Audi - CMS 4 Importers

T-Systems is implementing a Content Management System (CMS) for Audi AG, which permits around 100 importers worldwide to create their own country-specific websites quickly and in conformance with the applicable corporate identity rules.

Corporate identity plays a particularly important role in the context of the Internet because differences between various countries are more apparent here than elsewhere. At Audi, the local subsidiaries themselves used to be responsible for the technology employed.

Labor-intensive and occasionally prone to cause availability problems, this approach also prevented the company from maintaining consistent quality among Audi’s websites in the Internet. In the interest of integrated branding, a tool to address this problem was needed. The new solution had to be designed for use not only in the German headquarters, but also abroad.

Today, together with T‑Systems, Audi AG provides its importers – about 100 companies worldwide – with a Content Management System (CMS) that ensures consistent corporate identity and compliance with security and editorial standards for all country-specific website pages everywhere in the world. T-Systems handles the introduction and support of the system – also on a local basis at the importers’ offices, when necessary. The benefits for Audi are overwhelming, because today Audi is able to set up an Internet website for a small country within five days.

Master design

In the course of preliminary considerations, decided to use the content of the English-language website www.audi.com as the basis of a so-called “master“. It would serve as the repository for all content, while the individual country websites could select the content of relevance to them from the master – “inheriting“ it in effect, much like the concept of object orientation. The corporate history, for example, which is practically mandatory on every website, is available in only one single variant now – with the option of translating it into the relevant local language. In addition, there is local content. When importers prepare special content that might also be of interest to other countries, they have the ability to file it in the central media library for reuse by others.

“The master is like a store: here, too, there are far more things than can be seen in the store window, i.e. on audi.com. In a store, page content such as texts and photos are produced, but it’s the decorator who decides what ends up in the window,“ says Jürgen Reimann, project manager at T‑Systems, to illustrate the concept.

VW adopts successful concept

And the new system also made it possible to dramatically simplify and automate collaboration with the external agencies providing service – no less than four altogether.

“Optimized processes and reduced consultation requirements, resulting in shorter routes to the publication of content,“ are the major improvements according to Roland Höpting, CMS for Importers Project Manager at Audi. In addition, information is substantially more up-to-date, since the new system enables importers to work in real time. Technical support is no longer required for publication. Investment costs for the CMS will be “recovered“ via Sales. A large part of the savings generated by the new system benefits the importers. Along with programming costs, a share of their agency fees is also eliminated.

Volkswagen has meanwhile adopted the system from Audi and is developing it further. “In principle, CMS for Importers can be used on a cross-brand basis as a Group solution without any problem whatsoever,“ says Marcel Åslund, who is responsible for the technical project management of the CMS launch. Which means one of the ideas behind the original planning of the CMS development has become a reality.