Global Media Conglomerate

50% Faster Publishing through Platform Consolidation and CMS Migration

Managing a portfolio of 25 media brands on a single digital platform is a publishing and engineering challenge at scale. For our client, a global media conglomerate reaching more than 78 million users, the cost and complexity of that challenge had become a constraint on editorial output. Editors depended heavily on technical teams to move content, launch pages and maintain brand consistency, slowing production. The company needed a platform that could support its full portfolio, reduce operational complexity, put publishing control back in the hands of editorial teams and remain adaptable as business and technology requirements evolve.

WHAT WE DID

Content Management Systems

Drupal Consulting Services

Product + Platform Engineering

Omnichannel Experience

Approach

A shared foundation across the portfolio: Material designed a multi-site platform architecture capable of serving the company’s full brand portfolio from a shared core. By standardizing governance, design and content structure across brands, the platform made 60 to 80 percent of functionality available across brand sites from day one, eliminating the need to recreate the same capabilities for each site. This gave the company a scalable foundation for existing brands and a clear path for adding new ones.

Editorial capability without IT dependency: A shared library of components and templates built using Acquia Lightning and global style guides developed in Pattern Lab gave editorial teams greater control over building pages, creating custom layouts and launching content experiences without raising development requests, removing the key production bottleneck. Four brand sites went live within the first six weeks of rollout.

Keeping the platform current: Reusable migration frameworks enabled the transfer of more than one million archived articles, maintaining standards for SEO, performance and media management. As the platform evolved, Material completed successive version migrations from Drupal 8 through to Drupal 10, keeping the infrastructure secure, current and ready to support a portfolio that had grown considerably since the original build.

50%

Reduction in development costs

1M+

Articles migrated

Brand sites launched

50%

Faster publishing times

Outcomes

The consolidated platform removed the bottlenecks that had been slowing editorial output across the portfolio. Standardized publishing tools and workflows reduced operational complexity and enabled content to move more efficiently across brands. Two successive platform upgrades have kept the infrastructure current and secure, with the platform now supporting a portfolio that has continued to grow since the original consolidation.

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