VDI Wissensforum Rebuilds Website for Growth and TYPO3 Scalability
Amplifying a Training Platform with a Future-Ready TYPO3 Solution
The VDI Wissensforum (VDI WF), a leading professional training provider for engineers in Europe, wanted to overhaul their online platform to better deliver their growing range of online and on-site seminars and support their plans to expand internationally. They partnered with digital agency BRANDUNG to build a flexible, scalable system based on TYPO3 that tightly integrates with their other customer systems.
The result is a cutting-edge hybrid content-commerce architecture that combines the content flexibility of TYPO3 with the e-commerce power of Magento. This “best of both worlds” approach optimizes usability and content workflow for VDI WF's complex requirements across more than 2,600 annual events and 37,000 attendees.
Overcoming An Outdated Legacy System
VDI WF’s original website used an outdated version of TYPO3 that lacked modern features and integrations. As their course catalog and customer base expanded globally, the site needed to keep up. Upgrading the entire digital ecosystem to TYPO3 became critical to stay competitive. After a thorough review process that included a three-tiered pitch process with multiple agencies, VDI WF selected BRANDUNG for an relaunch project due to their TYPO3 expertise, user-centered approach, and demonstration of excellence.
Modular Design Enables Continuous Growth
A key project goal was creating an adaptable site architecture to handle ongoing expansions to VDI WF's multilingual seminar catalog. BRANDUNG employed a modular design pattern to provide this flexibility. As new course categories emerge, additional content modules can slot in without the need to rebuild other areas. TYPO3’s out-of-the-box internationalization features mean that VDI WF can swiftly launch dedicated country sites when they have translated course content. BRANDUNG built custom indexing and faceted search with Solr for VDI WF, helping users find relevant seminars among the extensive learning options.
A 360-degree Service from the Customer’s and VDI’s POV
BRANDUNG implemented a series of API integrations between TYPO3 and VDI WF's backend systems, like their CRM and ERP platforms. These connections allow for seamless data sharing to power user experiences like:
- Accessing booking history and participation records
- Checking real-time enrollment processing
- Various data imports, such as contact-, location-, category-, sponsoring and company-imports
- Participation bookings via the Magento integration
On the technical side, RabbitMQ message queues serve as a reliable intermediary layer to move data between the TYPO3 frontend and other systems behind the scenes. This infrastructure enabled brandung to build 360-degree customer views and create simplified self-service workflows for VDI WF.
Examples for VDI's diverse seminar catalogue:
The Human Touch: Collaboration & Agile Process
From initial 2-day kickoff workshops through launch and beyond, BRANDUNG leveraged an agile, collaborative process to continuously align on goals and requirements. Follow-through initiatives included:
- Internationalization (launch international site in 2023)
- Personalization (collaborative UX process driven by journey mapping and personas; improve with account features providing tailored experiences)
- Optimization (tracking and SEO enhancements in 2022)
VDI WF continues to evolve the TYPO3 site in an ongoing partnership with BRANDUNG. Through their open dialog approach and continuous proven expertise, BRANDUNG has become a trusted advisor that grows alongside VDI on its digital journey.
“Thanks to the collaboration with BRANDUNG, our online portal now has an adaptable and expandable system that supports our continuously growing range of seminars, keeps us up-to-date, and helps on the path to internationalization. TYPO3 was the right choice and certainly will be our best option in the future.”
– Henrike Böser, Team Leader, Online Marketing, VDI
Equipped for Growth
With BRANDUNG’s expertise, VDI Wissensforum transformed their digital ecosystem into a future-ready platform equipped to scale with the growth of their business. Standard TYPO3 capabilities like multilingual content support and translation workflows laid the groundwork for planned international expansion.
The positive reception from customers and internal teams alike has VDI WF eager to continue evolving the TYPO3 implementation in an ongoing partnership with BRANDUNG.
Learn more about TYPO3 for internationalization.
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