Pantech

www.pantechUSA.com

"Liferay Portal has been a key enabler of our marketing efforts in Pantech’s new North American market. Having kept pace with 12 product releases in 2006 alone, the technology is clearly nimble and powerful but also simple enough to maintain with minimal support. We foresee Liferay as an integral part of Pantech’s IT investment in the future"

 

– Philip Hyun, Project Manager, URi

Company Profile

Pantech, through its affiliates - Pantech Co., Ltd., Pantech&Curitel Communications, Inc. and Pantech C&I Co. - is the number two mobile phone company in South Korea and is the seventh largest handset manufacturer in the world. Pantech has been responsible for a number of breakthrough innovations in the mobile technology sector, including the introduction in 2004 of the world's first fingerprint recognition camera phone, as well as award winning camcorder, MP3 and DMB phones.

Pantech Wireless, Inc., a Cypress, California–based subsidiary of Pantech & Curitel and Pantech Co., Ltd., researches, markets and develops wireless handsets and telecommunications products throughout North America as part of the Pantech Group. For additional information, visit the PWI website at www.pantechUSA.com.

Challenge

Pantech made its entrance into the US cellular market in the fall of 2005, planning to offer its products through all major US wireless carriers. A crucial part of the agreement with the carriers was the existence of a website to which customers could be directed for product support and information. Hence, a public site was mission critical for both their US carrier clients and target end users.

As Pantech was already an established international company, it needed the site to quickly adapt to the existing look and feel of its corporate brand. Spanish language support was also essential for the multilingual US market. Lastly, due to the need to cater to deadlines and timelines set by the market and its partners, Pantech was looking for a fast solution that could be easily managed over time.

Resolution

In response to these immediate marketing and business needs, Liferay Portal was chosen by Pantech’s digital advertising company, URi, as the best solution for its pressing deadline. In particular, the easy to manage front-end would allow graphic designers to quickly match Pantech’s existing global branding. Meanwhile, Liferay’s flexible and feature-rich backend would be easy to customize for the IT team in a short period of time. It also allowed for simple, easy to maintain, long-term multi-lingual support.

Beyond meeting these basic requirements, Pantech and URi continue to be impressed by the scope of business value that Liferay delivers:

  • Manageability and low costs of ownership – The built in content management system (CMS) and its ability to scale in capacity is a perfect fit to handle the large loads of marketing content that Pantech needs maintained over time. Moreover, the CMS’ intuitive and user-friendly interface is wholly maintainable without the involvement of large IT teams with significant technical skill, allowing Pantech to enjoy low costs of maintenance and ownership.
  • Business agility – Given the nature of Pantech’s business, timely updates are required to synch up to a product release calendar rather than a timeline established by the preferences of an IT team. In fact, Liferay’s agility helped Pantech USA support the launch of 12 products in 2006 alone. With rapid changes to their website happening with each product launch, the CMS system enabled content to be pushed up on their site quickly and accurately.
  • Extendibility into new markets – Liferay is compatible with a large global product company such as Pantech as it provides a quickly implementable solution to cater to international market expansion. Liferay provides the client with ease of mind and a confidence that the marketing efforts in its new U.S. market are reliably met with each product launch. The company recently built its Canadian website on Liferay as well, leveraging the technology’s multi-lingual support for French-Canadian audiences.

 

Looking forward, Pantech and URi hope to leverage Liferay Portal for a number of other marketing and business endeavors.