Magnolia CMS
High Scalability and Complex Integration for DeutschlandCard
Over six million people in Germany take part in the DeutschlandCard customer loyalty programme. They all use the customer self-service portal Aperto developed on the basis of the Magnolia content management system.
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- DeutschlandCard
The focus of this project was on a high degree of integration in the customer’s business processes, e.g. CRM systems, dealer directories and e-commerce applications.
DeutschlandCard is a customer loyalty programme from Arvato (Bertelsmann Group). Consumers can collect points at partner companies like Edeka or Deutsche Bank and then exchange them for rewards.
The website for this loyalty programme is one of the most complex Magnolia projects worldwide.
Statistics
| Client | DeutschlandCard GmbH www.deutschlandcard.de |
| Implemented by Magnolia Partner | Aperto AG |
| Infrastructure |
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| Number of Sites | 1 |
| Number of Authors | Approximately 10 editors |
| Unique visitors per month | Self-service portal for over 2 million DeutschlandCard customers |
The Challenge: Large volume of consumer data and high-performance connection
The challenge lied in the conceptual design and technical implementation of a customer portal for Bertelsmann AG’s loyalty programme. DeutschlandCard needed a website that could handle the data and page views of millions of users while offering a high-performance connection between the backend systems for the reward and customer data.
Using the Magnolia CMS, we were able to optimally implement core needs in terms of integration in the system topography and scalability for high-traffic scenarios.
Sebastian Frick, Technical Project Manager, Aperto AG
The Solution: High-performance online platform and user-friendly CMS interface
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- DeutschlandCard
DeutschlandCard customers can order directly from the portal and manage their bonus point accounts. A shop function also allows them to select and order their rewards online. Customer and order data are exchanged with a CRM and ERP system through interfaces.
Aperto designed the portal and handled its technical implementation based on the Magnolia CMS (Enterprise Edition). By using different SOAP web services, Aperto integrated the external CRM and ERP systems for customer data and shop administration. The entire technical platform is designed to deliver high performance, a lot of dynamic content and personalised information. By using the authentication and authorisation system Acegi alongside Spring MVC, a qualified architectural basis is provided in the frontend.
The website for this loyalty programme is one of the most complex Magnolia projects worldwide.
Learn more about Magnolia Enterprise Edition
High-Performance Architecture
While carrying out the project for Bertelsmann DeutschlandCard, Aperto also took over the planning and conceptual design for hosting the development, test and live servers. A number of servers simultaneously generate dynamic pages for the live system. Magnolia is used as a CMS and Apache as the web server. The pages are generated with Tomcat and JBoss, data is stored in an Oracle database.
A highly available server farm with a number of publishing instances and a load balancing strategy ensures that the high availability demands are met even during periods of peak loads, e.g. during introductory campaigns. The servers are also monitored 24/7 by two automated monitoring systems, Nagios and Munin. In the case of interruptions or operative breakdowns, supervisors are informed in real time via SMS, email or support cell phones. This allows them to take the necessary measures very quickly.
SAP integration
DeutschlandCard uses SAP to manage rewards. Rewards are products for which customers can exchange points. The SAP system exposes product data as a SOAP Web service. Magnolia CMS connects to the Web service to exchange products, prices and user data.
Product data is imported from SAP into the Data module. Content editors add product pictures before embedding the data on pages. DeutschlandCard chose to import product data in a scheduled manner rather than on-demand. Scheduled import is commonly used with content that does not change very often such as warehouse catalogs. It also allows exact control over when to impose traffic on the integrated application and lets editors edit the content once the import is done.
Business Benefits
Benefits of Magnolia CMS for the DeutschlandCard project
- Faster time to market and lower risk with STK technology
- Improved user experience through internationalization and WYSIWYG editing features
- Efficient business process integration with pre-existing ERP infrastructure
- Easy integration of custom workflows
Conclusion
Magnolia makes it possible to flexibly connect multiple external dynamic data sources from Arvato Bertelsmann and other partners. The result is a high-performance online platform for the personal customer information and services of DeutschlandCard, and a very user-friendly CMS interface for the editors.