Daikin is a leading global manufacturer and supplier of HVAC (heating, ventilation and air conditioning) equipment’s. Managing sales, R&D and manufacturing teams across different locations, Daikin Europe needed to revitalize their communication with the whole network of customers, partners and distributors.
AMPLEXOR delivered a new platform that allowed the company to go from a scattered and multichannel digital approach to a unique user-centric and personalized global portal.
As one of the largest companies in the world of air conditioning, Daikin provides premium quality indoor climate solutions to all sorts of residential, commercial and industrial customers.
Based in Ostend, Belgium, Daikin Europe is Daikin’s sales, R&D and manufacturing headquarters for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, managing five innovative development centers, 17 affiliated companies and a full network of independent distributors.
With so many teams spread across different locations, and the constant need to address the requests from a multiplicity of stakeholders (affiliates, distributors, installers,
dealers, contractors, end-users and customers), the search for a solution that would enable an easier access to support documentation and information started early for Daikin. In 2006, several extranets were launched to support sales and technical staff in the EMEA region, providing access to a digital portfolio of supporting documents and information.
Although this was already a step forward, there were technical and functional limitations and these platforms were soon proved to be insufficient. On one side, information was still hard to reach, as the portals were not personalized to each user’s specific needs and lacked intuitive navigation and search functionalities. On the other, the platforms were not flexible enough to support daily needs for content creation and updates, and information was constantly out-ofdate
In other words, Daikin required a central platform to move the company from a traditional one-way siloed communication towards a twoway multiple audience targeted communication, engaging all users, from staff at affiliates and distributors to external partners:
The quest for a new partner to develop this transition started in 2014, and after looking to several different solutions in the market, AMPLEXOR was the selected partner for this project. AMPLEXOR already had a long working relationship with Daikin, building one of the original platforms nearly ten years ago. This background undoubtedly helped but it was the innovative approach of that convinced Daikin. Based on Adobe Experience Manager (AEM) technology, AMPLEXOR presented a state-of-the-art portal that offered a fully optimized digital experience to all its potential users.
As we always do in our digital experience projects, we began with a thorough assessment of existing internal communications tools and services. Then the team built the initial proof of concept, designing some key pages to allow the design to be evaluated and tweaked.
The engagement of Daikin since this early stage of the process proved to be fundamental for its success. The close collaboration between AMPLEXOR’s team and Daikin was a key element trough the functional analysis, while identifying all the needs of the different users. Daikin continued to be very engaged during the whole project, supporting the users’ guidelines and organizing internal test sessions. That positive attitude no doubt helped us complete the project to everyone’s satisfaction.
Through this project Daikin was able to succeed from a scattered and multichannel digital approach to a unique user-centric and personalized global portal. The new portal excelled the user expectations with its modern, multi-device lookand-feel and most importantly, due to its multiple functionalities and self-service tools.
From a content management perspective, the new portal finally allowed Daikin to have a consolidated overview of all their available content. It also upgraded the content creation
and publishing workflows. In the new AEM based portal, information is centralized from any source, which allows format consistency and the reuse of content in different contexts.
And the centralized management of information doesn’t mean that there isn’t any flexibility for local or departmental initiatives.
With the new portal, Daikin is able to strengthen trust with all existing and potential new customers, partners and employees. By providing interesting information and allowing effective communication, Daikin is ultimately leading to an increased revenue, optimized workflows, cost reduction, better customer service and improved productivity.