Why CIM chose TSD
TSD was contacted by The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) who were in need of a complete digital overhaul and bespoke e‑commerce platform after a lengthy vendor selection process as they felt we had the right balance of e‑commerce experience and technical competancy.
CIM had previously implemented a number of websites on the popular CMS platform Umbraco but due to it’s in-house implementation felt that it wasn’t fitting their needs and was unwieldly and cumbersome to use.
The Solution
We worked with CIM’s in-house development team, design team and numerous departments through a collaborative research and development process to restructure their entire online presence. This included over 10 dedicated websites, countless department specific areas, a member only portal which interfaced with their two internal CRMs (including Microsoft Dynamics), designing and building a custom Single Sign On (SSO) identity provider and internal membership renewal process.
The various website editors were thrilled with the new CMS structure and management process. Although still in Umbraco, the implementation was aligned with their day-to-day operations which made managing the sites quick and simple for editors regardless of computer competency. Editors went from avoiding updating content to actively engaging with the CMS and updating regularly.
Having replaced their old online authentication system with a SSO solution we were able to validate member’s details and offer bespoke discounts, restrict access to products and offer member specific product pricing.
Payments were previously taken through a combination of different payment providers including WorldPay which we reviewed with CIM and identified considerable cost savings on the fees involved with processing cards.
The bespoke e‑commerce platform built is powered by Umbraco and Ucommerce. Completely customisable by the online editors and automatically populated with stock using a variety of syncing processes. The websites take payments via Stripe and PayPal.
As well as rearchitecting and building their online presence, we reviewed the hosting infrastructure resulting in annual cost savings in the tens of thousands of pounds and a simplified development/deployment process saving their in-house development team countless hours.
The entire group of websites and e‑commerce functionality can now be managed by their small in-house team of developers.
The Results
The results have been excellent, already achieving monthly online sales in excess of the total development investment -not to mention considerable time and cost savings across the board.
We expect the sales growth to continue as further future enhancements and targeting techniques are incorporated.
In Their Words
Kate Gibson (Head of Digital at CIM) had this to say about working with TSD:
Top class development team and a pleasure to work with! A super talented bunch who listen to requirements, execute projects efficiently and get everything over the finish line looking really sharp. I brought Tim/TSD into CIM to sort our varied and dated platforms out and bring us into the digital world.
We needed a content publishing site, a custom e‑commerce solution for the various (global) product and services we offer as well as a large-scale content management system to run all components of The Chartered Institute of Marketing, regionally and globally. They were all delivered above and beyond spec, within our (already quite small) budgets and to a top standard. We were thrilled. A great team to work with too, collaboration and communication was easy so our teams worked well together and all was well synergized, enjoyable!
The content publishing site started out as a simple blog-like site in its initial iteration, the brief soon exploded and required a team of professionals to come in and develop based on the many features now required. We brought in TSD who helped define the scope of work, quickly then implemented the solution and we were up and running within weeks, a real result based on the final scope of the project.
We quickly moved onto our long-awaited e‑commerce platform build, which required a lengthy list of customizations based on the complexity of the various product and services and their global distribution needs. We not only revolutionized an entire company’s sales and finance department with the new technology but also catapulted the business back into a space they were unable to compete in, resulting in revenues that far exceeded the company's expectations and are still amazing the FD to date! Gold stars all around for that launch.
TSD sorted our design work, user experience elements, code development, CRM migration requirements, trained the internal teams on the new features and all the various stakeholder management presentations that goes along. An all around successful partnership that delivered some really great results. I will absolutely work with Tim again and would highly recommend him to anyone looking for a great development partner.
