Successful digital transformation: the case of Le Journal des Entreprises

"We had all our information, but it wasn't structured or showcased," says Emmanuelle Bouron, Director of Strategy and Diversification at Journal des Entreprises, describing the state of the online media outlet before its redesign.

Le Journal des Entreprises is a B2B media outlet that covers economic news about companies and economic players in the region. It has a website where most of the content is accessible via a paid subscription.

📚 The Journal des Entreprises use case is featured in the 2025/2026 edition of Ouest Medialab's AI guide for local media .

Requirements

In 2023, Le Journal des Entreprises will complete a comprehensive overhaul of its editorial content. The project began in 2021 when the team realized that the website, which dated back to 2017, was obsolete.

"[The site] was no longer suited to the developments we wanted to make and, above all, [it] was no longer suited to the uses and needs of our audiences." Emmanuelle Bouron

Le Journal des Entreprises produces 12,000 editorial pieces each year, and its editorial database contains more than 200,000 articles. Following internal discussions and reader surveys, several objectives have been identified:

• Making archives visible again, 
• Help journalists index their articles,
• Improve internal linking so that free content benefits from better natural referencing.

To achieve these goals, Le Journal des Entreprises decided to call on ContentSide, whose Semantic Platform tool was already integrated into its Melody CMS.

ContentSide solutions

To meet these challenges, ContentSide used Semantic Platformits artificial intelligence solution for semantic content analysis.

To better illustrate the work we've done, let's take the example of an article published on the website Le Journal des Entreprises, "CMG-CGM finalizes acquisition of Bolloré Logistics, its biggest ever".

• Triple article classification

Journal des Entreprises articles are classified by Semantic Platform according to three different classification schemes: geographical location, business sector and economic theme. 

In this article, Semantic Platform made it possible to link the article to the logistics sector, the M&A theme and the city where CMA-CGM's headquarters are located, Marseille.

• Associating tags with content

Thanks to its Named Entity Detection feature, Semantic Platform has detected the names of the companies mentioned in the article, in this case CMA-CGM and Bolloré Logistics, which are added as associated tags. 

Le Journal des Entreprises uses the Dun & Bradstreet database, via Altares, so that company information on these associated tags is immediately available to the reader.

• Recommended links for further reading

These multiple semantic enrichments make it possible to create a high-performance internal mesh in terms of natural referencing, and above all to offer an effective user experience by developing fluid, practical navigation for readers.

For example, it's possible to find all articles related to the companies mentioned, and/or about the same sector of activity. This allows readers to discover a new way of browsing the website, by discovering similar articles recommended according to the desired criteria.

In addition, Semantic Platform recommends further reading links based on semantic detection of similar content.

• Reprocessing of Journal des Entreprises archives to improve visibility

To enable readers to benefit from the same functionality across the Journal des Entreprises' 170,000 archives , Semantic Platform has re-classified them according to the three filing plans, and associated them with the appropriate tags.

Focus on Melody, the editorial system used by the Journal des Entreprises

In 2021, Le Journal des Entreprises adopted Melody, a multichannel editorial system designed to meet the needs of online media.

"We integrated Melody in 2021 so that our editorial teams could very quickly and easily post and publish their content on the web. They are completely autonomous." Emmanuelle Bouron 

Le Journal des Entreprises wanted to provide its journalists with a tool that was directly integrated into their editorial system. Thanks to the partnership between ContentSide and Melody, the Semantic Platform's features are now directly available in Melody.

The " new" Journal des Entreprises

Le Journal des Entreprises launched its new website at the end of February 2024. Thanks to Semantic Platform, content is enhanced: it is easier to access, and navigation between content is more intuitive.

That's not all. The impact of Semantic Platform can be measured in different ways: 

"First and foremost, it was a step forward for journalists. They were pleased to see their content become easier to find, with a search engine that works well with this classification." Emmanuelle Bouron. Le Journal des Entreprises also received very positive feedback from subscribers.

As part of the redesign, several ROIs were calculated: 

• 2.5 times the number of sessions, 
• x2 on the number of pages viewed per session, 
• 39,000 articles made accessible to search engines, 
• 10 times fewer URLs with "slow" loading times.

Bruno Dussourt, Managing Director of Journal des Entreprises, spoke about ContentSide's achievements in issue no. 1583 of Les Clés de la presse, dated March 5, 2024:

"We have reorganized the database around geographical areas, business sectors, and economic themes such as CSR, fundraising, and employment, and we have enriched it with external legal and financial sources via the Siren code and a partnership with Altarès & Bradstreet. Now, thanks to ContentSide's artificial intelligence tool, our subscribers can filter information according to their areas of interest. This is why the Journal des Entreprises is positioning itself as an economic intelligence platform serving regional decision-makers."

The future of the Journal des Entreprises

Following the success of the redesign, Le Journal des Entreprises decided to take its use of AI a step further by integrating a generative AI feature. Semantic Platform can now suggest headlines and lead-ins directly from the journalist's editorial environment. 

When the journalist has finished writing their article, they only need to click once to see three suggested titles and lead-ins generated by Semantic Platform. They can then add them, modify them, or simply decide not to use them. These suggestions save time when filling in SEO tags.

🎤 Discover the testimony of Emmanuelle Bouron, Director of Strategy and Diversification, during a workshop co-hosted by Le Journal des Entreprises, Melody, and ContentSide in December 2025.