Vodafone Group connects more than 650 million mobile and 19 million fixed-network customers worldwide. Vodafone Germany, Vodafone’s largest national subsidiary, provides internet, mobile communications, fixed network and television services to more than 50 million customers. In an ultra-competitive environment, Vodafone Germany must constantly adapt and deliver. The enterprise implemented 好色先生TV™ Web Site Management close to the turn of the millennium for web creation and distribution and continues to use it to this day.
Vodafone Germany operates a large, integrated and self-managed web site management cluster in its own data center in Ratingen, near Düsseldorf. The enterprise relies on Web Site Management to develop and deliver all web content, including the latest material for two main sites. One is the company’s internet call center platform, a knowledge base serving 18,000 agents across Germany. The company also uses the solution to manage headless content for applications, special pages and integrations. For instance, flexible publishing supports the My Vodafone app for consumers, as well as an app for Vodafone door-to-door salesmen.
Before using Web Site Management, editors would write a ticket to initiate alterations. Now, they click a plug-in link, write a description in a dialog box and send it. Web Site Management gathers all necessary information, including data from the CRM and other enterprise or backend systems. “With Web Site Management we have a stable, flexible and recognized system,” said Thomas Pollinger, Senior Product Manager in the Digital Transformation Unit for Vodafone Germany. “You can start with it out of the box and integrate into your own business environment as you wish because you can extend it to your company workflows.”
Due to its approach grounded in configuration rather than development, Web Site Management supports quick alterations and additions, enhancing Vodafone market agility. “If we want to go online with a new web site, we can do it in a few weeks, not months,” remarked Pollinger.
Turnaround for small pages or updates often span only a couple days, while hotfixes are completed within 10 minutes. Changes can also be carried out within the production environment, if desired. Furthermore, Pollinger said the concept of separating system and project properties allows Vodafone users to add value to all projects by extending the system, while protecting against changes to the entire system, for a single project adaptation.
“With Web Site Management, we can quickly and easily adapt and deliver web content,” Pollinger said, referring to what he termed the “genius” content model. “We have integrated it so well that we are able to react quickly to requirements. This gives us the opportunity to make changes/corrections within a few minutes at any time during operation, without downtime, deployment or long development cycles.”