Yıldız Holding Realized its Content Management Systems Transformation with “Unigate CMS

Operating in the food and retail sectors, Yıldız Holding serves four billion people throughout the world with its 65 thousand employees, 58 factories and more than 300 brands. The Holding has numerous subsidiaries in Turkey and abroad, each with their own websites.

In line with the intent of reflecting the pioneering structure of the Holding to its digital assets, an update of the current infrastructure was requested to provide a better user experience and facilitate the implementation of required changes. Sharing of up-to-date information and integration between systems would enable eliminating costly transactions that require time and substantial effort in website management. Accordingly, the CMS-Content Management Systems used in these websites needed to be updated. In this way, the process of reflecting current activities in the websites would be improved, resulting in both a better customer experience and elimination of various sales and financial risks.

With Medyasoft, the digital solution firm Most Teknoloji (Most DX) operating within Yıldız Holding carried out a comprehensive CMS transformation project according to these objectives. In the project, the Unigate CMS product developed by Medyasoft technical team was used.

The Problems Experienced and Requirements before the Project

All companies operating within Yıldız Holding have different internal work processes. Since each subsidiary owns at least one brand, it carries out various marketing activities to bring its brands to its customers. It is crucial for these companies to manage all processes ranging from determining market needs to production, marketing and customer satisfaction end-to-end and in a sustainable manner. The activities run by each subsidiary in their own systems need to be compatible with the Holding’s strategy, as well as reflecting the vision of providing added value to all shareholders as these activities are reflected in Yıldız Holding’s image and processes as a whole. For this reason, there are ongoing efforts are in place towards enabling Yıldız Holding subsidiaries to rapidly adapt to the digital developments in the world and restore themselves in line with the pioneering nature of the Holding.

Before the project, individually managed CMSs were behind the websites of each subsidiary and content management of these websites were also carried out independently. The processes being integrated and managed centrally according to common standards would make it easier to add new products to websites, as well as product promotions, content updates and integration of new front-end designs, which in turn would result in improved user and customer experience.

On the other hand, the CMS infrastructures needed to be renewed in order to improve information security and security audits. To this end, adopting security as a strategic target, the Holding initially aimed to organize the security standards on its websites that serve as the main meeting point with its customers in accordance with its digital leadership strategy.

In short, the Holding wanted its subsidiary websites to be managed via a single CMS, a centralized structure in which the expert support needed by each business unit would be available and IT departments could be included in the process. Thus, the digital assets of Yıldız Holding would be made compatible with its global, pioneering structure, improvements would be made in both employee and customer experience and time and cost losses would be eliminated.

Solution: Unigate CMS

Medyasoft and Most DX, the digital solution company of Yıldız Holding collaborated to develop a project that meets all these requirements. Taking customer needs and challenges into account, Medyasoft experts enabled the websites to be managed on a single CMS instead of the different CMSs used by the subsidiaries. This transformation was realized through the Unigate CMS product developed by the Medyasoft technical team.

The Structure of the Centralized CMS Platform Adopted at Yıldız Holding

Different CMSs used by subsidiaries within Yıldız Holding were eliminated and a centralized CMS platform was designed where websites are managed via a single CMS.

As seen in Picture 1, the Unigate CMS Platform is comprised of a CMS Panel, Database, Assets and a Service layer.

The CMS Panel: It is used by CMS users. This panel is comprised of a workflow, module, template, site page, content and data management. The CMS Panel also communicates with the File Server for assets and MSSQL as database.

Database: The Unigate database is compatible with multiple MSSQL Server versions. The database architecture enables storing all content created, approvals and previous versions. Thanks to the backend architecture adding new tables to the database and organizing the related fields are very easy.

Assets: All media content can be kept in the Unigate file server, regardless of the format. In addition to adding-erasing operations, layout actions such as cutting, converting and size changing and adding content to any table can be performed on Unigate.

Service layer: Unigate service layer consists of error reports, monitoring and tracking structure. A centralized CMS management is ensured through the Unigate CMS Platform structure. Content distribution to all clients is made over this platform.

Advantages Unigate CMS Provides to Yıldız Holding

Carried out collaboratively by Medyasoft and Most DX, this project helped meet the requirements of both the business units that manage the websites and the IT unit and establish the necessary structure in order to provide a better service to the end user. Thanks to this transformation which had a positive effect on brand awareness and customer preferences, a substantial contribution was made to sustainability and profitability by applying the customer-focused approach to the Yıldız Holding websites. The CMS solution offered by Medyasoft experts have provided important benefits by meeting all the requests of Yıldız Holding in terms of Content Management Systems.

Improved User and Customer Satisfaction

It was ensured that the business units could easily use the CMS through a one-day training and user manuals, without needing any technical knowledge. Thus, the business units can upload content rapidly and easily without IT support.

With the centralized CMS, workforce losses in both IT and business units were reduced by 90%, also resulting in time savings. Also, the fact that the website offers the same quality of user experience to all users regardless of browser or device results in improved customer experience.

Information Security

It was of utmost importance that the websites within Yıldız Holding were improved in terms of security. On the other hand, having multiple websites meant multiple information security scans, which both increased costs and took time. Unigate CMS consolidated all these information security processes under a single domain and decreased the time and costs allocated to security. Thanks to Unigate CMS, developed with up-to-date technological infrastructure, security gaps are closed rapidly after information security tests and the sites can be safely opened to end users.

Centralized Management and Data Integrity

Different CMSs used in Yıldız Holding and its subsidiaries had different management displays, which meant that data was hosted in different structures and domains. This made back up and tracking processes more difficult and also increased the costs. With the centralized CMS structure designed specifically for Yıldız Holding, all back up and tracking services could be made on a single place, enabling data integrity.

The CMSs being consolidated at a single center allowed for the easy integration of peripheral systems with CMS. Thus, the IT unit did not have to work separately for each CMS and CMS could communicate with Yıldız Holding systems through web service.

Profitability

The development processes in the CMSs used within Yıldız Holding were improved with Unigate CMS, enabling cost reduction and eliminating the cost items written as losses in the profit and loss statement.

Sustainability

With Unigate CMS, rapid integration of customer requests to the system were made possible, malfunctions were rapidly handled and thus, “sustainable product life cycle,” one of the most critical requirements of Yıldız Holding, was provided.

As the most up-to-date technology is used in the CMS solution, all modification requests can be adapted to the Yıldız Holding system. This provides a sustainable maintenance support process, as well as contributing to reducing the costs by half.

The Importance of CMS Transformation and Recommendations

For companies with multiple subsidiaries, CMS transformation is very important and necessary. The success of this transformation depends on the support of senior management and effective participation of the stakeholders. In this context, first of all, senior management needs to be convinced that CMS transformation is an important tool in realizing the company’s strategic targets and it needs to be included in the strategic roadmap. All stakeholders must be informed on the upcoming transformation and they should be included in the transformation.

Benchmarking efforts must be carried out in collaboration with the stakeholders and after determining the favorite products, meetings must be held with the respective companies for detailed explanations regarding these products. The requirements of these companies must be thoroughly understood and the need for “closing the security gaps” which is one of the most important requirements for websites must be rapidly provided with the product. Lastly, the product must be easily integratable with both ready-made templates and new designs, also making sure that it has infrastructure that enables service integrations.