Building a solid digital business platform for Peri with Magnolia

PERI’s 2013 relaunch of its international websites failed due to a number of technical issues with the CMS and infrastructure used at that time. The most important requirements, like re-using content and assets across sites without duplicating content and the possibility to have sites with localized language versions and appropriate access control, could not be met in a reasonable time frame. In addition to the corporate site, event sites and product launch sites, PERI had over 50 sites, many with more than one language and hundreds of pages each. There was an urgent need for a global brand platform.

PERI wanted to maintain control over the corporate site at headquarters in Germany, while giving international subsidiaries the ability to re-use high quality digital assets and the power to create and modify localized content. By meeting these requirements, PERI would be able to get to market faster with less overall costs. With over 50 authors around the world, it was necessary to find a user-friendly solution that would minimize training requirements and enable them to easily translate content.

As PERI was looking for a solution that would enable it to re-use content across its international sites, it carried out an extensive evaluation of content management systems. Magnolia was the system of choice. The new site infrastructure allows PERI to manage hundreds of products, projects, press releases and job advertisements around the world.

With nearly ten years experience in implementing Magnolia, Lemonize had the skills and experience to propose a customized solution that would enable PERI to achieve their targets of globalization, internationalization, localization and high usability. In addition, SysEleven was chosen as a powerful hosting partner of the infrastructure.

Globalization

All of PERI’s sites are based on one single, centralized infrastructure, making it easy to re-use design and implementation across sites. Changes made to the master instance immediately apply to all sites worldwide. Initial cloning of the "master" site is only a matter of seconds. The clone is a full-featured site with all content available in high quality and in different languages, ready to be tailored/localized to the subsidiary's needs.

To achieve its global digital strategy, PERI asked Lemonize to extend concepts and add on globalization extensions like site and language scoping, content re-use and localized variations. Magnolia already enables companies to configure different permissions, allowing authors to log in and see just their local sites. Lemonize also customized Magnolia to enable subsidiary authors to see only the languages of their site.

Usability

Managing a global online presence across multiple countries and languages is a challenging task. With more than 50 authors of different nationalities spread across the world, the company needed a platform that would be easy to use. Reducing errors by content editors mean lower operational and management costs.

Magnolia provides a great experience for content authors. Its app framework allows developers to create custom apps to manage specific site sections. Just as apps on mobile phones make tasks easier and more focused, these apps allow editors to focus on one task at a time. Lemonize implemented 14 custom task-focused apps to create a more efficient and streamlined user experience. This reduced complexity for editors, who now use separate apps to manage the whole product and project portfolio as well as all content around the world.

Localization

Lemonize implemented geo-local customizations, since PERI wanted localized variants of digital content in addition to the ability to maintain all content and digital assets in multiple languages. PERI subsidiaries around the world can re-use high quality digital assets as well as create and modify localized content suited to local circumstances.

Internationalization

With over 50 sites across the world, PERI needed all of its content and digital assets to be available in multiple languages. Magnolia allows it to maintain all content and assets (as well as their translations) centrally to re-use on global sites. Each subsidiary can decide which subset of languages to maintain.

The multilingual user interface makes it easy for content editors to use Magnolia in different languages. Lemonize ensured that Magnolia’s internationalization functionality is deeply integrated in all apps, enabling users to have access to inline help and descriptions in both English and German. While assets are created initially in English and German, content variants are customized for different countries and languages.

PERI’s new globalized online presence allows it to create and re-use high quality content much faster than before. PERI is now able to develop new sites and microsites easily and to re-use content with local variations. Because Magnolia is extremely flexible and easy to customize, PERI has been able to add functionality as it goes, creating task-based apps that make its sites easy to manage.

By thinking globally, PERI was able to cut down on infrastructure and implementation costs. Because Magnolia provides a great user experience, PERI’s authors around the world are easily able to create and edit localized content in different languages. This has enabled PERI to grow and strengthen its digital presence, helping it to retain its place as one of the world’s leading companies in its industry.