About

With over 150 years of history in the ocean liner and shipping business, Hapag-Lloyd is the global leader in international carriers in terms of transport capacity and volume, number of ports of call and number of sailings. Hapag-Lloyd specializes in door-to-door container transport services and operates a fleet of 55 container ships that move large volumes of goods to shipping destinations around the world. Partnered with its container transport services, Hapag-Lloyd also operates one of the top luxury cruise lines in Europe, Hapag-Lloyd Cruises, which provides popular international vacation destinations. Its fleet of cruise liners also includes the acclaimed “Europa”, ranked for six successive years in a row by the well known “Berlitz Cruise Guide“ as the world’s finest cruise ship. Hapag Lloyd has been able to achieve its success with a staff of approximately 4000 based in its more than 260 sales offices in over 90 countries. Whether Hapag-Lloyd is shipping refrigerated bananas from Paraguay or cruising to an exotic location in the Caribbean, Hapag Lloyd ensures that its goods and passengers arrive safely and quickly to their destination.

Challenge

Always ready to respond to market challenges, the Hapag-Lloyd logistics group previously used a highly integrated system to share and update content within its regional global offices. Though the transfer of structured content, including shipping orders and other business documents was largely automated, internal company content used in the context of everyday office interactions such as market research, legal documents and company presentations, were scattered throughout several local intranets and electronic bulletin boards. Even though the filing system had evolved and grown with the Hapag-Lloyd staff over time, the system was very limited, particularly when it came to the quick retrieval of relevant information or for cross-location collaboration. The need for a content management system that provided centralised collaboration, along with a repository that was easy to manage and accessible from several different locations, became a key challenge for the Hapag-Lloyd logistical Group. The group would also need a strong search component to effectively link all of the company’s internal documents through one central location.

By adopting a content management system where employees could quickly access relevant organizational content, Hapag-Lloyd would be able to improve its business processes and communication channels across all global departments.

Solution

Hapag-Lloyd chose RedDot Content Management (CMS) and LiveServer to solve the content management challenges that its logistical staff faced. With partner, IBM, RedDot was able to utilize the IBM Websphere Portal Server to help meet Hapag-Lloyd’s requirements for top performance and flexibility.

RedDot LiveServer’s functionality has brought a number of benefits for Hapag-Lloyd employees. Users are able to quickly access information and a large number of applications via a single sign-on login. With LiveServer personalization and targeted content delivery, Hapag-Lloyd is able to restrict or grant access to specific pieces of content as well as allow employees to see only content that is relevant to their respective areas of expertise. The Verity search engine also adds a powerful search component such as simple full-text search and enables staff members to retrieve Intranet documents quickly and easily from the system.

Results

The benefits of RedDot are already apparent across several areas of the Hapag-Lloyd organization. For example, sales staff can immediately log into the company intranet to access the latest company presentations during a customer meeting. To ensure the authenticity and accuracy of messaging and other important corporate standards, any updates or changes made to documents are automatically versioned and made available to staff through an automated workflow process. Hapag-Lloyd is able to take RedDot’s capabilities even further by utilizing RedDot’s multilingual component, which allows the system to display only information that is relevant for individual country offices and store content in each country’s respective language.

After the company completes content migration to the new Intranet, Hapag-Lloyd’s future plans include incorporating additional applications for an e-learning portal. Through its e-learning portal, Hapag-Lloyd plans to gradually extend the portal into a centralised online meeting space where employees, agents, and eventually business partners can collaborate on various projects, forums and news tips. This will ensure an efficient, cost-saving treatment of information and consistent communication within the group and with external partners.