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Drupal: A Versatile, Experience-Driven Platform

116 Village Blvd. Suite 303, Princeton, NJ 08540 125 Cambridge Park Dr. Suite 310, Cambridge, MA 02140

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The Online Challenge

Experiences Deliver Results

Delivering Experiences With Drupal

Rapid Drupal Engagement - Acquia Site Factory, Lift,

ContextDB

Creating Experiences that Deliver Results

Case Study: Warner Music Group

Conclusion

Contents

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Building loyalty online is no easy task as

more consumers flock to the internet

to shop. Many companies compete to

sell similar products and services using

comparable language and outreach

tactics. Banks offer commoditized

checking, savings, money markets, stocks,

and bonds products. Similarly, web hosting

companies offer security, uptime, FTP, GIT

integration and reliability. But, which one

will you choose?

The Online Challenge

» Web hosting companies offer security, uptime, FTP, GIT

integration and reliability. But, which one will you choose? «

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Brand loyalty is an important topic but,

the focus of this paper expands far

beyond it. Great experiences, combined

with brand appeal, create a seamless

and connected engagement process on

any device. Nest, a smart temperature

correcting thermostat which helps

manage energy costs and provides reports

on its efforts to prevent climate change,

is a great example. Nest permeated

a saturated market by providing an

engaging experience for customers. Nest

brought more than a smart temperature

correcting thermostat to the market

by defining a complete experience

including packaging, installing, activating,

registering, and customer support. This

full-lifecycle experience has helped Nest

target their demographic and succeed in

their market, eventually selling to Google

for $3.2 billion in 2014.

Experiences Deliver Results

» Nest permeated a saturated market by providing an

engaging experience for customers. Nest brought more than

a smart temperature correcting thermostat to the market

by defining a complete experience including packaging,

installing, activating, registering, and customer support. «

It’s easy to find other examples : Apple

(continues to create impressive products

and engagement experiences from

Genius bars to Itunes checkout (this is not

surprising, as Nest was founded by

a former Apple VP of Product). All of these

elements drive loyalty, engagement, and

most importantly, results.

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» Tomorrow’s market winners should be able to deliver

an experience that is cross-channel by design, allowing

customers to search, buy and serve seamlessly across

multiple channels and touchpoints.3 «- ORACLE

Measuring design or experience is a

difficult task, but a study on experience

design by Adobe suggests companies with

great experiences compared to those with

poor consumer and customer experiences

have 14.4% more repeat customers, 16.6%

higher product / service referral rates, and

have 15.8% fewer customers that are likely

to do business with a competitor1.

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Delivering Experiences with DrupalWhy Drupal?

Drupal is so much more than just an open

source content management system.

Drupal continues to evolve as a leading

tool for creating exceptional digital

experiences. This year alone, Gartner has

ranked Acquia (and therefore Drupal by

proxy) as a leader in its magic quadrant

for content management systems. This

extends to Acquia’s continued innovation

in products and services that support the

ease of deployment of Drupal solutions.

Drupal is used in a variety of applications,

from small websites to massive scale

multi-site enterprise frameworks and

applications. Proprietary software vendors

face significant challenges as new methods

of creating and measuring experiences

consume market share. Proprietary

software companies speed-to-market

and release cycles are bound by a limited

output capacity and customer prioritized

feature backlog.

NICHE PLAYERS VISIONARES

LEADERSCHALLENGERS

Completeness of vision

Abi

lity

to e

xecu

te

Source: Gartner (July 2015)

Sitecore

Adobe

EPiServer

Oracle Acquia

HPIBM

OpenTextSDL

ProgressMicrosoft

SquizGX Software

eZ Systems

e-Spirit

Hippo

Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management

CrownPeakAutomattic

CoreMedia

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However, Drupal, the largest open source

project in the world, is a prime example of

rapid innovation. The global community

of contributors with vast, diverse skills and

innovative ideas, continues to push Drupal’s

modular framework forward.

Pinterest remains a prime example of the

detriments of speed-to-market errors.

When Pinterest garnered popularity within

social communities, many proprietary

software holders struggled to respond

because of their restrictive release cycles.

Meanwhile, the Drupal community

developed, tested, and released a Pinterest

module within days.

Drupal is also a vastly complex and flexible

application development framework

that comes in a variety of prepackaged

distributions for different industry uses,

ranging from university, community, and

government.

» When Pinterest garnered popularity within social

communities, many proprietary software holders struggled

to respond because of their restrictive release cycles.

Meanwhile, the Drupal community developed, tested, and

released a Pinterest module within days. «

DEVELOPED TESTED RELEASED

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Rapid Drupal Engagement - Acquia Site Factory, Lift, Context DBAcquia offers Site Factory software as

a service to power some of the biggest

brands in the world on a framework

that enables rapid site deployment, and

therefore rapid experience development.

Companies that manage networks of sites

with shared characteristics such as brand,

features, structure, etc. can assemble a

master site and then duplicate repeatedly

to deploy brand or product sites. Each site

instance resides on an elastic cloud SAAS

infrastructure to remove the hosting and

maintenance burden.

Some examples businesses where this

model applies:

• Enterprises managing multiple brands

like pharmaceutical companies can

create a site for each product . Each can

be united by one brand, one publishing

workflow, one navigation model, etc.

• Franchises managing multiple stores’

web properties

• Real estate companies managing

multiple sub-divisions

• Radio or television networks

• Educational institutes with different

departments

• Governments

» With the advent of Site Factory, Lift and ContextDB,

now marketers can truly focus on what matters - creating

experiences that deliver results. «

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A recent Forrester report evaluated

the ROI of using Acquia’s Site Factory

for site development, and the results

revealed a 944% ROI over 3 years2

based on a composite company with the

following characteristics:

• No centralized process or technology

for website creation and management

• Individual brands using different

agencies with different technologies

and processes

• Different CMS peppered throughout

the company to solve different needs

• Time-sensitive digital campaigns core

to the business

Combining Site Factory with Acquia’s

newer products creates a powerhouse

suite of capabilities. Acquia Lift provides

engagement and personalization

capabilities never before seen with

Drupal. Context DB knits data together

with customer profiles on any device.

With the advent of Site Factory, Lift,

and Context DB, marketers can now

truly focus on what matters: creating

experiences that deliver results.

» A recent Forrester report evaluated the ROI of using

Acquia’s Site Factory for site development and the results

revealed a 944% ROI over 3 years. «

Focus on What Matters

Unfortunately, many organizations

are held back from focusing on what

matters: attracting, retaining, and

converting customers. Instead, they’re

busy resolving bugs, determining

how to build a cost effective scalable

infrastructure, and knitting together

disjointed products, tools and best

practices to drive their product forward.

Drupal has evolved to solve these issues

and more. SAAS and PAAS offerings

mean a businesses can scale its web

presence as its requirements and traffic

require scale. For example, 24/7 support

subscriptions exist to eradicate trouble.

By tapping into these services, business

can start focusing on what matters

and spend more time building great

experiences.

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The Right People

When this user experience movement

started, skills were triaged into numerous

roles. Someone researched and reported

on the customer. Another person used

that information to create wireframes,

and another person took those

wireframes and applied a branded visual

design. This separation continued all the

way down the line which resulted in too

much communication, loss of time, and

worse, loss of focus on the customer.

Today, in order keep up with the

breakneck pace of the web and

competitors, we need to move faster

than triaged roles allow. We need

generalists to tighten the communication

and delivery loop. We need knowledge

experts on top of market trends, tools,

techniques for testing experience, and

delivering to meet standards.

» While Drupal and its extended services can open doors to

accelerate experiences and focus on what matters, getting

the right people on board and following results-driven

processes is the key to success. «

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PEOPLE

TOOLSPROCESS

The Right Process

Understanding business goals and

researching your market and audience

is critical to any experience project.

Structuring an iterative and highly

integrated team means better

communication, ability to pivot, and

less waste. Eric Reis brought this idea

of a lean process mainstream with his

book, The Lean Startup, which has taken

software development by storm. He

suggests the following:

• Prioritize what matters most

• Design only what’s necessary to

validate a Minimum Viable Product

(the version of a new product which

allows a team to collect the maximum

amount of validated learning about

customers with the least effort. )

• Build in small chunks

• Validate with customers

• Repeat

Your project methodology, team experience,

and enabling technology provide the

foundations to deliver exceptional

experiences that drive results for your

business. Let’s look at how these elements

come together in a real-life example.

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Case Study: Warner Music Group; Reduced cost and time-to-market with new Drupal platformIn 2011, Warner Music Group had to find a

platform that could not only support long-

term growth of their artists’ websites,

but one that could enable a cost effective

and rapid transition from their soon to be

decommissioned platform. Their website also

dealt with massive traffic spikes, bugs, and

features requests: all coupled with major

release immovable deadlines tied to artist’s

album release dates. It was a high-risk task

with no room for error.

» Together, FFW, Acquia, and Warner Music Group designed

a pixel perfect centralized collection of artist sites built on

Acquia’s Site Factory in less than 60 days. «

The Solution

Together, FFW, Acquia, and Warner Music

Group designed a pixel perfect centralized

collection of artist sites built on Acquia’s Site

Factory in less than 60 days. First, we created

a master artist site that included all of the

features you’d expect to find on most sites:

a blog, upcoming events, and social linking.

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Once the artist template was created, it

was cloned upwards of 75 times, resulting

in 75 sites connected by one brand and one

site structure. After duplicating, each was

themed to each artist’s aesthetic. 75 sites

were both migrated from the old platform

and deployed on the new platform within a

tight 6 month deadline. This massive project

would be impossible on any other platform or

without such an experienced team. Acquia’s

Site Factory also allowed Warner Music Group

to focus on experience and their digital first

needs.

» We can stand up as many sites as we want. The way Cloud

Site Factory is structured allows us to scale much faster

and it allows us to actually scale margin. So if we do more, it

doesn’t cost us more. «- VP FOR DIGITAL, BROADCAST AND MEDIA COMPANY

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Conclusion: Removing Barriers to Create Exceptional Digital ExperiencesWhen it comes to creating digital

experiences, it’s the people, processes, and

tools that enable us to innovate faster.

Drupal’s evolved ecosystem of modules

and services accelerates development and

helps companies focus on what matters

the most: designing, testing, and iterating

experiences that drive results. Acquia’s

products now offer richer personalization,

testing, and analysis options than ever

before. Combined with the right process,

Drupal‘s proven platform will allow your

organization to achieve its desired business

results.

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Credits

1. Adobe / Forrester: Best Practices in UX Design

https://www.adobe.com/enterprise/pdfs/Forrester_Best_Prac_In_User_Exp.pdf

2. Acquia / Forrester: The Total Economic impact of Acquia Cloud Site Factory

https://www.acquia.com/forrester-tei-acquia-cloud-site-factory?cmpac=teiacsfPR

3. Oracle: Creating cross-channel unified experiences

http://www.oracle.com/us/corporate/analystreports/heavy-reading-customer-experience-1906553.pdf

4. https://www.acquia.com/blog/acquia-leader-again-new-2015-gartner-magic-quadrant-wcm

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FFW is a digital agency built on technology, driven by data

and focused on user experience. For over 15 years, the world’s

largest brands have relied on us to build accessible, creative

and user-friendly digital solutions that deliver results.

We combine data insights, design, and development to build

better solutions that inform, entertain, and convert your

site users to customers, locally and globally.

FFW creates engaging experiences that make technology

captivating and every visit valuable.