New customer portal to optimise the customer experience

A joint solution for 18,000 employees in 62 countries divided into five divisions - that was the project goal of the GEA Group and adesso. Previously, there was no group-wide solution; instead, a large number of apps, portals and dashboards were used. The GEA Portal has changed this permanently. The heterogeneous system landscape was standardised and the customer experience improved.

Digitalisation for the entire company

The GEA Portal is more than just a customer portal. In combination with the GEA ID, it means digitalisation progress for the entire company. GEA is developing from a machine and plant manufacturer into a comprehensive solution provider offering digital services throughout the entire life cycle of the machine. This simplifies the user's daily work and thus increases customer loyalty. Innovative business models ensure more traffic and open up new sources of revenue.

Maximum reach with the new GEA ID

The customers‘ employees receive a personal GEA ID that they can use to access all relevant information and carry out transactions. The ID enables comprehensive personalisation of the offering while at the same time maintaining the customers’ rights concept. All GEA Group offerings requiring registration will be successively converted to the GEA ID.

Bundling of all traffic from the customer relationship

The digital customer interfaces that were previously offered in isolation are being bundled under one roof. This has a significant impact on the traffic figures of the group's online presences. Among other things, the e-commerce solutions and other offers from the divisions and national companies benefit from this.

In addition to personalised access to the portal offerings, the EU-compliant digital nameplate also serves as an identifier for accessing information. In this case, all the information from the machine's digital product passport is provided.

Increasing conversion rates with additional digital services

GEA offers a comprehensive portfolio of digital solutions for the group's machines and plants. These are linked to new business models that generate recurring revenues. Based on subscription models, booking and managing features on demand is a core functionality for simplifying and digitising the business relationship between customers and GEA.

The GEA Portal guarantees a seamless digital customer experience:

• By entering into a service contract, customers receive their individual GEA ID, which ensures access to the booked scope of services.
• With the help of the digital nameplate, customers can access the GEA Cloud without registration and thus retrieve information in compliance with the EU digital product passport.
• With the GEA ID, customers can view all machine-related data, documentation and spare parts catalogues online at any time.
• Transactions such as configurations, spare parts procurement, planning of service calls, etc. can be handled quickly and easily via the GEA portal.

• Development of a cloud-based state-of-the-art platform
• Centralised bundling of all offers and applications
• Integration of new and existing applications
• Realisation of different services: Mailing, notification, feature flag, audit, translation
• Standardised UX/UI according to a global design system

A modern microservice architecture was used, which was implemented by several teams in a shared technology stack. We relied on Java and Spring Boot for backend development and used TypeScript and Angular in combination with the PrimeNG component library on the frontend side.

These microservices are provided in a cloud-based environment based on various Azure services.

An essential part of our development process is the planning and implementation of a CICD strategy in which we use Azure DevOps, Terraform, PowerShell and Docker, among others.

• Professional and technical design and implementation of the portal solution
• Development of new applications, the "core apps":

  • Support App: Provides a centralised ticket system for interaction with GEA Support.
  • Asset App: Provides an overview of the machine fleet, machine status and machine details and will be developed into a digital twin in the future.
  • Document App: Provides a central storage location for documents of all kinds for exchange between GEA and GEA customers.

• Software quality assurance using various methods, from unit tests and automated end-to-end tests to exploratory testing with various tools such as Storybook, Cypress, SonarQube and many more, as well as the generation of executable test cases with AI support
• Agile development according to Scrum
• Delivery of increments after each sprint
• Process consulting for user-centred and efficient product development