Germany-based MICROS-FIDELIO GmbH is a subsidiary of MICROS Systems, Inc. and is the headquarters for the regions Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA). MICROS Systems, Inc. is a global market leader in the hospitality, specialty retail, cruise and travel industry sectors. More than 330,000 customers use the systems around the world. MICROS currently has sales and development locations in more than 140 countries and is listed on the NASDAQ under the symbol ‘MCRS.’
“ With our certified Sitecore Administrators, we can develop our corporate web site independently. That is a big adventure if you run a huge, multi-language web site like we do. Adding and updating content in 15 languages, keeping a consistent design and branding, building out new sections and functionalities, integration of a third-party shop system – with Sitecore it’s not a problem! „
- Rita Haertwig, Director Marketing EMEA
Challenge
Web content processes at MICROS-Fidelio were highly decentralized. Business units and regional divisions created the product and brand content for local target audiences on aging, non-scalable content management platforms. Implementation, maintenance, training and support were very time consuming and expensive. Product content was often outdated across the websites in 21 EMEA countries and 15 languages. Keeping consistency in messaging and look and feel was always a big and costly issue. Therefore MICROS-Fidelio was looking for a corporate content management solution (CMS) to build a multi-language information and lead-generation portal. This should also lead to a centralized approach based on one standard technology hosted in the Datacenter in Germany. With the new CMS MICROS-Fidelio wanted to be able to maintain, support and develop the system without help from expensive agencies. The goal was to introduce a unified, more cost-effective solution and to increase conversion rates and brand perception in EMEA.
Solution
MICROS-Fidelio knew that finding the right CMS wasn’t going to be an easy task. Many manufacturers claim to be best, but once MICROS-Fidelio started to dig deeper, looking specifically for flexibility and an open approach, they found that there are only a handful of good choices worldwide. After evaluating the market, MICROS-Fidelio took a closer look at Sitecore and TYPO3: Test Systems were implemented in the datacenter, rolled out to 11 countries and tested for six weeks. MICROS-Fidelio felt that the advantages of Sitecore standard technology, functionality, ease of use and worldwide vendor support, scalability were outstanding.
Result
Rita Haertwig, Director Marketing EMEA, is thrilled about the advantages they achieved with Sitecore, saying, “The implementation including translated content imported to the CMS turned out to be very easy. After the EU portal launch, the roll-out to 21 countries took us only four months. This was due to outstanding, direct Sitecore support during beta testing, implementation and post-sales. The documentation and training is very easy to understand, even for some users without an IT background."
Haertwig continues, "With our certified Sitecore Administrators, we can develop our corporate web site independently. That is a big adventure if you run a huge, multi-language web site like we do. Adding and updating content in 15 languages, keeping a consistent design and branding, building out new sections and functionalities, integration of a third-party shop system – with Sitecore it’s not a problem! In the next steps we plan to add a newsletter module and connect to our SharePoint intranet system. Marketing is now able to implement new modules to the web and to react quickly to any market changes. We can even run international campaigns at short notice.”