100+ Drupal-powered microsites and mobile apps for 3 Nestle brands

Introduction

Nestlé is the world’s largest food & beverage company and as such owns hundreds of brands and sub-brands and thousands of products. Quite a few of those products compete against each other and almost all of Nestlé’s brands are sold into tens of markets around the world.

Every Nestlé brand, most sub-brands and many products have their own microsites. A growing number are now also developing mobile apps, either as a mobile-native alternative to existing web apps or as extensions that provide completely different functionality such as games or unique content formats.

Each an every one of these brand, sub-brand and product microsites and applications have to be customised for tens of markets around the world. Different languages, different products, different promotions and different local distribution partners to be advertised are just some of the main customisations that can be required for up to 50+ international markets.

Each brand simultaneously operates as an independent entity, as part of the wider division within Nestlé it belongs to and the corporation as a whole.

Brand-level independence and freedom exists within a corporate framework that must be adhered to and includes technical and security standards all digital assets must adhere to. One of those standards is that the backend of all microsites are powered by Drupal, the open-source CMS.

This case study covers the approach, processes, challenges and successes of a compact K&C team that has now built over 100 Drupal-powered web and mobile applications for 3 major Nestlé brands – Baby&Me, Wyeth and The Nestlé Nutrition Institute (NNI).

What we did step-by-step

• Built a compact, highly efficient team of around 15 permanent members, augmented as required and designed and managed to sustainably evolve over time.
• Invested in creating re-usable Drupal modules based on the highest coding and security standards that can be integrated in multiple web applications and between Nestlé brands for greater long-term cost and time efficiency.
• Built over 50 microsites and mobile apps for Nestlé’s Baby & Me brand.
• Started simultaneously working with the Wyeth and Nestlé Nutrition Institute (NNI) brands as IT outsourcing partner for digital assets, building another 50+ applications across both.
• Developed a fluid and efficient model which allows knowledge, skills and capacity transfer between 3 sub-teams working for the different Nestlé brands we support.
• Achieved digital asset KPIs in top 10% for Nestlé for all 3 brands

An enterprise-level Drupal case study

Digital asset development at the enterprise level is a very different beast to software development in most other environments. There are multiple stakeholders across corporate, division, unit, brand and potentially product levels, each with a variety of requirements, priorities and interests that need to be met and balanced.

Standards are high but can compete, such as velocity vs. compliance or security sign-off. Projects can often be large in their scale and complexity and involve larger teams or teams of teams that require different methodologies for effective management and efficiency of output.

Even smaller projects involve the added complexity of meeting corporate standards while achieving project-level goals.

This is a case study of how a compact, flexible and evolving team of 15 permanent front end, back end and QA engineers have excelled within the enterprise environment of Nestlé, delivering and maintaining over 100 individual digital assets, and counting, for 3 brands operating across 50 markets.

The challenge

This enterprise-level Drupal project tackles 3 major challenges:

1. Balancing stakeholders

Balancing “in a perfect world” brand-level preferences for digital assets with other considerations including approved brand style guidelines, corporate security and compliance requirements and commercial viability.

2. Managing scale

Scale and complexity management: each web and mobile application has to simultaneously conform to brand and corporate-level standardisation and be customised to the needs of a specific brand, sub-brand, product, professional or consumer audience or international market.

3. Speed vs. Compliance

Launching hundreds of high-quality microsites and mobile apps across multiple brands and markets means working quickly and efficiently. New digital assets being approved by Nestlé’s corporate security and compliance department, however, takes time, creating a potential bottleneck.

Achievements

Our Nestlé team is most proud of:

Beating the competition

The 3 brands the K&C team supports rank in the top 10% of all Nestlé brands for digital asset KPIs incl. security audit success and no. of digital asset launches per year.

Eliminating technical debt

80% improvement in time to ticket resolution for digital assets belonging to the Baby & Me brand.

Investment in re-usable Drupal modules built to the modern best-practice standards for easier future maintenance.

Onboarded 2 more brands

The success of K&C’s work with our original Nestlé brand Baby&Me  led to the onboarding of a further two brands, Wyeth and NNI.

That has seen the team grow to 15 full-time members covering front end, back end and QA, augmented by mobile development experts.