CMS Migration and User Interface Redesign

It all started with a metal folding chair in 1941. Krueger International, Inc., has since become the contract furniture company committed to providing customers with smart solutions. 

As the first 100% ISO9001:2008 certified furniture manufacturer, Krueger International (KI) rapidly expanded into Canada, Latin America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Australia. A strong market understanding is crucial to the success of this $700 million-dollar company. It’s the main reason why global customers continue to trust KI’s innovative furniture and moveable wall solutions and why their website needed to be able to showcase their expertise and rich product offerings. Diagram's job was to build an online system that seamlessly and beautifully showcased KI's varied products and services to their many clients and internal users. 

To serve KI's internal and external stakeholders more effectively, the website needed a new, cohesive user interface (UI), better information architecture, and improved search and navigation capabilities. Fixing these pain points would reduce the amount of time that their sales reps, customer service teams, and customers spent locating product information that was buried within a series of PDF documents on the old site.  
 
Through extensive user interviews, Diagram discovered that KI sales representatives and customers needed the ability to:

• Browse, download and share images (Image Library), fabric and finish collections
• Search by keyword, product or document type for brochures, product specifications, planning guides, fabric and finish cards, case studies and more (Document Library)
• Browse standard fabric and finish offerings and view specifications, colorways and product approvals (Surface Materials Library). 

In addition, all of this content and imagery, much of which was stored in separate systems, needed to be organized and delivered with a flexible, cost-efficient Content Management System (CMS) that had the ability to integrate with KI's back-end systems. 

With the old site on an outdated version of Ektron, Episerver was the clear choice for CMS migration. The Diagram team took a graduated rollout approach, building out features in Episerver's Digital Experience Cloud and pushing components live over four project milestones rather than a single "big reveal" after a long project cycle. Taking advantage of Episerver’s subdomain system allowed the old ki.com and the new site on furniture.ki.com to coexist until project completion.  

The robust product libraries are fueled by a custom .NET middleware solution that integrates KI’s internal database (BPCS/ESPEC), Episerver CMS, Episerver Find, and Widen (digital asset management).   

The middleware between KI’s ERP and Episerver creates associations between products and their approved fabric/finish options and also functions as the data source for site search via Episerver Find. Fabric data in the middleware also feeds their partner website, pallastextiles.com.  

Collectively known as the all-new Design Resources section, KI’s Image Library, Document Library, Symbols Library (CAD/Revit), and Surface Materials Library are an interactive toolbox that gives designers everything they need to convey a vision to a client.