About Stadtwerke Krefeld
Stadtwerke Krefeld AG (SWK) is a municipal utility and transport company covering Krefeld and some neighboring municipalities. This holding company is part of SKW-Konzern, a regionally oriented municipal group of companies active in the five branches of energy, water, waste processing, transport and services. The group provides extensive infrastructure services to private households and businesses in Krefeld and the surrounding area.
Challenge
Stadtwerke Krefeld defined a strategic digital transformation program with two main goals:
- To increase customer loyalty and stimulate cross- and up-selling.
- To improve employee efficiency, data quality and sales conversion.
Part of this program involved implementing a digital experience platform to facilitate interaction between customers and employees of Stadtwerke Krefeld. After an RFP (request for proposal) process, the Sitecore Experience Platform was chosen.
In view of the program’s strategic importance, a new agile scrum team was formed within the organization, and was given the task of implementing, maintaining and optimizing the digital customer touchpoints, such as the corporate website and customer portals.
Stadtwerke Krefeld wanted the customer data exchanged via these touchpoints to be secure at all times. In addition, the company wanted to be in full compliance with the general data protection (GDPR). During the customer experience platform’s implementation phase, Stadtwerke Krefeld encountered challenges in creating a scalable and, above all, secure Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure for the Sitecore platform. These challenges caused a slowdown in development speed and made the achievement of the relaunch deadline for the corporate website look doubtful.
The management of Stadtwerke Krefeld therefore asked for help from Macaw, a Sitecore Platinum Partner and Microsoft Gold Partner with extensive knowledge and experience in implementing Sitecore-on-Azure solutions.
Approach
Macaw assessed the current status of the project, the processes, and the implemented solutions. This involved scrutinizing the design of the Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure, the implemented architecture of the Sitecore Experience Platform and the defined Agile Scrum processes. On this basis, Macaw designed and implemented a new and secure Azure cloud infrastructure and assisted Stadtwerke Krefeld in meeting modern Sitecore standards, optimizing Agile Scrum processes and increasing development speed.
Result
Thanks to Macaw’s help, Stadtwerke Krefeld now has a secure cloud infrastructure and a future-oriented Sitecore solution. In addition, Stadtwerke Krefeld’s inhouse development team can now improve the speed of the development process, and maintain and expand the new Microsoft Azure cloud infrastructure and Sitecore solution on its own so as to facilitate the customer experience platform’s future growth.
