Relaunch for regional supplier ELE with AEM

The website of the regional supplier Emscher Lippe Energie (ELE), part of the E.ON Group, no longer met the company's requirements. In addition to visual-aesthetic aspects and the need to be responsive on mobile devices, the flexible mapping of business processes was the primary requirement for the next-generation website.

Originally conceived as a pure relaunch project, the requirements quickly turned out to be more extensive on closer inspection: the previous CMS-centered concept of the old website had many restrictions, which is why Intentive initially worked with the client in a preliminary project to design a suitable digital platform tailored to ELE's individual needs. This platform needed to be flexibly expandable, scalable and easy to integrate into the E.ON Group's existing Enterprise Service Bus architecture.

For reasons of better maintainability, data previously held in various individually developed systems was to be transferred to API-based standard components wherever possible, and structured data storage was to enable the use of content in other digital channels as well.

The aim was to create a digital platform that is already optimally equipped for future requirements.

The new website was built on the basis of E.ON's existing Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) platform in order to exploit synergy effects within the Group. In addition to centrally managed operations, ELE also benefits from functional and visual enhancements that E.ON continuously develops and makes available to its subsidiaries. Standardized functionalities do not have to be developed multiple times, which reduces time and financial expenditure.
In order to adapt the digital platform to ELE's individual circumstances in terms of technology and processes, Intentive not only customized the standard E.ON components, but also implemented tailor-made middleware that integrates the third-party systems on-premise and in the cloud, aggregates content and processes and makes them usable for different digital input and output channels. Thanks to this decoupled, API-based architecture, ELE continues to use proven components in the technology stack without limiting its flexibility.
The middleware was able to demonstrate its performance directly in the API-based connection of Akeneo PIM and cloud-based HR management, allowing the natively connected third-party systems to realize their full potential. Other scenarios, such as an onboarding portal for new employees with Strapi's headless CMS, also demonstrate the strengths of the concept when integrating additional services - including for future scenarios.