Sensus, a global leader in utility infrastructure systems and resource conservation strengthen their presence worldwide by enhancing their ability to manage the messaging around their proven products and solutions at a global scale using a single cost effective tool. Liferay 6's latest features help Sensus be more competitive by allowing them to represent their offerings in an extremely intuitive way while maintaining product hierarchy and without sacrificing flexibility. With the ability to share divisions, product lines, products and solutions across regions when needed, Sensus now has a solution at their disposal that will help them grow their business worldwide and provide the needed messaging intuitively and in a way that will scale into the future.

1. Sensus Uses Liferay to
Strengthen their Global Web
Presence
Alaaeldin El-Nattar Danny Ayers
Principal Architect, Rivet Logic Global Online Marketing Communications Manager, Sensus

2. Sensus Overview
Overview
 10,000
Customers
 42
Loca2ons
on
5
Con2nents
 Over
3,600
Employees
 $865
million
sales
Product Portfolio
 Communica2ons
Network
 Smart
Meters
 Advanced
Metrology
 Distribu2on
Automa2on
 Demand
Response
 Home
Area
Network
Utility Customers
 Smart
Grid
Ligh2ng
 Electric
-­‐
Leading
Market
Posi2on
in
North
America
 Services
 Gas
-­‐
Leading
Market
Posi2on
in
North
America
 SoSware
 Water
-­‐
(and
heat)
Leading
Market
Posi2on
Globally

3. Rivet Logic Overview
• Award-winning professional services focused on enabling:
• Collaboration and Community Platforms
• Enterprise Content Management
• Web Content Management and Portals
• Using Leading Open Source Software
• Company Facts
• Headquartered in Reston, VA
• Regional Offices in Boston, New York City, Los Angeles
• Near-shore Development Center in Costa Rica

4. Rivet Logic and Liferay
• Certified Partner since 2006
• Platinum Partner
• Conduct Public Training on East Coast USA
• Contributor (various means)
• Host of first ever East Coast User Conference in 2009
• 25+ Liferay implementations

5. The Sensus Challenge
• Disparate messaging around products and solutions
• Each region has their own CMS
• US/Canada have a custom built CMS
• Maintainability issues
• Flexibility issues
• Integration with external systems is tough
• Content localization is not possible

6. Sensus.com 1.0
• US/Canada website
• Inflexible look and feel
• Inflexible product and
solution structure
• Did the job but couldn’t
grow to meet the
global needs

7. Sensus.com 1.0 Global Sites
• Look and feel
inconsistency
• Lack of control over
messaging around
products and
solutions
• Inability to manage
regional content
separately

8. THE REQUIREMENTS

9. The Information Architecture
Sensus.com
Country
Country
Division
Division
Product Product
Line
Line
Product
Product
Product

10. Relationships & Associations
Country
Division
Product
Product
Line

11. THE SOLUTION

12. Liferay Communities (Sites)
US/Canada
China
Germany

13. Dynamic Web Content
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14. Localization
• Liferay natively supports localization
• All portal content will be localizable
• One tool for all regional authors
• Same content can be authored in multiple languages

15. THE CHALLENGES

16. Liferay Challenges
• Sensus needed the following:
• Human readable URLs
• One page per solution
• One page per division
• One page per product line
• One page per product
• Product line and product navigation
• Geolocation

17. Liferay Challenges
Country
Division
Product
Product
Line

18. Liferay Challenges
• Liferay’s default URLs are not good enough
• Liferay allows for creating custom friendly URLs
http://sensus.com/web/usca/solution?id=advanced-metering-infrastructure-ami
VS
http://sensus.com/web/usca/solution/advanced-metering-infrastructure-ami

19. THE CUSTOMIZATIONS

20. Divisions Page
Division
Tab
Division
Summary

21. Division Page
Division
Overview
Product
Line
Product Navigation
Lines

22. Product Line Page
Product Line
Overview
Products
Associated
Solutions

23. Product Page
Product
Overview
Product
Documentation
Associated
Solutions

24. Solutions Page
Solution
Summary
Expands
Dynamically

25. Solution Page
Solution
Overview
Associated
Assets

26. THE MAGIC

27. The Basic Concept
• Completely decouple authoring from presentation
• A simple authoring process:
• Authors create content using Web forms
• Authors categorize content
• Content is auto-published to the right spot
• Look and feel is automatically taken care of

28. How it works (Authoring)
ARTICLE
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Web Form
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Authoring
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29. How it works (Tagging)
Country
P U B L I S H
US
ARTICLE
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s
Product
AMI
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Systems
Division
Water

30. THE DEMO

31. Comparison
• Before • After
• Non scalable, proprietary CMS that did • Enterprise level solution + community
not allow control of design, layout, and and enterprise support
most content.
• Dynamic CMS that meets the needs of
• Did not have flexibility to adapt to current business and provides flexibility
continued growth.
to adapt to future.
• Did not support regionalization,
internationalization, and 3rd party • Have infrastructure to support
integration (Sharepoint, etc..) regionalized product offerings and
• Poor readiness for Marketing (SEO, internationalized languages
SEM, micro sites, Salesforce • Support for 3rd party integration,
integration) document management, SSO
• Overall a reduced ability to extend our • Marketing / content creation ready: SEO,
current web offering quickly deploy micro sites/landing
pages, WYSIWYG editing, drag and
drop layouts
• Already looking at ways to expand into
other parts of our business (training,
document management) due to the
flexibility that Liferay offers

32. THE FUTURE

33. What the Future Holds
• Sharepoint integration
• Adding global sites to sensus.com
• French
• German
• Content translations on International Site
• English
• French
• Spanish

34. Standards & Openness
• Liferay is:
• Standards compliant
• Easy to maintain
• Open source
• Highly customizable
• Has a healthy community

35. Q&A

36. Thank You!
www.rivetlogic.com
blogs.rivetlogic.com
facebook.com/rivetlogic
youtube.com/rivetlogic
twitter.com/rivetlogic