Uncorking potential
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Limited reserve
Growth can be a great thing. Especially if you're Treasury Wine Estates (TWE), one of the world's largest wine companies with a portfolio of 70+ leading brands and counting (Penfolds, Wolf Blass and Fifth Leg to name a few).
From grape growing to giveaways, TWE are responsible for how their wines are made and marketed via 70+ individual brand websites, with many fast approaching CMS platform expiry.
We partnered with TWE to explore flexible, cost-effective platform solutions that could support a large ecosystem of websites. Our design and development team worked their magic to bring 11 websites to life in 6 short months.
Marrying of the vines
Over seven weeks, we paired our smarts with TWE’s sophisticated palate to define an ecosystem strategy and solutions to withstand the test of time.
Adopting a lean and agile approach, we worked with internal stakeholders in two phases.
The first phase involved a discovery workshop to map the current state, identify pain points, and prioritise key tasks and features. The second phase involved a rapid market scan to see which solutions might be a suitable fit while keeping major replatforming at bay.
Interviewing stakeholders across the business, we learned that the current state was too slow, too complicated, and too volatile.
Updates would regularly revert content changes or take down the website entirely during key business periods (i.e. a nightmare).
Ranking these pain points, we summarised that the future state needed to deliver a nimble end-user and admin experience, offer a high level of personalisation and intelligence, and support the features currently offered by their existing suite, only better. We turned their top concerns into 10 key assessment criteria, then compared what we needed against what was out there in the wonderful world of CMS solutions.
A headless CMS. A full-bodied ecosystem.
Like a great Cab Sav, the CMS solution needed to be multifaceted. Flexible and accessible for internal marketers and contractors, yet secure. It needed to tap into the company's intel and targeting smarts, while offering mobile-friendly experiences, instantly.
To meet TWE's key assessment criteria, we recommended the company shift to a headless CMS environment, introducing a composable digital experience platform (DXP). Put simply, we discovered that their needs could be met by a loosely-coupled foundation platform, with plug-in features to serve the needs of their existing suites. This solution would give Treasury Wines a modern, innovative and flexible base to build meaningful, connected web experiences, while being high-performance, cost-effective and easy to use.
Identifying two ways-in - dotCMS and Storyblok Headless CMS, both with Netlify product sets (hosting for the pretty front-end stuff) - we were engaged to complete a proof of concept for our shortlisted platforms. During this exercise, we found that while there were highlights to using dotCMS, Storyblok and Netlify were a better fit for migration.
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Juice that's worth the squeeze
Like a fine wine, smart website ecosystems are designed to age well. With a solution in sight, we helped Treasury Wines co-design their future state including a high-level strategy to get there.
With the platform secured and a strategy in hand, our design and development team worked in harmony to design and build 11 websites in just 6 short months. Utilising a global design system they played to the strengths of a dynamic headless CMS to build a series of world-class consumer websites.
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