Future-ready headless platform for Kolping Akademie

The Kolping Akademie, one of the leading providers of vocational training, further education, and social projects in southern Germany, supports thousands of participants each year on their path to professional qualification and personal development. With a strong focus on practical learning, social responsibility, and lifelong education, the organization has established itself as a key driver of modern educational services and digital transformation in the training sector.

The Kolping Akademie serves a wide range of target groups – from young professionals and job seekers to companies and participants in continuing education programs. The existing website made it difficult to address these audiences in a structured and user-friendly way. In addition, the wide variety of educational offerings lacked visibility, making it harder for users to find relevant courses. Another key challenge was ensuring accessibility, in order to provide equal access to information and services for all users.

The Kolping Akademie partnered with TEAM23 GmbH to build a future-ready, headless platform on TYPO3. 

The reasons for choosing TYPO3 were clear: the Kolping Akademie required a flexible and future-proof system capable of handling a wide range of content, user needs, and integrations.

Within a modern headless architecture, TYPO3 serves as a robust and secure content hub, enabling seamless delivery of content across multiple channels. Its high scalability and flexibility allow for the efficient management of diverse educational offerings and continuous platform development.

By combining TYPO3 with a decoupled frontend and a powerful course search, a sustainable digital ecosystem was created that is easy to maintain, highly extensible, and perfectly suited to the growing demands of the Kolping Akademie.

The project focused on creating a target group-oriented digital experience for the Kolping Akademie. To achieve this, the needs of different user groups were analysed and translated into a clear, intuitive design system that guides users efficiently to relevant content and services.

The goals for this relaunch were:

• Strong focus on user-centered design and addressing diverse target groups effectively
• Proven expertise in complex TYPO3 headless architectures and scalable platform solutions
• Ability to translate complex requirements into intuitive interaction and navigation concepts
• High standards in accessibility (barrier-free design) from concept to development
• Focus on building future-proof, extensible digital ecosystems through API-driven approaches

A key part of the work was the conceptualization of the entire platform, with a special emphasis on the course search as the central interaction element. The course search was designed to make the wide range of educational offers easily accessible through filtering, categorization, and a user-friendly interface. This ensures that users can quickly find suitable courses based on their individual needs.

In addition, a holistic interaction concept was developed, aligning navigation, content structure, and user journeys. Content was restructured and clustered according to user perspectives, enabling a more intuitive orientation across the website.

The implementation followed a headless approach with TYPO3 as the central content hub, allowing for flexible frontend development and seamless integration of external services. This modular and API-driven architecture ensures that future extensions and additional digital services can be integrated efficiently while maintaining a consistent user experience.

The relaunched Kolping Akademie platform resulted in a future-ready, scalable solution that improves usability and accessibility for a wide range of users. Visibility for the Akadamie’s extensive program portfolio was achieved through a powerful, user-friendly course search. This function allows users to find suitable offerings through categorization, filters and an intuitive interface.

The overall restructuring of content enhanced the user journey, enabling users to navigate the platform and find relevant, important information with ease. Thanks to TYPO3, the platform provides flexibility and scalability, encouraging future growth and development. Operating on a headless TYPO3 architecture, the platform enables seamless integrations while supporting efficient content management.

This project was realized in collaboration with TEAM23 GmbH.