.jpg?format=pjpg&auto=webp)
.svg){kind=logo}
Simmons & Simmons achieves full control over presentation and data with Contentstack
Simmons & Simmons was challenged with upgrading and managing its websites at scale and speed.
Share on:
Simmons & Simmons was using a legacy CMS that was inhibiting their creativity and control. The company was challenged by manual updates and it was difficult to track content changes causing discrepancies and version control. By onboarding Contentstack’s headless CMS, Simmons & Simmons has achieved full presentational authority, and a distributed application ecosystem for greater flexibility and control.
The challenge
Simmons & Simmons was using Sitecore CMS, and was struggling with an intensely manual process to keep its website and product site up to date and efficient. Any updates to the websites needed to be created manually, and it was difficult to keep content and presentation data separate. Simmons & Simmons also faced limitations with how to present templated pages, forcing them to use scripting within the content which slowed down the process of making changes.
As a legal authority, many of the publications on the site are legacy, and may have been written many years ago. There are thousands of articles that need to be kept as legacy information for clients and users, and migrating them to the latest version or moving them to a new channel or platform was becoming a huge challenge.
Simmons & Simmons also found that there were a lot of unauthorized changes being made, where content was updated in the body of the original text, or where specific elements had been redesigned, and the data wouldn’t copy over accurately when it was transported to a new location. Without becoming a barrier to creative freedom, the business wanted a smarter solution to manage their wealth of data, including not just content but also client and customer information.
The solution
A headless CMS was an obvious choice for Simmons & Simmons, to get more control over both presentation and content. “We wanted to have complete presentational control”, said Taslima Yousuf, Digital Business Analyst. “We also wanted a distributed application ecosystem where we weren’t tied to any specific product. There was no way to do that before. Contentstack was the simplest headless CMS we saw, with an intuitive user interface, and customizable models.”
Simmons & Simmons can now recreate new sections of their website and product site, without any need to rewrite the code. Stakeholders simply make changes, send them across, and these arrive in the right areas automatically.
In particular, Contentstack’s Modular Blocks feature has been really useful for Simmons & Simmons, to allow the business to play with the layout of pages, and give more options to content editors to be able to adapt any template. New CTAs, images, or video components can be added with ease, without the risk of breaking the page. “This has been great for user experience,” Yousuf said. “We lock down parts like the header for example, and then we give the freedom to chop and change buttons, links or images to add personalization and targeted UX.”
The company is also making use of Contentstack Marketplace, looking towards extending their capabilities with image components, audio, and even podcasts. Developers can use the easy integrations offered by Marketplace to build out a tool within Contentstack and then adjust it to meet their specific business needs.
From a development perspective, integration capabilities have also made day-to-day work far easier.
There’s no doubt that we can manage our systems better. Upgrading to new versions or packages is so much easier, and we can connect two different sites through data models, while still using one CMS to manage both and control them together. And we’ve built in our access management software so that we can keep the same level of control.
Taslima Yousuf | Digital Business Analyst
The results
- Days to hours: Updating content models and adding new features used to take days with Sitecore, and now takes mere hours.
- Smarter content creation: Building and updating pages is quicker and easier to do, with far fewer issues than the business was experiencing with Sitecore. Design freedom has allowed for personalization.
- More control: By using the API for content migration, the business has been able to scale the work they are doing, while retaining full presentational and data authority.
- Faster load and development times: The experience is better on both the front end for the user and the back end for editors and development teams, who can make changes in a fraction of the time.
Company
Simmons & Simmons is an international law firm that works across four highly regulated sectors: Financial institutions, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Technology, Media and Communications, and Asset Management and Investment funds. Grounded in exceptional knowledge of the law, Simmons & Simmons prides itself on consistently delivering smarter, more efficient ways to tackle clients’ most complex challenges.
Industry
Products used
Partners on this project
Ready for more?
Contact an expert