunch in 2008, all pages are generated XHTML-conformably. The content output formats provide XHTML code and thereby conform to the content types globally defined by Siemens.
It is thus much easier to continue using the content administered in CONTENS outside of the CMS. With the extranet relaunched in 2009, the Mobility Division addresses potential customers of the new locomotive generation Vectron.
With CONTENS, the Siemens Mobility Division can simplify and accelerate the search for information and make it easier for customers and employees to find what they're looking for.
Compared to previous solutions, the use of CONTENS also saves money during full operation and expansion.