ICE speeds up content delivery, cuts development costs with a headless CMS

For years ICE had been using WordPress and switched over to Kirby CMS, which is a flat-file CMS. Kirby CMS did not enable direct access for stakeholders to make updates. Instead, it required stakeholders first to submit a ticket with the development team. If they needed to correct a typo or make a change to a piece of copy or post a blog, all content updates required a development ticket. As a result, much of their developers’ time was spent managing content and resolving tickets.

ICE needed a CMS that would give their stakeholders more independence to make content updates and free up developers’ time so they could focus on innovating. ICE also did not want a monolithic CMS that would bind them to whatever was built into the CMS. They were looking for a CMS that would give them the freedom to integrate, to use best-of-breed apps and components of their choice and enable omnichannel delivery.

During ICE’s CMS search, they learned the power of an API-based, headless CMS. ICE found that Contentstack answered all their CMS questions. It even resolved issues that at the time they didn’t know needed to be addressed. Contentstack has met ICE’s expectations and more in the following ways:

• Version control has given ICE peace of mind. If content is accidentally published live, it can be rolled back to a previous version with a click of a button.
• The CMS’s intuitive UI made onboarding stakeholders a breeze. Business users are able to delve right in and make content updates with little to no prior training.
• Being able to set up and develop in multiple environments (e.g. staging, production, etc.) has allowed developers great flexibility in building and testing before committing to any live deployments.
• The ability to schedule publishing has freed up early mornings for one of ICE’s junior web developers. She no longer has to wake up at the break of dawn just to publish a new press release on the website because she can schedule it days or weeks in advance.

Before Contentstack, a regular update took about 30 minutes. A simple content edit needed to be repeated multiple times in different development and production servers. Contentstack cut that process down to 30 seconds.

Contentstack has helped ICE free up their development resources; previously, one developer was dedicated to content updates. At times, two other developers would jump in to help with content updates. Now developers don’t do content updates at all.

“Contentstack isn’t just a CMS of today. It’s a CMS of the future," said Kevin Yang, senior manager, digital experience. "We’re looking forward to the continuous ROI that Contentstack provides our organization as we continue to build technology that powers the American dream.”