Liferay Portal Provides Open Source Content Management And Services To Major German Insurer

Liferay Specialists Create Large Consumer Site with Over 350 Pages of Content for Insurer HanseMerkur Under Tight Time Constraint; Search Engine Results Improved

HAMBURG, GERMANY – 21.11.2006 – Liferay, a leading provider of enterprise-class open source software products, announced today that its professional services group has implemented Liferay Portal 4.1.2 for the new public Web site of HanseMerkur, Germany’s second-oldest mutual insurance company and a major provider of health, life, travel and property insurance. The site brings new capabilities to both HanseMerkur and its customers, at a cost far below commercially available portal and Content Management System (CMS) alternatives.
Liferay Portal’s economical open source framework provides HanseMerkur with a superior platform for ongoing development, integration and maintenance. In addition to its improved CMS which supports over 350 pages of content, the site offers new customer features such as the ability to initiate an insurance contract online. An improved Search Engine Optimization (SEO) technology also leverages changes in content in real time, thereby increasing the incidence of search engine hits.
HanseMerkur’s initiative for an improved Web presence began in early 2006. According to the company’s director of research and development, Dr. Horst Karaschewski, the company wished to dramatically increase the amount of information available online to prospective customers. HanseMerkur envisioned its site populated with marketing content in mixed formats like HTML, graphics and PDF. Visitors to the site would interact with online content including contracts, job applications and downloadable forms.
“We looked at portal development tools from several commercial and open source providers,” noted Karaschewski. “We were attracted to Liferay’s advanced features, ease of use, and its CMS’ ability to handle extensive amounts of content. After meeting with Liferay representatives at the CeBIT tradeshow last March, we actually expanded our proof of concept to take advantage of Liferay’s superior list of features.”
“Liferay’s CMS enables HanseMerkur to organize and present its online material in an easy to maintain system,” added Suresh Shamanna, Liferay’s director of European operations. “The client’s design team was impressed with Liferay’s flexibility in dynamically integrating external applications and internal content.”

Liferay’s European professional services team completed construction of the new site under a demanding two-month deadline. “Liferay’s turnaround on our project was exceptional. The consulting team was highly motivated and delivered the resources and expertise we needed to get the job done correctly and on time,” said Karaschewski. “Whenever changes were required, Liferay’s staff was able to accommodate them. The end result is a quality site and a working relationship that will support HanseMerkur’s future needs.”
During HanseMerkur’s collaboration with Liferay’s consultants, the company chose to sponsor a new Search Engine Optimization (SEO) feature to be implemented as a standard into Liferay’s coming 4.2 release. With this new feature, HanseMerkur’s new site and Liferay Portal 4.2 can automatically and dynamically optimize its visibility on leading Web search engines. SEO ensures that the buying public is drawn in with site information updates and keeps the HanseMerkur brand in the forefront of consumers’ minds.
HanseMerkur plans to continue working closely with the Liferay team for further enhancements and feature build-outs in the coming months. For a full description of Liferay Portal, or for an online demonstration of Liferay Portal’s capabilities, please visit www.liferay.com.

PRESS CONTACT:
Corey Gutwillig
S&S Public Relations, Inc.
847/955-0700 ext. 9333
cgutwillig@sspr.com

About Liferay:
Liferay Portal is the world’s leading enterprise open source portal framework with Fortune 500 clients in the U.S. and Europe. Liferay Professional Services offers technical support, custom development and professional training to ensure successful deployment of its flagship product in the most demanding IT environments. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles. For more information, please visit www.liferay.com
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About HanseMerkur:
HanseMerkur is a Hamburg-based insurance group with more than 130 years of experience in private health insurance. The company, which is also Germany's third-biggest travel insurer, offers the whole range of life, casualty, property, accident and motor insurance. With gross premiums written of 671 million EUR in 2005, HanseMerkur's investment portfolio registered at an estimated 3 billion EUR last year. For further information, please visit www.hansemerkur.de

This release was published on openPR.