New CMS
ANWB Reizen carries a total of seven different travel brands: ANWB Ledenreizen; FOX Vakanties; Pharos Reizen; SNP Natuurreizen; Cruise Travel; Travelhome and Kampeerreizen. Each of them has a separate organizational, marketing and product strategy. Not to mention, each serves its own customer base via seven separate websites with individual CMS installations, functionalities and content (destinations, travel and country information, photos of cities, etc.).
Not only is maintaining this IT set-up expensive, but it’s also difficult to reuse content or functionalities between brands. This results in missed opportunities, as by combining their travel customers – totalling 3.7 million – they would be able to use up-selling and cross-selling techniques. Since their current CMS had reached its end-of-life, ANWB Reizen decided to look for a new one that would allow them to implement their multi-label strategy more efficiently.
“The Sitecore framework gives you a kick-start for implementing Sitecore CMS,” said Marcel de Bruin, infrastructure & systems manager at ANWB Reizen.
Sitecore Framework
ANWB Reizen deliberately chose the Sitecore framework. As this framework had been implemented by Macaw numerous times in the past, it was kind of like a toolbox to them, filled with their ‘best practices’ from previous implementations. The functions and content structure for the CMS were set up generically based on a well-thought-out data model that fits the seven labels. This way, the structures, modules and content shared between the labels would have to be developed by the IT department only once. Plus, if a certain travel brand had unique requests, this framework could easily be used for creating an additional CMS application for the brand or for modifying an existing one.
Together with Macaw, ANWB Reizen firstly set up the data model and the Sitecore framework for the development and realization of a website for one label. Bearing in mind that every CMS component and layout must also be suitable to (re)use by other brands, if possible. Ultimately, they came up with the website for the first brand.
Commerce, marketing automation, lead nurturing, social collaboration.
The data model was implemented in such a way that the development time and time-to-market of the brands could be significantly reduced. This synergy also reduced development costs and made the ANWB Travel organization more scalable.
Eventually, the framework and knowledge were passed over to ANWB Reizen so their in-house developers could create any additional components that may be necessary and add them to the framework. Not to mention, they were also able to migrate the other brands themselves, with Sitecore Platinum Partner Macaw ready to help if necessary.
Once the framework was in place and the first site had been migrated, there was still room to integrate extra tools from the Sitecore toolbox. Think commerce, marketing automation, lead nurturing, social collaboration.
