Case studies
A large national insurance broker was maintaining 12 standalone WordPress hub sites by hand and wanted a CMS to stop the duplication. Its shortlist of Sitecore, EpiServer and Adobe was over-specified and licensed per site on an estate that grew every year, and the signed-off budget covered the licence with nothing left for implementation. I renegotiated the platform down to Kentico Xperience with unlimited domain publishing, wrote the RFP and ran a scored three-agency tender. The client then pulled the budget and took it in house.
A large national insurance broker needed to improve its online delivery across a number of hub sites, 12 of them including head office. A key objective was to reduce the man hours spent manually updating small hub sites.
Historically they worked in WordPress for all the hub sites, each one a standalone website, maintained by their internal development team. The number of hub sites and the maintenance load was becoming an issue, so they began researching content management systems, with a view to publishing content to multiple hub sites without updating it across many separate accounts.
The internal team had reviewed the market and not really made headway on which CMS would suit. That was largely down to not having defined a clear set of requirements and objectives for what they wanted the system to deliver.
The initial research had identified Sitecore, EpiServer and Adobe as contenders, and then budget became an issue. ExCo had signed off a figure based on finger-in-the-air forecasts, so it covered the cost of the CMS and none of the implementation: information architecture, design, development.
They decided their knowledge had run its course and brought me in. It made a nice change to be brought in at the beginning rather than when it is almost too late to change course.
I started with a review of where they had got to and the decisions already taken, then ran high level workshops to establish the actual pain points.
That surfaced things nobody had considered: shared content, publishing, ongoing licensing costs. Site architecture, content production, brand and imagery had not been thought through either, and all of it needed pulling together before any agency could deliver a solution. It became clear that a full scoping and RFP document was needed before going to market for a CMS vendor and an agency.
The first problem to solve was the budget and the licences. Reviewing Sitecore, EpiServer and Adobe, I concluded they were potentially over-specified, and that each would mean an ongoing licence fee based on the number of hub sites, which were growing annually. I reviewed the available alternatives and, following negotiations with the vendor, we settled on Kentico Xperience with unlimited domain publishing.
The RFP was an extensive document setting out every key function the client required. Working with the client we reviewed a number of Gold Partners and shortlisted 3 to tender. My role then moved to liaison between client and agency, which kept the client at arm's length and the process as fair as possible.
The 3 agencies each responded to the RFP, reviewed in detail against a scoring matrix, so the client could show due diligence if the project were ever audited. We then invited the agencies in for a 1 hour presentation, to meet the team and answer questions, with agency site visits to follow. Those visits hit lockdown and were cancelled.
At that point the client pulled all budgets and took the project in house. They made their own choice of agency, without my input, based on a 1 hour presentation that was undoubtedly the slickest but did not answer many of the technical questions the project needed to address.
They took the project on through lockdown. When they got back in contact after 9 months, they had only just reached the design phase.
By May 2021 the technical build had been completed and had been sitting with the client for over 6 months while content was prepared for input. Content generation was the largest part and the main blocker of the project, which had been highlighted to them at the outset and had not been resourced properly.
At the time of writing, the site still waits for a launch.
Two things, and the second is the uncomfortable one.
A licence model has to be chosen against the shape of the estate, not the brand on the box. Three over-specified platforms priced per site, on an estate growing every year, would have consumed a budget that already had nothing in it for implementation. Kentico with unlimited domain publishing solved the commercial problem and the technical one at once.
And a scoring matrix only protects a decision if the decision is actually made on it. Three agencies answered the same RFP and were scored so the choice could survive an audit. The client then chose on a 1 hour presentation instead, and the project reached design in nine months and had still not launched a year later, blocked by exactly the content resourcing that had been flagged at the start. Due diligence is worth nothing if someone can step around it at the last moment.
Running a selection like this sits under advise. On why projects like this fail before implementation starts, see why technology projects fail before implementation starts.
Because the estate was growing every year, so a licence priced per hub site is a bill that rises with the thing you are trying to make cheaper. Kentico Xperience with unlimited domain publishing removed that, and freed budget that had been entirely consumed by licence cost.
Showing that the decision was made on the brief rather than on the room. Three agencies answered the same RFP and were scored in detail so the choice would stand up if the project were ever audited, which matters in a regulated sector.
Because it is the one part nobody can outsource and everybody underestimates. Here the technical build was finished and sat with the client for over 6 months while content was prepared, and that risk had been flagged at the outset.
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