Magnolia CMS
Magnolia CMS Helps $7B Utility Build its Brand on the Web
Many public utilities today face competitive pressures similar to those of private corporations, including the need to establish their brand and reach out to customers. Providing efficient and effective CMS facilities is imperative, now that the web has become a primary medium for product and environmental messaging.
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- Stadtwerke München (SWM)
Stadtwerke München (SWM), named the “top local utility” in annual surveys, is Germany's biggest communal utility company, with 1.3 million customers and $7 billion in annual revenues. It is 100 percent owned by the City of Munich, and its 7,300 employees provide customers with electricity, gas, water, district heating and cooling, and public pools. Its infrastructure facilities include thermal and hydroelectric power plants, gas storage and filling stations, underground cooling facilities, and both indoor and outdoor pools.
Statistics
| Client | Stadtwerke München (SWM) |
| Portals | www.swm.de/oekostrom |
| Infrastructure | Magnolia CMS Enterprise Edition |
| Number of Sites | 5 |
| Number of Pages | 500 pages (SWM.de) |
| Number of Authors | 5 (SWM.de) |
| Page views per day | 30,000 (SWM.de) |
| Unique visitors per day | 3,500 (SWM.de) |
| Daily traffic | 5,000 (SWM.de) |
The Challenge
Customers generally view SWM’s products as necessary commodities, and therefore typically lack the motivation to engage with the utility, apart from routine account-related tasks such as billing, payment, or complaints. At the same time, SWM is competing with private utilities to attract and retain customers.
As a primary channel for building their brand identity and communicating with customers, the SWM web portal had to be easy to use, with a modern, interactive design that included typical Web 2.0 features like RSS feeds, and social media integration. Content authors had to be able to publish easily, without having to learn HTML or Java programming. The web site also had to be scalable, secure, and accessible, to cater to a growing base of over 1.3 million customers.
SWM had been using a proprietary CMS with obsolete layouts that were cumbersome to update. As a result, information was limited, and their site was unattractive and intimidating to users. Other drawbacks included:
- It was difficult to customize the proprietary system.
- The software did not comply with current web standards.
- The site’s color scheme failed to project a dynamic, progressive, customer-friendly image.
- Two full-time administrators were required to operate the server environment and perform basic tasks such as template configuration for custom page layouts.
- Content authors required at least one week of training, and regularly had to relearn their tasks, or call the help desk.
It was clear to us that the site was in urgent need of an overhaul. As a result, we were reducing marketing and sales opportunities and we found it difficult to communicate our brand identity and value proposition. We chose Magnolia CMS because it is easy to use for both our staff and our users.
Silke Radlherr, Team Leader, SWM
What SWM needed was a new CMS that would be easy to learn for both developers and authors, yet support key enterprise features including scalability, security, and custom workflows. They also knew that they had to rewrite huge amounts of content, which was limited, often technical in nature, and organized along business lines, rather than according to user needs – finding information was often a challenge.
The Solution
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- SWM.de
After evaluating various options, SWM chose Magnolia Community Edition for its initial portal relaunch in 2006.
They found that Magnolia CMS integrates nicely with other third-party tools used to build their sites, such as the Google Web Toolkit for interactive Web forms in the My SWM section of the site. Magnolia’s open source code also provided greater flexibility and less restrictive licensing.
After selection and approval of Magnolia CMS in 2005, a design agency provided a fresh modern, layout, which SWM's in-house development team converted into Magnolia templates. Next, content authors took on the task of reviewing and modifying content from the existing site for transfer to the Magnolia CMS system.
Within a few months, SWM's developers, IT staff, and line departments had the system configured and they launched the new site.
2010 Upgrade and Relaunch
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- Munich consumer loyalty card website
The 2006 relaunch successfully established SWM’s the brand identity on the web. However, by 2009, Web 2.0 was becoming ubiquitous, and SWM wanted to take advantage of the marketing and lead generation opportunities offered by the new technologies, such as the publication of audio and video content via multiple channels.
SWM upgraded to Magnolia Enterprise Edition to benefit from the Web 2.0 features. Other Enterprise Edition benefits included:
- Consistent publishing of content over multiple channels
- Unlimited vendor support and service level guarantees
- Scalable and robust performance
- Frequent bug fixes, and
- Caching, advanced backup, and versioning.
Our Web site relaunch using Magnolia Enterprise Edition went extremely smoothly. The CMS is surprisingly easy to customize. The STK allowed our developers and designers to separate matters of concern, and work collaboratively to relaunch the site on a short schedule. The activate/deactivate workflow feature and separate authoring instances helped us do a proper review of all the new content before it went live.
Silke Radlherr, Team Leader, SWM
The Standard Templating Kit (STK) turned out to be the “killer feature” of the 2010 relaunch. SWM’s development team undertook a pilot project to investigate the STK’s suitability for their latest portal. With a new site layout in hand, they were pleasantly surprised by how much the STK’s predefined templates reduced development time, and how easy it was to build state-of-the-art page layouts. Using the STK, multiple sites could have consistent configuration, setup, and usage, even though they may look completely different.
The STK greatly reduces development time. Integrating a design, plugging in reusable content elements, enabling interactive communication and applying it all across multiple sites can be done fast and efficiently. The STK made Magnolia CMS easy to integrate with Google Web Toolkit, and with our in-house applications.
Dr. Maximilian Störzer, Relaunch Project Leader, SWM
The Result
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- SWM's new look
The 2006 Magnolia Community Edition relaunch enabled SWM to connect with customers through an attractive, easy-to-navigate site that reinforces the SWM brand and environmental messaging. The subsequent Enterprise Edition relaunch in 2010 enhanced their web branding through interactive channels with a simplified design and content layout.
Both developers and authors are impressed with Magnolia’s rich feature set, support for best practices, and overall ease of use. Training and administrative costs have plummeted. Authors now find it easy to add and update content, thanks to Magnolia’s intuitive web-based interface and rich out-of-the-box functionality.
Magnolia CMS received positive feedback from all SWM stakeholders:
- Visitors are able to find and interact with content efficiently through such features such as pre-defined page layouts, readable URLs, and out-of-the-box accessibility.
- Authors can update web content quickly and easily with marketing collateral and promotions to drive sales.
- User-friendly tools cut administrative costs.
- Standardized STK templates save time and money, and ensure that multiple sites have consistent configuration, setup, and usage.
- In-house developers can leverage their Java knowledge to build custom solutions on top of open standards, employing best-of-breed open source components.
Today’s SWM site makes the best possible use of available space and employs compelling visuals to build an emotional connection with visitors. The layout places key information in blocks around a central stage that lets users quickly grasp web content. Integrated search, user-friendly navigation with drop-down menus and folder structures, and quick link boxes on the landing page, make it easy for customers to find the information they need.
Ever since we started to use Magnolia CMS several years ago, it has never disappointed us nor has it ceased to amaze us. It allows our IT and marketing teams to jointly support SWM’s lead generation efforts on the Web. Magnolia CMS has all it takes to reflect our brand identity in our online presence and let new as well as existing customers engage with us on the Web. Thus, it opened the doors for us towards a new marketing approach, that enables us to cross- and up-sell efficiently on our portal.
Johannes Haas, Business Portal and Online-Marketing Manager, SWM
The new SWM portal, built with Magnolia CMS Enterprise Edition, fully addresses the goals of greater user engagement, better communication, simpler content creation and administration, and standards compliance. It has helped SWM to shorten it sales cycle and expand sales opportunities by communicating effectively with its customers, while greatly enhancing its brand and value proposition.
In short, Magnolia CMS has become a crucial component of SWM’s marketing efforts.
Relaunching Websites for the City of Munich
Given the success of the SWM portal, in 2011 the City of Munich asked SWM to overhaul its municipal portion of the muenchen.de web site, using Magnolia CMS.
Magnolia’s multi-lingual support will be especially beneficial for muenchen.de.
Magnolia’s support for multiple instances and custom workflows ensures that content is thoroughly tested and verified before going live. This is of particular importance for muenchen.de, which has 100+ content authors, and require a “4-eye review” of all published content.