Deloitte’s 142 websites had become difficult to maintain and monitor, and the end-to-end experience needed modernising. They embarked on creating a unified, consistent and modern website experience, as well as streamlining and optimising their content operations. No mean feat when, as a consultancy, their regions are de-centralised and operate somewhat independently. 

 

I came into this project as the front-end experience was being re-imagined. In the beginning, my role was to work with the global content strategy lead to understand the vision, the new content types and the new template system. I then worked with key senior, global service line and brand stakeholders to establish the briefs for key pages of the new experience. I lead a team of copywriters to tackle each of the key pages, managing feedback from service line and brand leads, and compliance teams. Alongside this, I also worked closely with the UX and design team to contribute a copy and content perspective to the new template and component designs.

 

Once the flagship global site launched, I moved onto the migration team to guide 72 regional sites on content strategy as we brought their legacy content onto the new modern platform. Each member firm had a different set of clients, with different needs and levels of understanding and expertise; I started from scratch each time, educating and bringing them along the journey to understand and implement the new global content strategy. In some cases, I also managed and guided key stakeholders within each region where the content stakes were higher, and they were heavily invested in how it was going to look in the new platform. It took sensitivity and understanding to negotiate and lead them towards a resolution they were happy with.

 

I also guided the content authoring team (20 authors at its peak) which involved training, constant communication and content design quality reviews. This was against a backdrop of a continually evolving new platform, with template and component enhancements and new product features being released each month, as it evolved from the initial MVP launch. I had to ensure I stayed across every evolution, understanding how every change impacted content so that I could continue to confidently guide and educate clients and content authors.

 

Over 18 months, we migrated 72 regional sites onto the new platform - at points, juggling up to 15 geographies at a time. Even the pure logistics of each client’s different language and timezone was a challenge. For some sites, migration entailed 1000s of pages, and for others under 100. It took my plate-spinning skills to the next level. I learned how to build pages and author components in AEM, and I learned how to manage a relentless amount of tickets in ADO. But ultimately, this was about seeing a vision through from start to finish - not just handing over the deck, design and copy, but dealing with the grit and grind of bringing a vision to life and all the challenging realities that it brings.