Container Shipping Line Hamburg Süd: Global Content Management with e-Spirit

FirstSpirit CMS is the basis for Internet presentations and scheduled global intranet

Hamburg Südamerikanische Dampfschifffahrts-Gesellschaft KG (Hamburg Süd), one of the top 20 container shipping lines in the world, is dedicated to the reliable transport of goods around the globe – be it Hamburg, Santos or Hong Kong. The content of Hamburg Süd’s corporate websites should reach its recipients as efficiently as any transported goods. That’s why the shipping company decided to introduce the FirstSpirit content management system (CMS). As of now, the CMS of manufacturer e-Spirit will serve as the central content platform for all information published on the international, multi-language websites of the shipping group. In mid January, the websites of Hamburg Süd Group (www.hamburgsud.com) , Hamburg Süd Liner Services (www.hamburgsud-line.com) , Rudolf A. Oetker KG (www.rao-shipping.com) , the tramp shipping company of the Group, and the Brazilian sister company Aliança (www.alianca.com.br) went live. The e-Spirit partner company Acando supported the Hamburg Süd in implementing these Internet projects. The next phase is currently in progress and aims at switching the entire global intranet to FirstSpirit. The new CMS offers the Hamburg Süd all benefits of establishing powerful and cost-efficient content management processes via a central platform.

Basis for a long-term web strategy

The long-term web strategy of Hamburg Süd focuses on setting up an integrated online system that meets all requirements on Internet and intranet sites as well as e-commerce applications in a future-oriented and cost-efficient way. That is why the company decided to go for FirstSpirit. Its Best-of-Breed integrated solution turned out to be the best concept compared to all other systems in the tendering process. FirstSpirit convinced with technical excellence and high usability of its editing processes as well as its open and neutral approach to all systems. FirstSpirit supplied the application server with the redesigned editing framework for seamlessly integrating the e-commerce backend into the website. Standard frameworks such as JavaServer Faces were used for dialogs. “FirstSpirit provided us with the suitable modules and out-of-the-box functionalities that we required for creating personalized user areas and associated search functions”, said Klaas Klaassen, Team Manager Java Consulting and responsible for portals and CMS at Acando, the e-Spirit partner company supporting the Hamburg Süd in implementing the web project.

“By choosing FirstSpirit we got a CMS that facilitated very easy integration into our existing infrastructure, and allows for future extensions to adapt to new requirements”, explained Jork Feeken, responsible Project and Group Manager Intranet/Internet at the Hamburg Süd. At the same time the ease of use of the software now makes it possible to transfer content management tasks to a decentralized team of editors. In the past, most of these responsibilities had to be carried out centrally. These are excellent conditions for the Hamburg Süd to start working on the next major project: Consolidating and harmonizing all international intranets on one content platform.