Background

Vitec Videocom is the global market leader in the supply of high-end camera accessories. Their equipment forms the backbone of the broadcasting industry and can be found on the sets of most major Hollywood blockbuster films and television series.

Their diverse product offering covers lighting, batteries, teleprompters, remote camera solutions, fluid heads, monitors, wireless transmitters, flight cases, bags, and many other camera accessories. Each product line is represented by a specialist manufacturer that operates under the Vitec Videocom umbrella whilst retaining their own distinct brand identity.

Vitec Videocom brands include Anton/Bauer, Autocue, Autoscript, Bexel, Camera Corps, Litepanels, OConnor, Sachtler, SmallHD, Teradek, Paralinx, The Camera Store, Vinten and Vinten Radamec.

Business Problem

As a company that has grown rapidly through acquisitions, Vitec Videocom identified the need to add consistency to the way in which their sub-brands were using web technologies to market and sell products.

Detailed analysis of their websites identified that each varied in terms of branding, functionality, technology platform, hosting infrastructure, and support solutions. Vitec Videocom were not achieving the economies of scale or return on investment that should be possible by acting as a consolidated group of companies.

The challenge was to develop a centralised e-commerce platform that would enable new brand websites to be rapidly launched at minimal cost. This had to be accomplished whilst allowing each brand to maintain its unique identity.

Technical Solution

Priocept developed a multi-site e-commerce platform for Vitec Videocom to consolidate their brand websites on to a single digital platform. The solution is comprised of the following components and features:

• Magnolia is a digital business system with content management at its core. It was chosen to form the basis of the multi-site platform due to its extensibility and scalability. Priocept are a leading implementation partner for Magnolia and were able to leverage this experience to customise the CMS to suit Vitec Videocom’s requirements.
• Magnolia provides a single interface for managing multiple brand websites that are hosted on different domains. It also enables full reuse of content and features across each brand website and allows granular configuration of SEO features such as redirects, metatags, URL structure, tag management, and sitemaps.
• Product Information Management (PIM) is implemented using the Magnolia platform to give content editors a user-friendly interface for managing products and categories. Product data is persisted using Content Repository for Java (JCR) with search capabilities powered by SOLR.
• The platform incorporates multi-brand features to provide a seamless shopping experience across sites. This includes cross-sell and up-sell functionality to intelligently recommend related and featured products across the full catalogue.
• The system is integrated with existing Vitec Videocom systems such as Salesforce CRM, Eloqua Marketing Automation, and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and Manufacturing Resource Planning (MRP) systems that are used to manage product pricing and stock-level information.
• The system allows sales to be fulfilled via Vitec Videocom’s partners. To manage this, the website was integrated with Shopatron to handle payment processing and order fulfilment from distributed suppliers.

Results

By building a system that combines enterprise web content management with a fully-featured e-commerce platform, Priocept have crafted a tailored solution for Vitec Videocom that consolidates their brands’ websites on to a single platform and allows them to promote their entire product catalogue.

As further brands are brought on to the system, costs for hosting, licensing, development, maintenance and support are all being consolidated and reduced whilst sales are steadily increasing.
By engineering an efficient technical solution, Priocept has been able to solve Vitec Videocom’s original business problem and has delivered a system that has already started generating a return on investment.

This was an ambitious new platform build that set out to use technology as a way of consolidating costs and functionality across our increasingly disparate portfolio. By creating consistent website implementations across our many sub-brands, Priocept has helped us remove the expense of developing and supporting different systems for differing websites, markets and products.