The client initiated Project to harmonise its global presence through a transformative website strategy. Faced with challenges such as 100+ sites, a monolithic architecture, limited content flexibility, and performance issues, the project aimed to adopt a headless CMS, specifically Strapi, and implement a phased approach for significant improvements.

• Monolithic Architecture: Longer development cycles and deployment challenges stemmed from the existing monolithic architecture.
• Limited Content Flexibility: Non-logged pages and user journeys lacked efficient content updating mechanisms, hampering flexibility.
• Performance Issues: Existing performance issues impacted user experience and SEO scores.
• Code Quality: The codebase did not meet desired quality standards. The need for a CMS evaluation was identified as a crucial to-do item.

Based on our "show rather than tell" philosophy, we first presented a Strapi demo by using the homepage content of their three worldwide websites in Strapi and demonstrating the benefits of using CMS. Then we produced a proof of concept to completely redevelop their corporate website and integrate Strapi into it.

We evaluated various CMS platforms and zeroed down on Strapi as our go-to CMS and one single source of truth and delivered content via APIs to different sites. We used Nextjs, CloudFront for caching, Postgres database, AWS along with Strapi. The respective business teams can independently add content (for instance promotions, important news) in the admin panel. The dynamic zones and components provide additional flexibility. Strapi is also delivering important metadata to our system. This data is used to personalise the communications and the content displayed for each person.

• Content Management Made Effortless: With Strapi, different teams can easily add and manage content, like promotions and important news, without needing technical help. Strapi's features, like dynamic zones and components, made it flexible. It also gave extra details about the content, helping us personalise messages and what each person sees.
• Strategic Adoption of Headless CMS: Strapi's use of a headless CMS was a conscious decision to separate content from presentation, ensuring continuous flexibility and scalability.
• Decoupling Frontend and Backend: The roadmap involved a pivotal step—decoupling the frontend from the backend—to streamline content updates and enhance overall system performance.
• Taking it Step by Step: We didn't change everything at once. We started with a corporate website that had mainly static content.
• Continuous Performance Optimization: To make sure everything runs fast and smoothly, storing images and videos in separate places to make our system work better was recommended.
• Future-Ready Strategies:
  • CMS Evaluation: We meticulously outlined the criteria for CMS evaluation, comparing top headless CMS solutions like Sanity, Ghost, and traditional enterprise CMS solutions like Wordpress.
  • Multi-Tenancy: As the client has various global corporate websites, adopting a single Strapi instance with different websites configured as Content Types promotes an efficient multi-tenancy approach.
  • Role-Based Access Control: Granular role-based access control will be defined at the Content Type/Website level, ensuring precise control over user permissions.
  • Future Compliance: To meet potential compliance requirements, separate Strapi instances may be employed for different companies or legal entities.
  • Content Review Workflow: A Content Review workflow, involving a separate frontend instance configured as Preview mode, ensures meticulous content review before going live.
  • Post-Launch Management: Post-launch, all content changes will be seamlessly managed by the Business Team in the production environment.
  • Email notifications: Email notifications are created based on content changes at the website level and are delivered to website administrators for increased protection.
  • Release Cycle: A rigorous release cycle, encompassing Dev > UAT > Production, governs any new development.
  • Parallel Evaluation: Ongoing parallel evaluations identify optimization opportunities for our live website, ensuring it remains at the forefront of performance.
  • Media Storage: Images and videos are stored separately, either in an AWS S3 bucket or on servers provided by the Client Infra team, with configuration in Strapi based on the infrastructure provided.
• Customization for Precision: We tailored our Strapi instance extensively, by integrating email services for our Content Review workflow and Auto Delete feature on Preview to Live Workflow.
• Fortifying Security:
  • To reinforce security, we implemented a custom Single Sign-On (SSO) provider. This provider collaborates with admin roles, mapping them to Strapi Role-Based Access
  • Control upon the first login and updating them as roles change.

The pilot implementation of these action items is expected to deliver significant value to the client’s digital ecosystem:

• Agile Content Updates: Business teams will now have the ability to make real-time content changes, enhancing agility in response to market dynamics instead of the traditional method of making releases for small content changes.
• Improved Collaboration: Advanced Strapi features such as Multi Tenancy and Content Review Workflow will foster collaboration, ensuring a smooth and controlled content management process across global teams of the client.
• Optimised Performance: The parallel evaluation of performance and media storage solutions will contribute to an optimised and seamless user experience on the website.
• Future-Ready Architecture: By considering future compliance requirements and adopting a release cycle, the client ensures that its digital infrastructure remains adaptable and scalable.

The action items not only address immediate needs but are strategically aligned to deliver lasting value by enhancing efficiency, collaboration, agility, and overall digital performance for the client.

Future Expansion and Challenges Ahead:

To discuss the client’s plans for future expansion or enhancements in its global content strategy, considerations for additional languages, countries, or websites as part of the client’s evolving digital presence.

• User Adoption: Ensuring a smooth transition and user adoption of the new system may present challenges.
• Integration with Legacy Systems: Integrating the new system with legacy systems and ensuring seamless data migration could pose challenges.
• Ongoing Maintenance: Sustaining the improved performance and user experience requires ongoing maintenance and optimization.

• Frontend : Next.js
• Database : PostgreSQL
• CMS : Strapi
• Cloud platform and Services : AWS, CloudFront