Sensus, a global leader in utility infrastructure systems and resource conservation strengthen their presence worldwide by enhancing their ability to manage the messaging around their proven products and solutions at a global scale using a single cost effective tool. Liferay 6's latest features help Sensus be more competitive by allowing them to represent their offerings in an extremely intuitive way while maintaining product hierarchy and without sacrificing flexibility. With the ability to share divisions, product lines, products and solutions across regions when needed, Sensus now has a solution at their disposal that will help them grow their business worldwide and provide the needed messaging intuitively and in a way that will scale into the future.
IAC 2024 - IA Fast Track to Search Focused AI Solutions
Sensus Uses Liferay to Strengthen Their Global Web Presence
1. Sensus Uses Liferay to
Strengthen their Global Web
Presence
Alaaeldin El-Nattar Danny Ayers
Principal Architect, Rivet Logic Global Online Marketing Communications Manager, Sensus
2. Sensus Overview
Overview
10,000
Customers
42
Loca2ons
on
5
Con2nents
Over
3,600
Employees
$865
million
sales
Product Portfolio
Communica2ons
Network
Smart
Meters
Advanced
Metrology
Distribu2on
Automa2on
Demand
Response
Home
Area
Network
Utility Customers
Smart
Grid
Ligh2ng
Electric
-‐
Leading
Market
Posi2on
in
North
America
Services
Gas
-‐
Leading
Market
Posi2on
in
North
America
SoSware
Water
-‐
(and
heat)
Leading
Market
Posi2on
Globally
3. Rivet Logic Overview
• Award-winning professional services focused on enabling:
• Collaboration and Community Platforms
• Enterprise Content Management
• Web Content Management and Portals
• Using Leading Open Source Software
• Company Facts
• Headquartered in Reston, VA
• Regional Offices in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles
• Near-shore Development Center in Costa Rica
4. Rivet Logic and Liferay
• Certified Partner since 2006
• Platinum Partner
• Conduct Public Training on East Coast USA
• Contributor (various means)
• Host of first ever East Coast User Conference in 2009
• 25+ Liferay implementations
5. The Sensus Challenge
• Disparate messaging around products and solutions
• Each region has their own CMS
• US/Canada have a custom built CMS
• Maintainability issues
• Flexibility issues
• Integration with external systems is tough
• Content localization is not possible
6. Sensus.com 1.0
• US/Canada website
• Inflexible look and feel
• Inflexible product and
solution structure
• Did the job but couldn’t
grow to meet the
global needs
7. Sensus.com 1.0 Global Sites
• Look and feel
inconsistency
• Lack of control over
messaging around
products and
solutions
• Inability to manage
regional content
separately
13. Dynamic Web Content
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14. Localization
• Liferay natively supports localization
• All portal content will be localizable
• One tool for all regional authors
• Same content can be authored in multiple languages
16. Liferay Challenges
• Sensus needed the following:
• Human readable URLs
• One page per solution
• One page per division
• One page per product line
• One page per product
• Product line and product navigation
• Geolocation
18. Liferay Challenges
• Liferay’s default URLs are not good enough
• Liferay allows for creating custom friendly URLs
http://sensus.com/web/usca/solution?id=advanced-metering-infrastructure-ami
VS
http://sensus.com/web/usca/solution/advanced-metering-infrastructure-ami
27. The Basic Concept
• Completely decouple authoring from presentation
• A simple authoring process:
• Authors create content using Web forms
• Authors categorize content
• Content is auto-published to the right spot
• Look and feel is automatically taken care of
28. How it works (Authoring)
ARTICLE
Lorem ipsum this is an article that
Web Form
I’m writing to show random text
in this box I also need an image he
Lorem ipsum this is an article that
I’m writing to show random text
Authoring
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29. How it works (Tagging)
Country
P U B L I S H
US
ARTICLE
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I’m writing to show random text
in this box I also need an image he
Lorem ipsum this is an article that
I’m writing to show random text AMI System
in this box I also need an image
s
Product
AMI
Lorem ipsum this is an article that PUB Line
I’m writing to show random text LISH
in this box I also need an image
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Systems
Division
Water
31. Comparison
• Before • After
• Non scalable, proprietary CMS that did • Enterprise level solution + community
not allow control of design, layout, and and enterprise support
most content.
• Dynamic CMS that meets the needs of
• Did not have flexibility to adapt to current business and provides flexibility
continued growth.
to adapt to future.
• Did not support regionalization,
internationalization, and 3rd party • Have infrastructure to support
integration (Sharepoint, etc..) regionalized product offerings and
• Poor readiness for Marketing (SEO, internationalized languages
SEM, micro sites, Salesforce • Support for 3rd party integration,
integration) document management, SSO
• Overall a reduced ability to extend our • Marketing / content creation ready: SEO,
current web offering quickly deploy micro sites/landing
pages, WYSIWYG editing, drag and
drop layouts
• Already looking at ways to expand into
other parts of our business (training,
document management) due to the
flexibility that Liferay offers
33. What the Future Holds
• Sharepoint integration
• Adding global sites to sensus.com
• French
• German
• Content translations on International Site
• English
• French
• Spanish
34. Standards & Openness
• Liferay is:
• Standards compliant
• Easy to maintain
• Open source
• Highly customizable
• Has a healthy community