“ The extensive expertise of The Reference combined with the features and functionality of Sitecore proved to be key to our website success. „

- Stephen Delvoye, eCommunications Manager, Bekaert

Challenge

Bekaert is a global technological leader in its two core competences: advanced metal transformation and advanced materials and coatings, and a market leader in drawn wire products and applications. Bekaert (Euronext Brussels: BEKB) is a global company with headquarters in Belgium, employing over 23,000 people worldwide. Serving customers in 120 countries, Bekaert pursues sustainable profitable growth in all its activities and generates annual combined sales of € 4 billion.

Bekaert had several goals for an improved Web presence:

• Create a better awareness of the Group’s activities
• Optimize the RFQ features to generate more leads
• Make the website a platform for everybody (customers, employees, general site visitors, investors and jobseekers).
• Enable Bekaert.com to extend its presence towards multiple devices

The biggest scope of this project was to provide a Web Content Management System that allows Bekaert to easily maintain the corporate website while providing a content management architecture for future websites.

Solution

Bekaert led in-depth preparations for this web project within the company before organizing a tender. The Reference, a Sitecore partner and full service interactive agency, responded best to Bekaert’s well-defined ideas of a new global website that would serve as a gateway to the Bekaert world. The purpose of the site is to replace all former websites worldwide and to create a customer interaction system that truly reflects the Bekaert motto, better together.

“The extensive expertise of The Reference combined with the features and functionality of Sitecore proved to be key to our website success,” says Stephen Delvoye, eCommunications Manager at Bekaert.

This website project was managed by The Reference, in close collaboration with Bekaert’s Corporate Communications Team.  “It was a real challenge to translate the complexity of Bekaert’s products and applications into an intuitive interface. You can’t simply categorize or organize it into simple sections,” says Ben Van Damme, Account Manager at The Reference. “That’s why we structured Bekaert's rich product range by means of an industry selection tool, combined with an auto-complete search. This helps users to find what they are looking for more easily. In general, all content is reachable within a maximum of three clicks from the home page.”

Some features on the new site include:

• Flash history application illustrates the history of Bekaert in a flash application that is integrated in the website.
• Global Map and XML in Sitecore: Bekaert’s global presence, visible in the flash application map on the homepage, is managed through Sitecore. The locations/content is managed in Sitecore and feeds the flash application via XML .
• Multiple External Feeds are pulled from press agencies and are automatically converted in Sitecore Items.
• The Bekaert Jobs Application gives up-to-date “hot jobs” via web services.
• Subject- related content  enables relevant information about events and products to be displayed based on the selected metadata.
• Forward search integration for powerful search capabilities, including auto complete search.
• A mobile version of the site is managed through a separate tree branch in Sitecore. This allows a specific selection of website content to be made available for mobile broadcast.
• Multilingual support was not in this first phase of the project, but Bekaert will translate the site in Chinese and Spanish before the end of the year.
• Some 30+ existing sites are redirected to point to the corporate website in order to present all of the product information in a structured format.
• An extended extranet is in development to offer customer centred services. The whole idea is to give general information on Bekaert.com and extended information on the extranet. Sitecore perfectly suits our needs to manage this extranet.

Result

The new global corporate website focuses on uniform and consistent communication in order to strengthen the Bekaert brand and its online presence. Bekaert succeeds in managing thousands of web pages with Sitecore. Bekaert editors from all over the world can contribute to the site via Sitecore, without losing the advantage of centralized content validation.

“In the near feature we will also add a faceted search,” adds Ben Van Damme. “This will allow visitors to search for solutions based on materials or characteristics, rather than on product names. The site will be able to suggest what customers need, even if they don’t know the Bekaert specifications.” Extensive user testing based on mockups indicates that Bekaert has truly succeeded in addressing all target groups, across various levels of expertise.

“The Reference has shown thorough insight in translating our business objectives,” says Stephen Delvoye, eCommunications Manager at Bekaert. “Though a website is never finished, The Reference’s sound advice, together with their graphical and technical skills, have made this a project to be proud of. The extensions planned in the near future will further improve the added value of our new global website. With this website we aim to be as present online as we are in our markets.”

Technical Description

Solution Special Ingredients

• Forward Search is used for powerful search capabilities.
• Flash and flash scripting is used for the History and Global Map.
• XML is used for Sitecore interaction and manageability of the content through Sitecore.
• Different Web services are used for the Jobs and Press content.
• The unique mobile Siruna transcoding platform is used in conjunction with the mobile section  for mobile broadcasting.