Launched 11 beer brands via platforming for SABMiller
TECHNICAL CONSULTANCY
DRUPAL DEVELOPMENT
UI/UX DESIGN
QUALITY ASSURANCE
Client Overview
SABMiller is a multinational brewing and beverage company headquartered in London, England, United Kingdom. It is the world's second-largest brewer measured by revenues and is also a major bottler of Coca-Cola. Some of its major beer brands include Miller, Foster, Castle Lager, Peroni among 50 other brands.
SITES ROLLED OUT IN RECORD TIME
CONTROL OVER UI AND FLEXIBILITY
Our Engagement
We executed multiple projects for SABMiller harnessing the power of Drupal as a Multi-site platform for SABMiller. We worked with SABMiller London and SABMiller India and executed 11 projects including 7 brands and CSR Drupal websites in a short span.
Requirements
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Project management and requirements alignment with regional marketing managers.
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Technical leadership for SABMiller Drupal starter kit.
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Drupal development for specific brand rollouts.
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UX and UI Design on a couple of SABMiller brand websites.
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Planning and executing content migration from varied data sources and applications.
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Quality Assurance of all Drupal initiatives and brand websites.
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CMS video training for regional stakeholders.
Drupal as a Platform for Multiple Website Rollouts
With the Acquia site factory paradigm we made a lot of overlapping functionality between brand websites reusable using configurable modules. Rollouts for the specific brand involved configuring generalised modules, specific brand customisations and Drupal frontend development for the unique look of each brand. Thanks to Drupal starter kit approach, we didn’t have to re-do content modelling, install and configure base modules and features for each brand site, this allowed SABMiller to roll out brand websites faster and cheaper. New website for a brand simply required dev team to spin a new site from Acquia site factory and they would get a functional base website with stock features/content entities enabled ready for customisations.
Requirement Gathering
At the start of each project, we conducted workshops with stakeholders to gather their pain points and new ideas. This unstructured data was then converted to user stories with available details. We used confluence to organise documentation for all projects and JIRA to prepare project backlogs.
Grooming Sprint
Before breaking ground on any project, we conducted a grooming sprint to close down on any requirement or technical risk. Purpose of grooming sprint was for the client and dev team to agree on what was being built and for the dev team to finalize the technical approach. Below are few details of grooming sprint:
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Duration - 3 Days to 2 weeks depending on the size of the project.
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Acceptance Criteria - One of the major activity of grooming sprint was for QA team member to write down the Acceptance criteria and for client stakeholder to approve the acceptance criteria helping everyone to be on the same page.
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Technical Grooming - Finalising technical approach for user stories, this took minimal time as we were using Drupal starter kit and a lot of the technical decisions were well thought at the platform level.
Development
Development included customising the starter kit, migration of content using the migrate framework and UI development for the website. All websites were built with mobile first approach covering both Desktop and Mobile (Tablet if specified).
Re-usability
Any new feature built during the course of a specific brand website which had potential for reuse on other site was packaged as Drupal module with necessary configuration and merged back to starter kit for it to be available to other sites.
Documentation
We kept extensive documentation for Drupal starter kit architectural decisions, user guide for module configurations, CMS user guide.
As an example roll out, let’s look at the Radegast website, a Czech beer brand of SABMiller which was built on the above platform.
Discovery
Our initial brief was a lift and shift of the old website to SABMiller Drupal Platform. During the discovery of the project and after a conversation with the brand marketing manager, we agreed that website could use a facelift for it to connect with Radegast’s younger target audience.
Though a UI/UX redesigned was agreed upon, caution had to be taken to not exceed the budget as UI redesign had the potential of adding features and higher customisation and deviation from Drupal starter kit.
Design
Old Radegast website was built very long ago and hence the designs needed to appeal to a modern audience. Additionally, the challenge was to keep the whole process within timelines and budget both from design and development point of view. Major activities done during the design phase were:
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Information Architecture Overhaul.
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Illustration / Graphics Adjustments.
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Modernisation of UI using crisp / flat design.
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Adhering to brand guidelines while incorporating ideas and feedback of various stakeholders.
Delivered 11 brand websites within a short span
Multi-site platform - reduce development time for new sites and pages
Empowered brands, with rapid brand rollouts
Drupal 7 - Drupal improved the authoring experience, eliminating the dependency on the development team. It also allows multi-site rollouts for the brands and was scalable from a futuristic perspective.
Acquia Cloud Site Factory - One of the first brands to move to Acquia Site Factory, SABMiller can now manage multiple brands and multiple sites effortlessly.
Technology Stack
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