Case Study: Multilingual Website Development

Bohler-Uddeholm Corporation

Client Profile

When Austrian based Bohler Group and Sweden's Uddeholm Tooling merged in 1991, they created Bohler-Uddeholm Corporation, the largest tool steel manufacturer in the world. Because of the strength of the individual brands, both component companies maintained a separate presence in North America for several years. As Bohler-Uddeholm began to streamline operations, it became necessary to incorporate the two companies into one cohesive identity. Part of that challenge was integrating the Bohler web presence and the Uddeholm tooling web presence into one advanced online resource.

Challenges

• To create a modern online presence that took advantage of the latest web technology.
• To create an efficient customer resource that was highly scalable and adaptable to the company's changing needs.
• To combine both the Bohler Group and Uddeholm Tooling product lines, along with important company information for all three parts of the company's International divisions.

Technology

• ASP
• Custom Visual Basic
• Macromedia Flash,
• Microsoft IIS
• Microsoft SQL Server
• Microsoft Windows Server
• VBScript

Solution

Azavar Technologies Corporation provided Bohler-Uddeholm with a technologically advanced, customer centric and internationally unified web presence. Because Bohler-Uddeholm's product line is continually changing, Azavar developed a dynamically driven website solution that pulls product information and site content from a Microsoft SQL server. With this application, Bohler-Uddeholm can easily maintain current product information on the site.

The Bohler and Uddeholm companies had recently merged their efforts into one business unit. As the company began to streamline all business operations, they determined that their web presence must also be merged into one cohesive identity. Azavar created a custom solution for Bohler-Uddeholm that combined the strength of both brands into an informative and user-friendly website.

The website's content was aggregated from a number of sources to generate a single comprehensive online resource. The result is an advanced web presence that allows customers to find detailed product information, research the latest trends in tool steel, and interact with the company's sales force more efficiently.

To improve customer service, we made it easier for customers to interact with Bohler-Uddeholm's sales force by creating an efficient, real-time communication channel. The web presence allows customers to contact Bohler-Uddeholm, submit questions, request a quote and even purchase steel. In addition, the interactive location maps allow users to quickly find information about the Bohler-Uddeholm locations.

In addition to brand cohesion and customer relationship management, Azavar also created a means to communicate Bohler-Uddeholm's international presence. The site is broken up into the three sections of the International business unit; United States, Canada, and Mexico. Each country has a distinct, yet consistent style that features geographically based language and content along with important corporate information.

With Azavar's unique web solution and skilled project management approach, Bohler-Uddeholm was able to get a dynamic, scalable, and creative web presence up and running in less than 30 days.

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