Case Studies

About the Media Group Rheinische Post

The media group Rheinische Post (media group RP) comprises daily newspapers, advertising leaflets, Internet portals and local radio stations in Germany and abroad. The daily newspaper Rheinische Post is the flagship of the media group. With about 1.2 million readers and an edition of 400,000 papers, it is the second largest German subscription paper.

Establishment of Topic Portals for enforcing the leading Role of RP-Online

The task of QuePort was the preparation of a topic portal which serves the media group RP for expanding its leading role as a regional and supra-regional daily online newspaper portal. Thereby, it was especially important that the users have the possibility to inform about a certain topic comprehensively on special target group portals. Because RP-Online is not able to provide all the relevant information for the users at all times, it was necessary that also information from external sources could be integrated.

Achieving Targets by applying the intelligent Content Management Solution QuePort

Using QuePort, the content aggregation and online publishing platform was created by the help of which several topic offers can be prepared automatically. At the moment, the first topic portal „rp-wirtschaft.de" is available.

At the moment, the platform aggregates and networks contents from about 30 different internal and external sources and automatically combines them according to the defined topics and the contained sub-topics. Due to the automated networking of data and the user-orientated data processing, the user can access news from 70 towns. Thereby, information from internal and external sources is analysed and processed. All the information can be called up in a targeted way thanks to a semantic search technology. Due to this semantic search, also content-related information is offered to the user. Connections between articles and other contents are automatically identified and offered to the user due to the networking of data. Because of that, also older articles can be marketed several times using mechanisms such as "similar articles" or using a targeted draw in target group portals.

The defined topic sites are automatically supplied with suitable up-to-date contents whereby the time-consuming manual setting of content and links becomes unnecessary. Due to this automation, the current online offer as well as future offers can be prepared and operated in a cost-efficient way.

Also new channels can be established fast and cost-efficiently based on the uniform content platform. The platform offers different possibilities of expansion by context-sensitive content, service or commerce offers. The basis of this new type of monetisation due to advertising and additional service and commerce offers are offers with a high topic-related relevance which are individually adapted to the target group. The reason for that is that customer commitment is only improved if the contents are highly relevant for the user.

With the topic portal, that was prepared using QuePort, the media group RP can approach its target to increase the number of customers and their commitment and to establish new ways of marketing.

About the Newspaper Group Thuringia

The newspaper group Thuringia (ZGT) which is located in Erfurt is a daughter company of the Essener WAZ media group. The ZGT is the central service provider for the daily newspapers Thüringer Allgemeine (Erfurt), Ostthüringer Zeitung (Gera) and Thüringische Landeszeitung (Weimar).

New Ways in Online Journalism

The three Thuringian newspapers had the target to focus their online offers more efficiently on the single regions and to create a high acceptance on behalf of the users by offering a comfortable way of using. Thereby, two equally important issues were in the focus of interest. On the one hand, the online offer of the newspapers should be adapted to the single regions more individually; on the other hand, the work effort required for managing the portal should be reduced so that a wider range of online offers could be provided by the same human resources. Furthermore, the usability and the time the customer stays on the website should be increased in order to improve the chances of marketing in the regions.

QuePort was chosen as the online platform by the ZGT because it was capable of putting the desired regionalisation concept for the portals of the three newspapers into practice and of operating it.

Achieving Targets by applying the intelligent Portal Solution QuePort

The newspaper group Thuringia (ZGT) performs editorial and economic services, which for example include all the online activities, for the three regional Thuringian newspapers Thüringer Allgemeine, Thüringer Landeszeitung and Ostthüringer Zeitung. Each of the three papers disposes of its own website which includes a regional sector.

By the help of the portal software QuePort, a platform was created, which aggregates and semantically networks the contents of the several editing systems and of further content sources. All the contents of the three daily newspapers are centrally stored in a common content pool. By processing and networking the data, a turning content platform results, which offers a 360° view of the contents. Editorial and external contents are continuously added to this platform which are processed and fed into the newspaper portals and the 33 regional sub-portals automatically. Thus, three individual newspaper portals with common and newspaper-exclusive contents and a title-specific ranking of contents in the corresponding portal result by the help of QuePort. Despite of the automated portal processing, it is also possible for an online editor to place individual topics and offers, of course. The three Thuringian newspaper portals are special because each of the regional portals focuses all the contained categories and columns on the corresponding region. For example, the sports news of Jena are displayed in the category sport of the topic portal of the „jena.thueringer-allgemeine.de".

In order to keep the required human and time resources as low as possible, the defined regional and topic portals are automatically supplied with suitable and current content. Connections between articles and other contents are automatically identified and illustrated due to the networking and user-orientated processing of data. Therefore, the time-consuming manual setting of content and links becomes unnecessary.

Furthermore, contents can be marketed in multiple ways in the target group portals due to mechanisms such as „similar articles" or to the targeted draw in news, place or person dossiers. An easy and user-friendly guide of the users is guaranteed by navigators about places, associations, people and companies.

Connections become easier visible due to navigators, articles with similar contents and dossiers. Those content recommendations encourage the user to stay on the website for a longer time. The users' pleasure could be increased with the new possibility of interaction with or among the users. The new topic portals now can be operated intuitively. Their appearance corresponds to the current standards and requirements.

Connections become easier visible due to navigators, articles with similar contents and dossiers. Those content recommendations encourage the user to stay on the website for a longer time. The users' pleasure could be increased with the new possibility of interaction with or among the users. The new topic portals now can be operated intuitively. Their appearance corresponds to the current standards and requirements.

Result

Although the time and cost pressure is extremely high, the semantic search within the implemented portal software allows an economical use of human resources and a much more targeted provision of contents for the customer. For the first time, all the online contents are saved in a central and uniformly processed content store. Based on that, new offers can be prepared flexibly and fast. Thus, the intelligent content management solution QuePort has even exceeded all the expectations of the ZGT.

"QuePort as a component of our search technology platform allows us to implement timely and in a cost effective manner the vision of a dynamic supply of specialized information systems. With the help of Queport we could follow our philosophy to serve different information requirements of our users by combination and configuration of highly competitive components."

Jürgen Müller, Head of R&D Information Systems and Information Management, BASF Group Information Center