Case Study: Master Data Management for European Websites

The Berlitz company manages more than 550 offices in over 70 countries worldwide and is one of the most successful global players in education and language training, intercultural training and global leadership training. We created the centralized Berlitz webshop and information pages of all European countries. Seminars and courses from Berlitz service portfolio can be booked online via the webshops while Pimcore is used as an MDM system, which is interfaced to the Berlitz ERP and other 3rd party systems.

Business Needs

Berlitz planned to relaunch the 16 European websites, whereby the data should be managed centrally. The national websites are optionally provided with an online shop. Because the product assortment is very complex, a suitable data structure had to be worked out, which fulfilled the necessary requirements. A later extension of this data structure had to be provided as well. Another important point was the mapping of arbitrary other data structures, such as company locations to implement a location-based search. Third-party systems should be connected via interfaces, for example to the ERP system used by Berlitz or the swoox document search system. Another important aspect was the simple and flexible maintenance of the content - as well for multiple languages and punctuation.

Pimcore Solution

Solution partner LifeStyle Webconsulting developed a multi-site solution with Pimcore as the central data management system for 16 European countries in which Berlitz is represented. Pimcore is used to manage rich content and prices for language courses, seminars, workshops, language camps for kids & teens and study abroad programs, which are published on webshops of different countries later on. Also, it is used as a translation tool for the text bricks of 16 different countries (CMS and shop systems). An ERP system and other 3rd party systems are connected to Pimcore via Pimcore REST API. Also done by this is the functionality to keep on track of the movement of free and used participant places. The flexible asset management of Pimcore is used to manage images for certain CMS and webshop clients.

Business Results

The websites were launched by country. Central functionalities such as the course finder could be implemented well due to the now existing data structures, and also country-specific features could also be taken into account in the course of the project for this reason. The asset management and the product data maintenance, which can be controlled via the complex permission management, can be carried out centrally via the Pimcore installation.