Case Study: Digitalization of Internal Event Management for Logistics Corporation

With its three main business segments contract logistics, freight logistics and port logistics the Rhenus SE & Co. KG is an internationally successful logistic service. The company has its headquarter in the German city of Holzwickede (NRW). In addition to that Rhenus maintains more than 610 other branch offices with over 29.000 employees. The task was to develop an app that services as a digital companion for interested personnel and simplifies the registration process. All administration processes of event management had to be digitized for optimization.

Business Needs

For a long time, Rhenus has been relying on the so-called “Rhenus Management Forum“ to improve their executive personnel’s skills by workshops for different topics. A central administration site serves interested personnel as a registrations site and allows them to access to the content that is relevant for the workshop. On the one hand, this offer was supposed to be optimized for mobile usage and on the other hand, Rhenus aimed to design an efficient workflow for the administration and organization of events.

The task was to develop an app that services as a digital companion for interested personnel and simplifies the registration process. Interested people shall be able to register for and inform themselves about workshops and events on the eve of the event day via smartphone as is convenient. All administration processes of event management had to be digitized for optimization.

Pimcore Solution

To meet the requirements at its best a web-based management-backend with Pimcore 5 was developed for Rhenus, which is perfectly adapted to the app’s characteristics. Compared to conventional CMS applications Pimcore was implemented as a “Content as a service” (CaaS) solution in this case, which leads to the backend being independent of the frontend. As a headless CMS Pimcore provides the app with event information and entails administrative functions such as managing the availability of places and the number of participants.

Business Results

The flexible backoffice allows the Rhenus SE & Co. KG to use the developed app for every company event and to adjust it to their needs. Event participants are able to use the same functions via the “Rhenus Management Forum“ app as they can via desktop. Participants can conveniently register for different workshops via smartphone and take a look at the event’s agenda. In addition to that allows the app an overview of all participants and an easy way to contact the team responsible for organizing the event.