Rittal Makes the Switch: FirstSpirit CMS Selected as Platform for Global E-Commerce Portal

Content integration solution from e-Spirit for worldwide supplier of enclosure and housing technologies

Rittal has chosen to implement the FirstSpirit content management system (CMS). Rittal is a leading supplier worldwide for innovative enclosure and housing technologies, power distribution systems, system climate control, and IT Infrastructure. The company, based in Herborn, Germany, will use the software from e-Spirit in developing a new e-commerce portal. The extensive project will include integration of multiple components in FirstSpirit as the uniform content integration platform, which will act as a central "hub" to harness content and functions from various systems for the Rittal web shop portal. Other solutions to be integrated with the FirstSpirit CMS will include, in addition to the shopping cart software, existing solutions for media asset management and product information management (PIM), a product configurator, and SAP. The goal: to offer an attractively designed, well organized, and user-friendly portal that allows customers and other interested parties to access information on Rittal's comprehensive portfolio, as well as to customize products and place orders directly online.

The project will launch in Germany, but international rollouts in Europe, USA, and China are scheduled to follow. The launch of the portal is set for spring 2011 and is to be completed in just five months – and that is why the company needed a CMS solution that offered the best possible integration capability and out-of-the-box functionalities, thus satisfying requirements for ease of use and multilingualism.

"The idea was that the new e-commerce portal should reflect Rittal's high standards for innovation and quality", said Matthias Knopf, director of electronic media at Rittal. "With FirstSpirit we found a future-safe CMS solution that would allow us to simplify our editing processes, and above all one that would allow us to effectively bring together all of the different information that is required for an online shop. This not only simplifies daily work for our editors, but also offers our customers a modern e-commerce portal that meets their requirements in every possible way".

In future editors can easily access all of the systems through the CMS interface, thus allowing them to bring together in a single, standardized e-commerce platform such varied information as images from the media database, product data from the PIM, information for editing that is being maintained in FirstSpirit, product configuration options, along with an automatic availability check and price calculation from the SAP system.

Rittal, the largest company of the owner-managed Friedhelm Loh Group, will use the new e-commerce portal to lay the groundwork for further growth in the strategically ever more important area of online commerce and to strengthen its position as a market leader. For e-Spirit, the new customer acquisition further advances the company's reach as a leading CMS for SAP integration. "We're pleased to have again been able to utilize our strength in integrating the most diverse systems in a standardized CMS platform – in particular, the seamless integration with an e-commerce infrastructure – to acquire another international company as a customer and we will make sure, through a rapid project implementation, that Rittal is able to quickly realize an ROI in 2011 with its new e-commerce platform", said Jörn Bodemann, CEO of e-Spirit AG.

About Rittal

Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, headquartered in Herborn, Hesse, Germany, is a leading supplier worldwide for innovative enclosure and housing technologies, power distribution systems, system climate control, and IT systems. Rittal's system solutions are used in all areas of industry, in mechanical and plant engineering, and in the ITC industry.
The company's extensive range of services include full-service solutions for modular- and energy-efficient computing centers, including the innovative security concept (formerly Litcos) and the physical data- and system backup for IT infrastructure (formerly Lampertz). The leading software provider Eplan and the software developer Mind8 are subsidiaries of Rittal and round out Rittal's system solutions with interdisciplinary engineering solutions.
Established in 1961, Rittal now has 12 production facilities, 63 subsidiaries, and 40 offices worldwide. With a workforce of 9,000 employees, Rittal is the largest company in the owner-managed Friedhelm Loh Group of Haiger in the state of Hesse in Germany. The Group as a whole employs more than 10,500 employees and in 2008 had revenues of 2.2 billion Euros. For more information, visit www.rittal.de and www.friedhelm-loh-group.com .

Pictures courtesy of Rittal GmbH & Co. KG, reprint free of charge