Major Project Completed in Record Time – cgm.com Relaunch

A relaunch in record time: Within 6 months, we implemented a comprehensive relaunch for CompuGroup Medical (CGM) using a greenfield approach. The project is based on the open-source CMS "Neos."

However, this project is far more than just the original relaunch. In addition to numerous enhancements, we also operate a highly complex infrastructure for CGM.

We also won the “Neos Silver Award 2022” for this project.

Learn more about this exciting project in this case study.

Who is CGM?

Since 1987, what is now CompuGroup Medical (CGM) has been working toward the vision of a digitized healthcare system.

CGM operates in one of the most exciting and, at the same time, most sensitive sectors: healthcare.

Its core business includes software for physicians, medical practices, and hospitals, as well as products designed to connect healthcare professionals with one another and with patients.

Business Units:

Ambulatory Information Systems: Information systems for private-practice physicians and dentists
Hospital Information Systems: Information systems for hospitals, laboratories, rehabilitation centers, and nursing facilities
Pharmacy Information Systems: Information systems for pharmacies

Website: https://www.cgm.com/

CompuGroup Medical (CGM) by the Numbers

1987

Founding

>9,000

Employees

1.19 billion

Revenue in EUR (2023)

Active Countries

The Challenge—The Relaunch!

CGM’s previous website was outdated, based on an old CMS, and offered little potential for updates or further development as part of a relaunch.

In particular, the limitations on the use of modern digital marketing tools and strategies, as well as on the provision of new digital services on the website, were decisive factors in CGM’s decision to undertake a complete relaunch.

For CGM, this “greenfield” approach meant that not only the company’s main website but also the websites of seven CGM subsidiaries had to be relaunched.

The goal was to rethink the company’s entire online presence with a new infrastructure and a future-proof CMS. This CMS was to be flexible, secure, and open to new technologies.

punkt.de GmbH was able to convince CGM that“Neos” was the right CMS for the job while also offering the appropriate infrastructure for a high-performance and robust environment. In addition, we integrated the previous agency, “Kaufmann Digital,” into the relaunch project and took over project management.

A project of this magnitude with a very tight schedule requires close coordination between the agencies involved and the client. punkt.de GmbH played a key role as project manager; alongside the existing development agency “Kaufmann Digital,” our long-standing partner agency “made in” was responsible for all aspects related to design, UI, and UX .

A well-structured concept for design, UI, and UX was just as important for this project as a well-thought-out infrastructure developed in advance. This is because both existing systems (CRMs, marketing tools, content sources, etc.) and new solutions had to be developed and integrated in order to offer modern marketing and various services in a targeted manner.

Since CGM operates in over 60 countries worldwide and maintains locations in more than 20 countries, languages and linguistic considerations play a major role in the relaunch. In addition to supporting numerous languages, CGM serves a broad target audience in the healthcare sector with its services and products. This complexity results in over 2,000 domains, which also needed to be mapped and managed by the CMS.

Given the company’s size and diversification, it was also crucial to set up the new CMS in such a way that, if necessary, over 200 editors could work with the system simultaneously. The solution had to account for extensive authorization and approval processes.

CGM’s core business in the healthcare sector is a highly sensitive area in which compliance and data protection are of the utmost importance. Beyond the legal framework, the design phase required not only meeting the legal requirements of the GDPR but also implementing automated data deletion strategies. Furthermore, the corresponding physical infrastructure had to be designed by punkt.de GmbH to be fail-safe (High Availability, HA).

Implementing these requirements within six months —in terms of design, UI, and UX as well as the technical aspects of development and infrastructure—is only possible with well-established processes and agile project management. This also requires a client who understands agile work and pulls together with the agencies. We succeeded in doing this with CGM; we launched in June 2020, and the new website went live in January 2021. A complete success!

Of course, after the relaunch is another relaunch, and we ’re continuing to work on this project. In the following section, you’ll find some details about the implementation of the relaunch.

CompuGroup Medical (CGM) operates in the e-health sector in over 20 countries, in 14 languages, and under various legal frameworks. This requires a website of enormous complexity.

>2,000

Domains

>22

Country Pages

>200

Editors

Languages

Open Source & Neos

Projects of this scale present their own challenges, and the solutions developed for them are then incorporated into the further development of the Neos "Core," among other things, and can be further developed by the community as open-source contributions.

punkt.de, GmbH is very actively involved in the further development of Neos and is continuing to develop the so-called “Core” of Neos using its own development resources in collaboration with the community.

Features & Modules in Neos

Because we have "Core" developers on our Neos teams, innovative features or concepts from customer projects can be incorporated into the "Core" of Neos, and at the same time, the customer benefits from the fact that these features—which are very important to them—will continue to be developed by a broad community in the future.

This project has also demonstrated that, in addition to several features important to CGM in Neos, a number of concepts were also incorporated into the “Core,” thereby truly bringing the open-source philosophy to life.

Project Insights – Features & Modules

Neos Core

Media Management: This is already a core Neos feature for media asset management, which has been further developed as part of the CGM project—for example, to prioritize collections and automatically convert video files to different bitrates so they can be adaptively streamed to users.
Domain Redirect: A specialized module for easily managing over 2,000 CGM domains, redirects, and certificates via Neos in a user-friendly interface.
Redirect Importer: A standalone importer for large volumes of redirect changes, enabling changes to be implemented quickly and securely.
URL Monitoring: In addition to standard monitoring of website status, editors have been given the ability to independently mark websites as “important,” which are then automatically included in the monitoring process.
Content Analysis: For content-rich web pages, it’s important to reduce the workload on editors and automatically perform certain validity checks—for example, checkboxes, buttons, and forms are verified, and errors are displayed—so that editors can immediately notice and correct them.
Edit Conflict Prevention: With over 200 editors worldwide, it is important to prevent two editors from editing the same page at the same time and overwriting each other’s changes. “Edit Conflict Prevention” notifies the editor when a conflict occurs and indicates which editor is currently working on the page.
Shared Workspaces: In addition to the Neos workspaces, which were already part of the core, the concept has been expanded so that CGM and, for example, content groups can view new content and edit it collaboratively, including feedback features and an approval process.
Language and Country Dimensions: With over 20 country sites and 15 languages, a simple concept was developed to easily configure the corresponding combinations on sister sites and restrict them as needed. For example, only certain languages may be available.

CGM Modules

Taxonomy Management: To facilitate the reuse of content and the categorization of campaigns throughout the entire lead funnel, a taxonomy concept for the website data—developed in collaboration with CGM—was implemented. Among other things, this allows business units to be linked to segments and products, thereby enabling the assignment of target audiences. This information is then also incorporated into tracking for analysis purposes.
Voting Feature: Internal, company-wide voting system
Emergency Page/Emergency Communication: A feature that allows entire pages to be replaced—for example, with a message for crisis communication with users and customers.
A/B Testing: Easy management of an A/B split test to evaluate conversion rates and then easily implement the winning variant. It also offers full integration with the company’s own tracking system, including the option to use heatmaps.
Legal Notice / Legal Entity Handling: Since there are a multitude of different legal entities worldwide, this feature was developed to simplify administration and ensure that the correct “legal entity” for the corresponding page is also displayed in the footer.
Cookie Banner: CGM’s custom cookie banners, created based on a package from our partner agency Kaufmann Digital, can be managed in the NeosBackend, including layout and selection options.
Calculators: Various custom calculators and their logic were implemented as React applications and integrated into Neos as content elements.
E-commerce: Flexible Sylius shop integration for CGM products in Neos
Complex Forms: Custom and, in some cases, highly complex forms were implemented in Neos for CGM. These can be dynamic, multi-page, or equipped with specific features such as “double opt-in” or specific “validators.” Simple integration of iFrames is also possible.
SAP Integration: An integration with CGM’s SAP system was developed for customer data and forms, and it is continuously being enhanced.
Evalanche Integration: Evalanche was integrated to simplify newsletter management. For example, downloads are only available after the respective user has logged in, etc.
Elasticsearch: Elasticsearch was chosenfor search functionality; this powerful and high-performance search engine was customized and enhanced to meet CGM’s specific needs.
Investor Relations: To protect sensitive areas, such as Investor Relations, security features were implemented that impose very restrictive access controls for editors.
Event Hub: For CGM’s various formats, an events section was developed with a range of features that provide an overview of events and enable the management of tasks such as registration or the creation of landing pages for events.
Web Analytics: Tracking and web analytics for CGM are handled via Matomo; the necessary setup and configuration for events and taxonomy are also integrated. This also enables the use of heatmaps.
...and much more!

We received the "Silver Award" at the 2022 Neos Awards for this project.

It’s also particularly gratifying that the open-source community has been able to benefit from many of our developments. Since we rely on open source wherever possible and appropriate, this means that everything we develop or refine also benefits the relevant projects—in this case, Neos CMS. This includes improvements to permission management, the upload UI, and much more.

You can find more information about the award here:

https://www.neoscon.io/de/neos-cms-award-2022.html

Post-Relaunch – Further Development of cgm.com

We are very proud to have completed a project of this scale in such a short time.

Together with our design and UI & UX partners at“made in” and“Kaufmann Digital” on the development side, we were able to implement the project efficiently.

After the relaunch is before the relaunch, and together with “made in,” punkt.de GmbH works closely with CGM on the continuous development of cgm.com and the underlying technical infrastructure that we manage.

Our product owners (PO) from the development and DevOps teams regularly coordinate with CGM during daily stand-ups as part of our agile workflow to plan upcoming sprints, ensuring we stay at the cutting edge of technology.