Wednesday, July 26, 2017
LivingData is the leading software and system provider for public sector customers in the German state of Bavaria. In 2014 the team was facing the challenge of adapting the previous product portfolio to modern needs and expectations for website content management and web design.
When relaunching the product komXcms – a custom web page builder for municipalities and administrative districts – the AKDB Bavaria subsidiary chose Umbraco as their system and byte5 as their partner. Right now there are more than 50 Bavarian websites running on the cooperatively developed Umbraco-based system.
© LivingData GmbH
With the online world developing continuously, what also changes are the demands that municipalities and administrative districts have for their websites. A development that is most challenging for companies like LivingData, that started in 1997 as a software and system provider facing the standard needs of the public sector. Their portfolio includes tools for address and data organisation as well as a strong solution for website creation.
© LivingData GmbH
Until 2015 both of these functions were combined in LivingData’s self-developed software komXpress, which could no longer match modern functionality standards being demanded by public sector customers. A new development focusing on website creation with modern design and usability for public administrators being made editors become necessary. Since an in-house development would have been immensely time-consuming and expensive for the company and the system of choice – Umbraco – was new to most developers, the Munich based system provider decided to ask byte5 for help.
We decided to go for Umbraco since its ASP.NET basis was a perfect match for our previous software environment. We have learned to use the CMS as a strong tool kit for basic functions, that – due to its MIT licence – can be adjusted to our customers’ needs.
Alexander Brückner, LivingData CMS team leader
The new development was carried out cooperatively by two LivingData in-house developers and three byte5 experts, one of which became project manager. While the LivingData team concentrated mostly on frontend tasks, the necessary Umbraco backend development was mostly done by byte5 developers.
After receiving initial help by byte5 including certification trainings and backend development, our in-house developers were able to improve the system by themselves over the past months. What has changed mostly with the new system being launched is the work that our customers do. Most of their editors are public administrators, who have started doing website work without previous experience. Since we have given them a strong and intuitive system, we have noticed that many of the proposed alterations are based on actual ideas from the editors’ points of view. The users trust in the system – leading them to trust in their own creativity.
Alexander Brückner, LivingData CMS team leader
© LivingData
The combination of Umbraco expert knowledge at byte5 and excellent knowledge of customer needs at LivingData helped to achieve the aim to build a system that is easy to be used by public administrators. Since the system’s successful launch, more than 50 web projects have been realised – tendency rising!
© LivingData GmbH