Case Studies

Global Web Redesign Integrates Global Branding Across Multiple Sites and Media

Project at a Glance
RDA assisted West Pharmaceutical Services in their rebranding effort by integrating multiple websites into a single, homogeneous site with a consistent look and feel. The site allows North American clients the ability to work easily with West while also helping to increase European and Asian market share by providing information specific to those regions.

About Our Client

Pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and medical device companies around the world rely on West Pharmaceutical Services, Inc. for standard-setting systems and device components for parenterally administered medicines.

West applies proprietary materials science, formulation research and manufacturing innovation to advance the quality, therapeutic value, development speed and rapid market availability of pharmaceuticals, biologics, vaccines and consumer health care products. Internationally headquartered in Lionville, Pennsylvania, West supports its partners and customers from 50 locations throughout North America, South America, Europe, and Asia Pacific.

Background

West had four separate and distinct websites that were accessed by clients, prospects, investors, competitors and employees from around the world. West's corporate site, WestPharma.com, primarily provided static content while its Customer Corner site provided some level of interactive functionality. These sites were outdated and difficult to maintain and extend. They provide limited functionality and did not portray West as a global leader in the marketplace. Therefore, West undertook a rebranding effort in order to integrate global branding across all sites and media.

Solution Detail

RDA assisted West Pharmaceutical Services with its Global Web Rebranding Project through the development of a Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 solution. The rebranding effort in the Web space integrated the West websites into a single, homogeneous site with a consistent look and feel and additional functionality across all world regions.

The new system is relatively self-sustaining, easy to learn and use, flexible, and global in nature. Performance, security and reliability were all critical aspects of the solution. SharePoint out-of-the-box functionality was utilized when possible and customization was kept to a minimum.

Benefits

Rebranding and extending functionality across all world regions provided the following business benefits to West:

• Increased customer satisfaction of North American customers by making it easier to work with West. Provided customers the ability to partner with West by interactively exchanging ideas and information through a customer Portal.
• Increased market share in European and Asian regions by providing customers with globalized and localized information specific to the region to drive them to West products and services.

The Web Site Rebranding effort also provided a means of improving communication and collaboration with prospects and customers, including sharing information, providing online reports, alerting users when information has been updated, quickly and easily producing forms to gather information and tallying the results, implementing workflow for document review and approval and providing and managing localized content.

Technically Speaking

The development team used MOSS 2007, Visual Studio, SQL Server and SharePoint Designer.

The entire site was built using SharePoint technologies. It uses the Publishing Template with a custom master page, page layouts and style sheets. It consists of several Web parts to render the Contact Us Wizard, Forms, the 'Content Wheel,' Customer Portal, Investor section, etc. A custom-built workflow using Windows Workflow Foundation and ASP.NET forms allows content creators at the global level to push content to the different regional sites.

The site implements several forms developed as Web parts to allow anonymous users and customers to submit information or requests to West Pharmaceutical Services. Employees receive email notifications whenever forms are submitted and can also search and view all submitted forms from the intranet side of the site.

The Customer Portal uses several Web parts to display customer-specific information from their BI System, such as customer reports.

The Investor section uses a Web part to read data from a 3rd party vendor.

The site's built-in Search feature uses custom scopes, keywords and Web parts to provide relevant results to visitors.

The site uses SharePoint variations to allow building of multiple language sites in the future.

See sample screen shots below.

 

Client Testimonial

"RDA's team did an outstanding job and was very professional throughout the project. They went above and beyond to guarantee our success. I would highly recommend RDA to another client, and I am looking forward to working with RDA on future projects in the coming year."

Kathleen Sutcliffe
Manager, Corporate Application
West Pharmaceutical Services