Fujitsu

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Integration of Fujitsu Global Web Sites for Services and Products using XML

In-house Case Study

Using XML technology, Fujitsu has integrated its global sites (i.e., English language Web sites), which were previously created and maintained separately according to the particular product or service.
A framework for creating Web sites was established by employing a content management system that standardizes Web site content in XML and unifies control of required tasks, from generating content, through testing, to publication. This has made it possible to standardize Web site presentation and navigation functions, and to reduce the cost of creating and maintaining Web sites. The results of this have not only improved communication lines between Fujitsu and its customers, but also enabled Fujitsu to envisage a Web site that realizes a business process with its customers (beginning with customers browsing Fujitsu's service and product information on its Web site, moving on to business negotiations, then to estimates and proposals, and on to contracts and sales, and ending with after-sales support and repeat sales) and thus improve the services it provides.

Problems with Previous Services & Products Sites

Through the Internet, Fujitsu offers information about its services and products not only to customers in Japan, but also to those abroad. Previously, all this information was published independently on different Web sites according to the product or service. The content of these Web sites was linked from sub-pages of the Global Site (www.fujitsu.com) under the headings "Services and Products", "Support and Download", "Contact", and "Shop". However, because each Web site (linked to from "Services and Products") differed in terms of composition, appearance, and navigation, the following problems arose:

Problems for customers who view the Fujitsu Global Site
Customers visit the Fujitsu Global Site with various aims. For example, to find out about product functions or details of services, or information on support or to view case studies. They may also want to contact Fujitsu with inquiries.
However, in terms of usability, it is undesirable and inefficient to have inconsistent appearance and differing navigation procedures across Web sites under the Fujitsu banner. For instance, a customer considering building a particular system might wish to view related case studies. In such a case, the customer would have to browse a variety of sites, such as the server product site, storage product site, and middleware product site, in order to find relevant case studies.
Inconsistency in content and navigation also give the erroneous impression that the various Web sites belong to different brands, undermining the unified image of a single "Fujitsu" brand that Fujitsu wishes to present to its customers.

Problems for content creation
Previously, content creators of each of the various Web sites created, tested, stored, published and maintained content in their respective servers according to the product or service. Daily content updates involved not simply adding the updated information to the HTML code, but also knowledge of the particular site (such as its composition and design). This unnecessarily increased demands on the content creation teams in terms of time, effort, and expense.

What Constitutes the Ideal Services and Products Site?

The standard role any Web site that offers information on products and services could be summarized thus:
"Making our customers interested in the services and products of our company and providing information the customers need".
Added to this, it is essential that customers can view the information they need without inconvenience and that the Web site provides a two-way communication channel between the company and its customers.
Fujitsu's ultimate goal is "a Web site that realizes business process with our customers". More specifically, customers would begin by browsing our service and product information on our Web site, leading to business negotiations, then to estimates and proposals, and finally to contracts. Furthermore, wherever possible, all aspects of Fujitsu's relationship with its customers (such as the sale of contracted products or services, after-sales support, provision of maintenance information, and repeat sales) will be carried out via the Web site so that a true business process is achieved. The overriding advantage of this will be a reduction in cost for both sides of the business relationship.

What was Lacking in Previous Services and Products Sites

This section lists and describes aspects of the ideal Web site that Fujitsu's previous Services and Products Web sites lacked.

Seamless browsing
The presentation and navigation should not vary from site to site. From the customers' point of view, it should be possible to find and view required information on any site under the Fujitsu banner without feeling as if they are browsing across different sites.

Adaptation to ever-changing needs of customers
Customers' needs are always changing. The ideal Web site should adapt flexibly to changing needs so that the structure by which it provides information is always the most customer-friendly. It should also provide a system of interactive communication between Fujitsu and its customers.

Adaptation to ever-changing technology
Internet technology standardized by W3C is not immune from change. The ideal Web site should have a mechanism that allows the site to adapt easily to changes in Internet-related technologies (after all, such changes will affect how the site itself is constructed).

Easy site creation (content creation)
Knowledge of Internet-related technology is one of the requirements for creating Web site content. For this reason, there is a limited number of people who can create Web content, and thus a need to train content creators. Once trained, creators must keep up with the never-ending changes in Internet-related technologies. Accordingly, the ideal web site should have a mechanism that can make these tasks easier for content creators.

Quality assurance
Quality control and assurance are not only necessary for our services and products, but also indispensable for Web sites that introduce them. Such sites should contain no HTML coding errors, no broken links, no navigation errors, and should be easy to navigate.

Smooth management of content life-cycle
In order to improve work efficiency and content quality, the content life-cycle (i.e., the sequence content creation - testing - publication - maintenance and updates) must be easy to manage.

Efficient use of management resources
The creation and maintenance of service- and product-specific Web sites on separate servers (including different servers for content storage, testing, and publication) together with other time-consuming tasks such as designing presentation and navigation, combine to create a cumbersome and demanding workload.
Carrying out all Web content-related tasks (storage, testing, and publication) in a single integrated environment would, by economy of scale, result in effective use of the three management resources: manpower, infrastructure, and funds.

Fujitsu's approach

Improvement of Web sites for problem solving is a most urgent task. However, it is difficult to make steps toward the ideal web site while at the same time carrying out daily content creation and maintenance. For this reason, we divided the task of improving our Web sites into three phases as illustrated below. As of February 2004, Phase 1 is almost complete.

As part of Phase 1, "Foundation", the tasks of integrating Services and Products Web sites and applying a content management system have been achieved.

Integration of Services and Products Web Sites
In the phrase "Integration of Services and Products Web Sites", "integration" has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it refers to integration of content positioning. On the other, it refers to integration (unification, to use another expression) of presentation and navigation.

Integration of content positioning
Previously, each service and product had its own Web site, which was accessed from the Global Site (www.fujitsu.com). The Phase 1 improvement involved repositioning the content of the services and products sites (i.e., information such as product information, case studies, and download pages) as content of the Global Site. By this process, we were able to impress upon our customers that the Global Site is no longer a patchwork of independent Web sites, but a unified Fujitsu Web site with respective components for its services and products. In addition, there is the added advantage that browsing the Web site is now much easier than before.

Note: Because each Web site also had its own top page, links had to be made to the appropriate pages within those sites, bypassing the top page.

Note : Content is divided into categories such as "Solutions" and "Software". The actual structure is much bigger than shown in the above diagram, including many more branches. For example, "Solutions" has subcategories such as "Retail Solutions" and "Financial Solutions", and these in turn have their own content pages and subcategories.

Integration (unification) of presentation and navigation
Guidelines to define standard composition and presentation were established and applied to all Services and Products content. The guidelines regulate content composition, navigation, and stylesheets (*). For example, the guidelines define details of page composition such as the size and positioning of the title area, left menu, content area, and right menu. The size of each area and the articles to be published are also defined by the guidelines.

Note : The guidelines have been in existence for some time (and already applied in some areas). They have now been expanded and updated to include regulations of such details as navigation and stylesheet usage for the specific purpose of Web site integration.

Introduction of a Content Management System
A content management system to control the task sequence of content creation, publication and maintenance was established. Content creators can use this system from a Web browser. Use of the content management system was also defined in the guidelines.

The procedure from content creation to publication is as follows:

1.Content creation
Web content is created in XML format. Because a dedicated editor is used, together with a template suited to the content (for example, there is a template specifically for creating case study content), creators do not need to be XML experts and can create content by copying and pasting in an on-screen window. (*)
Note : In a template, the individual XML elements are defined in XML Schema.

2. Content registration
Content that is created in XML format is registered in the content management system. This system is used to manage XML content. Registered content is stored in the database as master data.

Steps 3 to 6 are performed using the content management system.

3. Content conversion
Web sites are created by using XSL technology to convert XML content into HTML. Because it is possible to make this conversion by just clicking commands in the content management system, creators do not need to be XSL or HTML experts. Additionally, Web sites created in this way automatically conform to the guidelines because the stylesheets used in the conversion are produced in accordance with the guidelines.

4. Display check, testing, and correction
The Web site created in step 3 is for testing. Points that are checked include the site layout and display, and whether or not the site performs correctly. Any errors that may be found are corrected at this stage.

5. Publication
The Web site to be published is created next. This is possible by just clicking commands in the content management system. Both the test Web site and the published Web site are stored in a common server that can be used for all services and products sites, so there is no need for separate servers.

6. Maintenance
Content updates can also be performed in the content management system. As well as reflecting content updates on the master data in the database, the content management system retains a version history of updated files. This means that errors in updated files can easily be rectified by reverting to an earlier version.

Benefits

Although Phase 1 is not yet complete, the following benefits have been already recognized:

Realization of seamless browsing and improvement of visibility and usability of Web sites
Application of the guidelines and content management system has unified the presentation and navigation of Web sites. This unification has also improved visibility and usability. Seamless browsing has also been achieved by integration with the Global Site and by the unification of presentation and navigation. For example, the section "Case Studies", which previously was published independently on each Web site, is now situated in a single location. In addition, the unified case studies are classified according to their content, field, and region with an index added for each classification. Because the information necessary for classification and indexing is included in "Case Studies" XML documents created using the dedicated template, the classification and indexing system are included in the Web site when the content management system is used to convert XML documents into HTML.

Integration of brand image
By integration the diverse Services and Products Web sites into the Global Site and unifying the presentation and navigation, we were able to reinforce in our customers the idea of Fujitsu as unified brand.

Realization of an easy-to-create Web site, quality improvement, and potential to adapt to ever-changing technology
The use of XML schema-based templates and XSL-based stylesheets means that Web site presentation and navigation can be defined uniformly and automatically. Thus, high quality Web sites can now be created easily, regardless of content creators' skill. By revising XML schemas and stylesheets to reflect the on-going changes in Internet technologies, it is possible to create Web sites that readily correspond and adapt to the most up-to-date technology.

Smooth management of content life-cycle
Application of the content management system has realized smooth management of the content life-cycle.

Efficient use of management resources
Application of the guidelines and the content management system has enabled the tasks involved in the creation and maintenance of Web sites to be standardized. Web site integration has also meant that a common server can be shared by all sites for testing, publication, and maintenance (so that there is no need to acquire separate servers for each Web site). These advances have made for more efficient use of management resources, for example by reducing the cost of creation and maintenance of Web sites.
Other improvements achieved during the execution of Phase 1 include changing the character set to UTF-8 and changing the search engine. It should be noted that all that was required to achieve these changes was to modify the stylesheet. Previously, such changes would have required individual changes to every page of content.

Future Development

The expressiveness of a Web page (in other words, the richness of its design) depends on the XML schemas and XSL stylesheets available. Specifications such as these are continuously added to in accordance with the requests of content creators.
Although integration of the Services and Products Web site is now complete, integration of the News (http://pr.fujitsu.com/), Environmental Activities (http://eco.fujitsu.com/), Employment (http://recruit.fujitsu.com/), and Procurement (http://procurement.fujitsu.com/) Web sites is still under way. Similarly, in addition to the integration of the global sites, integration of domestic sites is also planned.

After Phase 1 is completed, the improvement task will shift to Phase 2 to carry out "Content Expansion". In Phase 2, the presentation and navigation will be further improved in order to develop content that meets customers' expectations. Then, in Phase 3, "IT Service Expansion", we will establish a Web site that realizes a business process with our customers.

XML will continue to be the basic technology at the heart of the future development of Fujitsu Web sites.

Result

The use of XML technology for the integration of Services and Products Web sites has had the following benefits:

Improvement of content quality and simplification of Web site creation
The use of XML schemas and XSL technology has enabled the creation of Web sites of a pre-determined, high level of quality, regardless of content creators' skill.

Reduction of cost of creating and maintaining
Web sites The use of XML schemas and XSL technology and the application of a content management system have reduced the cost of creating and maintaining Web sites.

Establishment of a foundation for Web sites that create business
The integrated Web site is a foundation of our ultimate goal - a Web site that realizes a business process with our customers. XML technology has helped the establishment of this foundation.

Reference Data :

Fujitsu Global Site : http://www.fujitsu.com/global/

Case Studies : http://www.fujitsu.com/global/casestudies/