Case studies

The company

Rolls-Royce is a global business, providing power systems for use on land, at sea and in the air, through its four divisions: civil aerospace, defence aerospace, marine and energy. It is headquartered in London and has 39,000 employees in 50 countries.

The challenge

In 2009 Rolls-Royce asked Magus to consult on website policies as part of a major overhaul of rolls-royce.com.

“The site hadn’t been redesigned for quite a few years,” says Andrea Gold, Global Web Manager at Rolls-Royce. “There were no standards at all, mainly because it was all channelled through two people, so they were able to put information up as they wanted. But that meant it was also quite subjective.”

Over time, this had a cumulative effect. The online brand, for example, had become fragmented: each business area had its own brand and colours, and the global web presence lacked a common look and feel. In the late 90s and early 2000s, many non-standard domain names were acquired and sites launched.

“Historically Rolls-Royce has been a company where you can go off and do your own thing,” says Gold. “There has been a lot of persuading to do to make people realise the power of keeping it all consistent.”

The solution

The Magus website policy team worked with Rolls-Royce to understand their brand and corporate guidelines, and create a comprehensive set of web policies.

The new web policies covered: search-engine optimisation, domain names, copywriting, accessibility, usability, online brand, co-branding, site-creation and legal standards.

“Creating website policies from scratch can be a complex, time-consuming and knowledge-intensive process” says Nicola Thompson, Head of Standards Services at Magus. “We can benefit companies like Rolls-Royce by dramatically short-cutting that process, by drawing on our library of best practice web policies, and years’ of experience consulting for global brands”.

Magus was lead consultant on PAS 124, the BSi British Standards specification, for Defining, implementing and managing website standards.

The result

Rolls-Royce now has a consistent set of website policies for all web editors across the organisation. These detailed, documented standards provide the basis for ongoing training to ensure continued compliance company-wide.

With policies in place, Rolls-Royce could then proceed with the relaunch of rolls-royce.com, with a common approach across its entire web presence. “We’ve now got a site that we can build on and show Rolls-Royce as a company at the cutting edge of technology, which is what the site’s there to do”, says Gold.

The benefits of the policies were immediate and ongoing:

• Strengthening of the online brand, as all business units and country sites adhered to a common set of standards
• Raising the profile of the website internally, with unprecedented buy-in from senior management. “They’re realising the importance of the site and have given more input,” says Gold. “The CEO has been heard to talk of it as ‘our shop window’. That’s been a very important step forward for us.”
• A solid base to build on. With website policies in place, Rolls-Royce can focus more on developing content and adding value. The policies created by Magus will be incorporated into internal training, thus ensuring company-wide compliance as the web presence grows and expands.
• A lasting solution. Rolls-Royce now has a strategy that will allow them to develop their web presence in the certain knowledge that standards compliance is guaranteed. “We wanted to ensure that the quality of the site was high from the outset,” says Gold, “and that the quality wouldn’t degrade after launch.”

To ensure their web policies were being effectively implemented and maintained, Rolls-Royce use the Magus ActiveStandards platform to monitor and manage online compliance.

Working with Magus

“Working with Magus on web policies has been a very positive experience”, Gold says. “It’s been nothing but good. They’re a great company, very friendly.”