IVIS Group delivers an integrated Halal Knowledge Centre Portal for Halal Development Corporation

Background

Established on 18 September 2006, Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC) coordinates the overall development of the Halal industry in Malaysia. Focusing on development of Halal standards, audit and certification, plus capacity building for Halal products and services, HDC promotes participation and facilitates growth of Malaysian companies in the global Halal market.

Halal is not merely a way of life – it is a global industry. With a stake in commercial sectors worldwide, Halal development has become a significant contributor to all facets of economic growth. Intent on building a global Halal community, HDC brings the Malaysian Halal industry in unison toward a common goal.

With a vision to position Malaysia as a world leader and global reference centre in Halal knowledge and Halal-related services, HDC established the Global Halal Support Centre (GHSC) as a one stop support centre for both investors and consumers.

Business Challenge

To achieve its goal, HDC realised that it needed to establish a portal (Halal Knowledge Centre) that could meet the needs of different user communities spanning the general public, the academic and research community and the business community.

With such a diverse range of information in multiple formats and coming from multiple sources, HDC faced the challenge of how to easily and dynamically integrate this content into a single portal. The content needed to be easily accessible and quick to search and should provide the same experience to different user communities, each of whom would require information to be presented differently.

All of this needed to be easily maintainable by the team within the business and provide the capability for delivery across multiple channels as diverse as web, mobile phones and kiosks.

Solution – IVIS Professional Services

Based on IVIS Group’s multi-channel experience in building portals, IVIS Group provided HDC with a Content Management System (CMS) based solution that gave them a robust platform that is easy to maintain and provides maximum capability for extension in the future.

To ensure that the structure of the site and the content delivered the desired benefit to the diverse user groups, IVIS Group followed a User-Centred Design (UCD) approach, and by providing HDC with a team of User Experience consultants to work alongside their own team, was able to develop a design for the portal that focused on the needs of the end user.

IVIS Group developers provided a solution that seamlessly integrated the multiple data sources HDC needed to consolidate, into the CMS allowing for one consistent platform and a single point of content management for HDC. These data sources included articles, reports, events, presentations and newsletters from inside HDC; multiple databases from outside HDC, such as industry directories, ingredients databases, and the fatwa database; as well as content from dynamic external sources including third-party digital libraries, the halal certification database, RSS News feeds, Google Books and YouTube.

Once integrated, IVIS Group provided a federated search capability that consolidates information from all sources and content types and dynamically delivers linked and tagged results within a user-friendly interface. Linking products with ingredients and suppliers; businesses to their respective partners; and consumers to halal and fatwa (edict) information, all users of the portal were able to verify the halal status of products and services within a single page.

Other benefits of the CMS implementation included:

• Content production without programming or design experience
• Integrated and configurable role based access restrictions
• Publishing workflow and content validation
• Automated re-formatting for any device (web, mobile phone/WAP, PDA, print)
• Dynamic content extension capability like forums, polls and news
• Content scheduling and publication (user driven or time controlled)
• Online retail with integrated payment using IVIS Commerce services

Through the integrated user management, the HKC portal also provided controlled access to different types of user subscribers within the portal, allowing HDC to manage access to certain premium content only for a selected group of users.

Finally, IVIS Group was able to add additional value to the portal using their experience from the multi-channel retail industry. By implementing the IVIS Commerce Services, consumers are able to purchase and make online payment for books published by HDC.

Business Benefits

With the Halal Knowledge Centre (HKC) Portal, HDC now have a showcase of their commitment and capability in delivering a knowledge centre as a first step in their goal to establish a world-class Global Halal Support Centre (GHSC).

The HKC delivered the following benefits:

• Positioning of HDC as the source of Halal information
• Enabling communication that extends the concept of Halal to a broader definition
• Facilitating research through effective collection and dissemination of information
• Improving industry collaboration, partnerships and decision making
• Improving dialogue amongst the industry players as well as with consumers
• Improving training and education through easily accessible materials and content
• Generate new revenue from existing products and content

After the successful delivery of the HKC, utilizing IVIS Professional Services, HDC decided to move its corporate website to the same HKC CMS platform, allowing for a single interface to manage both their corporate website and knowledge centre, and creating a seamless user experience.

PROJECT DETAILS

DELIVERABLES: IVIS Group create a Knowledge Centre Portal solution for Halal Development Corporation