Two and a half years ago, EMI Music Mexico carried out a
costly, public Internet portal implementation. External maintenance costs were
so high that, in December 2002, the EMI Music Mexico Marketing Team decided to
discontinue updating the site.
In mid-2003 they decided to go back to the Internet and
started to evaluate implementation alternatives with lower maintenance costs.
Digital Touch, GeneXus distributor in Mexico, presented GXPortal. EMI Music
Mexico evaluated the tool, compared it to three other alternatives, and decided
GXPortal was what they were looking for. Implementation costs were down 50%
compared to the previous solution and to the average of the other three,
traditionally designed, proposals. In addition, maintenance costs were
drastically reduced to 20% of the original option.
"We started with the different look&feel proposals
designed by Digital Touch, and they themselves placed the design in the portal.
Developing the portal and designing the site was the easy part. The hard part
was to compile and upload the information on our 150 active artists (pictures,
disk covers and biographies) and on the more than 1500 products we are presently
working with. Only one month went by from the moment the decision to use
GXPortal was made to the time the final version of the portal was ready.
Uploading the information took us three more months," said Alejandro Penna, IT
Director of EMI Music Mexico.
"In just a few weeks we'll be starting up the portals of
EMI Colombia, EMI Chile, and EMI US Latin, EMI Music's Latin record label in the
U.S. Now we have the advantage of sharing information and artists. We'll also
benefit from the GXPortal multi-language feature for EMI Latin," commented
Penna.
"In addition, we have presented GXPortal in EMI Brasil,
already a GeneXus user. The GXPortal project, as well as the GeneXus-developed
BI system, was presented at EMI Music headquarters in London in October 2003,"
he added. Thanks to the success of the EMI Music Mexico portal using GXPortal,
the tool has been incorporated into other subsidiaries of the multinational
music company. EMI Music Mexico also plans to develop its Intranet using
GXPortal. The Intranet will give access to internal Marketing news, to GeneXus
applications and to reports on the BI system, among other
information.
http://www.emimusic.com.mx