Customer Solution Case Study
Audio Company Enhances Image, Cuts Costs
with Global Web Content Management
Overview “SharePoint Server 2010 helped us build a much more
Country or Region: Japan
Industry: Manufacturing—High Tech standardized, streamlined, impactful brand image.”
and Electronics Vaishali Benner, Director of Strategic Marketing, D&M Holdings
Customer Profile
D&M Holdings, based in Japan, with
2,500 employees, markets its premium
audio and video equipment through D&M Holdings manufactures nine brands of premium consumer
brands that include Denon, Marantz,
McIntosh, and Boston Acoustics.
electronics, including Denon and Marantz, and sells its products
in North America, Europe, and the Asia Pacific region. The
Business Situation
D&M Holdings needed centralized
company needed to streamline management of its brand
management of its brand websites to websites to improve marketing and reduce costs. D&M Holdings
improve marketing and reduce costs.
selected Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites as the
Solution foundation for a global web content management system. With
D&M Holdings used Microsoft
SharePoint Server 2010 as the
the solution, the company has consolidated nine different
foundation for enterprise web content website platforms into one, centralized content management for
management. Marketing teams control
content and distribute it to 74 sites.
its marketing teams, and created a cohesive brand image.
Website user experience has improved so much that the number
Benefits
Simplified web content management
of visitors leaving the site after viewing only one or two pages
Better user experience boosts has dropped nearly 25 percent. Further, the company expects to
marketing success
Better collaboration, less complexity,
recover its investment in the solution in just one year, due to
big savings reduced IT complexity and software licensing costs.
Streamlined development and
integration
“Our global brand Situation and this negatively affected our
D&M Holdings, a privately owned marketing exposure,” says Vaishali
websites lacked design electronics company headquartered in Benner, Director of Strategic Marketing
Japan, produces and markets premium at D&M Holdings.
and branding continuity, audio and video electronics equipment.
and this negavitely Its nine brands are renowned for quality Furthermore, creating or modifying
and innovation, and their longevity website content was a time-consuming
affected our marketing proves this: Denon, established in 1910, and costly process. Many of the
just celebrated its 100-year anniversary. company’s websites relied on older
exposure.” Other D&M Holdings brands include content management software, but, says
Vaishali Benner, Director of Strategic Marantz, McIntosh, Boston Acoustics, Benner, “Using our legacy platform, it
Marketing, D&M Holdings Denon DJ, Calrec, and Allen & Heath. took a few hours to do a simple task like
post a new product to a website.” To
D&M Holdings has grown through offload this burden for the marketing
acquisitions and has marketing, department, the company hired a
manufacturing, and distribution centers freelancer to update its websites, which
in the Asia Pacific region, North America, resulted in additional costs. Also, it was
and Europe. As a result of its acquisitions, difficult to feature product promotions
D&M Holdings experienced a because the structure of the websites
proliferation of disparate IT systems and varied enormously. For instance, only
services, including more than 200 some D&M Holdings sites could support
consumer websites which were based on banner ads. Therefore, ads had to be
nine different technology platforms such created in different sizes, using different
as the PHP scripting language, and creative material, which further increased
Adobe ColdFusion. It also relied on the costs and impeded collaboration.
services of multiple hosting providers “Requirements varied so much that our
and third-party design and development marketing teams had no reason to work
firms to maintain these websites. “Our together on design or messaging.”
hosting, development, and software
costs were very high,” says Lalit Panda, For its European sites, which span many
Chief Information Officer at D&M countries and cultures, D&M Holdings
Holdings. “And, we did not have found it extremely challenging to
centralized control over our website support multiple versions of the same
source code or content.” content in different languages. Each
country built and maintained individual
D&M Holdings must coordinate product websites for each supported language,
branding and website management which totaled 22 websites in all. “We
efforts among marketing offices and couldn’t maintain brand consistency
distributors. However, the decentralized because the central European office
website environment challenged the wasn’t controlling content for all the
company’s global marketing efforts. Each sites,” says Bert Kiggen, Director of
region, country, and even product Product and Marketing at D&M Holdings
distributor developed its own website in Europe. “Nothing was shared. This
content. Thus, it was impossible for the wasn’t a sustainable strategy for meeting
company to maintain a cohesive brand our objectives of premium brand
image. “Our global brand websites management and effective cost
lacked design and branding continuity, containment.”
Solution
In late 2009, D&M Holdings conducted a
thorough evaluation of web content
management systems, including
solutions from EMC and Autonomy
Interwoven. It also evaluated Microsoft
SharePoint 2010 for Internet Sites. The
company’s primary requirements of the
new platform were that it help to reduce
cost and complexity, integrate well with
the rest of the company’s IT
infrastructure, was easy-to-use for
nontechnical people, and could extend
to support future integrations, such as e-
commerce, customer relationship
management, and a company intranet.
“On all those points, SharePoint 2010
proved to be the best solution,” says
Figure 1. New Marantz website Panda.
home page, based on
SharePoint Server 2010. D&M Holdings then engaged Omnie
And for customers, the website Solutions, a Microsoft Registered Partner
experience was less than ideal. For with expertise with Microsoft SharePoint
example, on some D&M Holdings sites Server, to help the company design,
search functionality was limited, while develop, and implement an enterprise
other sites did not even support search web content management solution
functionality. Navigation was based on SharePoint 2010 for Internet
cumbersome, and customers found it Sites. “Omnie is our go-to partner in this
challenging to locate product project,” says Benner. “The company
information. Because users could not understands our business and how to
find what they were looking for, the address our needs in the SharePoint
“bounce rate,” or rate at which visitors environment.”
left the websites after viewing just one or
two pages, was high. “On the Denon U.S. In March 2010, Omnie Solutions helped
site, our bounce rate was 30 percent,” D&M Holdings begin a global migration
says Benner. To improve the user of its websites. The project includes
experience, D&M Holdings turned to consolidating more than 200 disparate
outside vendors to provide sites to 74, centralizing content
enhancements to search functionality management to core marketing teams in
and other components of the sites. “We Europe, North America, and the Asia
were spending money to fix something Pacific region, and relocating website
that was truly broken. We were using infrastructure to the D&M Holdings
stopgap measures when we really North American headquarters in
needed a complete website Mahwah, New Jersey.
infrastructure overhaul.”
Creating an Engaging User Experience disseminate content from its core
The new D&M Holdings sites feature marketing sites to individual country or
streamlined navigation and easy-to- distributor sites. For instance, the core
browse product catalogs. Developers marketing team in Europe, which is
used the Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 based in the Netherlands, creates
Ultimate development system, Microsoft website content for all of the company’s
Visual Studio Team Foundation Server European sites. An automated workflow
2010, Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 in SharePoint Server 2010 ensures that
Web Parts, and Microsoft SharePoint content is routed to and reviewed by a
Designer 2010 to create a rich, designated series of approvers such as
interactive user experience. (See Figure 1 copywriters, editors, designers, and
for an example of one of these new marketing managers. All digital assets,
sites.) D&M Holdings incorporated including graphics, logos, text, and
animations to boost visibility for multimedia files, are stored in a central
products and services being promoted, repository in SharePoint lists. Individual
and mapping functionality to help site owners select the assets they need
customers locate nearby resellers. such as graphics and website copy,
Developers also used SharePoint list translate the content, and publish it in
functionality to create a repository to their respective languages. Global
store and manage product catalog data. changes (such as modifying site
“Visual Studio 2010, and its seamless navigation) are automatically propagated
connection to SharePoint Server 2010, to all the sites.
helps our team dramatically,” says Niraj
Patpatia, Technical Architect and Senior Integrating and Improving Search
Business Analyst at Omnie Solutions. “We To help customers find information more
can deploy code directly within the easily, the company employed search
SharePoint Server environment.” functionality in SharePoint Server 2010.
Using managed metadata capabilities in
Centralizing Web Content SharePoint Server, D&M Holdings
Management centrally defines taxonomies for its
Developers customized the environment website content, which allows the
using out-of-the-box SharePoint Server company to easily manage and apply
2010 features such as master pages and tags to website content to deliver
page layouts, which allow D&M Holdings context-sensitive search results. This
to create and maintain “templates” that metadata tagging capability also helps
include site design and branding the company increase its visibility in
guidelines for each brand. Content search engines and attract more
owners in each brand’s marketing customers to its sites.
department use a web-based text editor
to modify site content without help from Connecting to Social Networking Sites
the IT department. The site templates D&M Holdings also uses configurable
also allow D&M Holdings to quickly and Web Parts in SharePoint Server 2010 to
easily deploy new sites as it enters new connect its websites to popular social
markets or works with new distributors. media forums such as Twitter, YouTube,
and Facebook. This is just the first step in
D&M Holdings relies on the variations the company’s strategy to capitalize on
feature of SharePoint Server 2010 to technology to increase exposure for its
“With SharePoint Server brand. D&M Holdings plans to extend to complete the migration of its
this connection to its customer remaining six brand sites to the new
2010, the process is so relationship management (CRM) system. platform by August 2011. In future
“For instance, if a customer comments on phases, D&M Holdings plans to deploy
simple that our a product through a social networking an e-commerce platform to enhance its
marketing staff can make site, this detail will be captured in CRM,” business-to-business sales capabilities,
explains Benner. using Microsoft Commerce Server 2009.
quick modifications and The company will use Microsoft BizTalk
Consolidating Infrastructure Server 2010 to enable interoperation
updates to the sites Previously, D&M Holdings maintained among SharePoint Server 2010,
without IT intervention.” website infrastructure in dispersed data Commerce Server 2009, the company’s
centers in multiple countries. The new Oracle-based enterprise resource
Vaishali Benner, Director of Strategic infrastructure is located in a single data planning (ERP) system, as well as third-
Marketing, D&M Holdings center in New Jersey, where two servers party shipping and taxation service
run the Windows Server 2008 R2 providers.
operating system and SharePoint Server
2010, and two servers run Microsoft SQL Benefits
Server 2008 R2 Enterprise data Using SharePoint Server 2010, D&M
management software. Active Directory Holdings has simplified its web content
Domain Services provides user management processes, empowered its
authentication capabilities to manage marketing departments, reduced IT costs,
access to the authoring environment. improved customer experience, and
D&M Holdings uses the content streamlined its development efforts.
deployment feature of SharePoint Server
2010 to schedule and control the Simplified Web Content Management
publishing of content from its authoring In its previous environment, content for
environment to the production each country and distributor website was
environment, and it relies on Microsoft developed independently, with no
System Center Operations Manager 2007 oversight from core marketing teams.
R2 to manage and monitor the health of D&M Holdings managed and maintained
its SharePoint Server environment and to more than 200 websites. With SharePoint
help ensure top performance and Server 2010, D&M Holdings has reduced
availability. the number of sites by more than 50
percent. The company uses features such
Future Plans as master pages, page layouts, and site
In April 2011, after gathering and variations to enable its marketing teams
organizing data from its 200 disparate in Europe, North America, and the Asia
sites and finalizing guidelines for a new Pacific region to manage website content
global brand image, D&M Holdings for the company’s nine brands and
completed its migration of the Denon, distribute it for publication to 74 sites, in
Marantz, and McIntosh websites to 18 countries, and 10 languages. “With
SharePoint Server 2010. “The SharePoint Server 2010, the process is so
development was one of the quickest simple that our marketing staff can make
parts of this comprehensive brand quick modifications and updates to the
revitalization process,” explains Manish sites without IT intervention,” says
Om Maheshwary, Chief Executive Officer Benner. “That was impossible for us to
at Omnie Solutions. The company plans do, before. It took hours of our time and
“SharePoint Server 2010 we had to engage outside resources. through the website. “When a customer
The improvement is astronomical.” posts to Facebook or Twitter about one
has helped us of our products, we can capture those
Alex Alexandrou, Vice President of Web details in CRM,” explains Benner. “This
collaborate and Technology at D&M Holdings adds, will provide us with valuable insight into
cooperate on a global “With SharePoint Server 2010 as our the customer’s situation should they later
global web content management system, contact us with a question or a service
scale.” our environment is vastly simpler. We request.”
can now truly support the marketing
Bert Kiggen, Director of Product and
department in its efforts to build and Better Collaboration, Less Complexity
Marketing, D&M Holdings, Europe
maintain a strong, global brand Means Big Savings
presence.” Enterprise web content management
capabilities have helped D&M Holdings
Better User Experience Boosts marketing teams achieve better brand
Marketing Success consistency, innovation, and cost savings.
Now that all D&M Holdings sites are “Now that all regions have the same
based on a common infrastructure, the website capabilities, if one region creates
company’s dispersed marketing teams a unique website innovation or
can use the same website assets—such enhancement, all regions benefit from it,”
as creative campaign materials for a explains Benner. “Essentially, we are now
product promotion—across multiple splitting many of our design, marketing,
sites. The consistency results in a better and development costs three ways,
customer experience. “Before, among among Europe, North America, and Asia
regions, our brand sites had a very Pacific instead of creating similar
disjointed look and feel. SharePoint features, functionalities, or product
Server 2010 helped us build a much promotions three different times.”
more standardized, streamlined,
impactful brand image,” says Benner. Additionally, the common platform
encourages collaboration. “Before, we
Greater consistency, improved had little reason to collaborate on a
navigation, engaging content that global scale because each region had its
includes rich multimedia experiences, separate challenges to overcome and
and enhanced search capabilities all technologies to work within,” says
contribute to a better customer Kiggen. “Now, we are working with the
experience.“ The bounce rate for our same tools, in the same environment.
Denon site has decreased by 29 SharePoint Server 2010 has helped us
percent—that’s almost a 100 percent collaborate and cooperate on a global
improvement since implementing scale.”
SharePoint Server 2010,” says Benner. In
addition, D&M Holdings takes advantage From an IT perspective, SharePoint
of the extensible nature of the Server 2010 helps D&M Holdings reduce
SharePoint Server 2010 environment to costs by reducing IT complexity. “All of
improve customer service in creative our brand websites are now hosted
ways. For instance, by integrating its centrally in the same data center. We
CRM system with SharePoint Server have reduced our footprint and
2010, D&M Holdings will be able to increased our control,” says Panda.
capture key customer information “Enhancing our marketing efforts and
achieving operational cost savings are
“The money we are essential to our success.” D&M Holdings
saving in hosting, will recoup its investment in SharePoint
Server 2010 quickly. “The money we are
development, and saving in hosting, development, and
software licensing costs will result in a
software licensing costs return on our investment in SharePoint
will result in a return on Server 2010 in just one year,” says Panda.
“And that is not including the time
our investment in savings we are realizing from the
decreased burden of content
SharePoint Server 2010 management on our IT staff.”
in just one year.” Streamlined Development and
Lalit Panda, Chief Information Officer, Integration
D&M Holdings The SharePoint Server 2010 environment
also streamlines development and
integration work for Omnie Solutions
and D&M Holdings. “With SharePoint
Server 2010, we reduce our time-to-
market for websites by approximately 30
percent,” says Om Maheshwary. “I
attribute this to out-of-the-box
functionality, such as prebuilt SharePoint
Server Web Parts, and easy connection
to other systems.”
Alexandrou adds, “With SharePoint
Server 2010 and the rest of our
Microsoft-based environment, we
experience tight integration and strong
product support. In this environment, we
don’t need to do special, complex
integrations to get things to work. We
have the luxury of working with products
that are easy to integrate and work
within the Microsoft .NET Framework to
expand our capabilities enterprisewide.”
For More Information Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010
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products and services, call the business collaboration platform for the
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For more information about Omnie
Solutions products and services, call
(404) 442-6200 or visit the website at:
www.omniesolutions.com
For more information about D&M
Holdings products and services, call
(81) 44-670-1111 or visit the website
at: Software and Services Technologies
www.dm-holdings.com Microsoft Server Product Portfolio − Active Directory Domain Services
− Microsoft SharePoint 2010 for
Internet Sites Partners
− Microsoft SharePoint Server 2010 Omnie Solutions
− Microsoft SharePoint Designer
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Microsoft Visual Studio
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