How to successfully launch a multi website platform for a leading pharmaceutical company in only 3 months.

Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co. KG is the headquarter of the Schwabe Group, which today occupies a unique position worldwide in the field of herbal medicines and preparations. The company is a world market leader in research, development and production of herbal medicines - phytopharmaceuticals. The Schwabe Group is a family-owned company operating in five continents. Well-known products from the company are e.g. Umckaloabo®, Gaspan®, Tebonin® and Lasea®.

In 2020, the company decided to create a multi-site platform for all its brands and markets in order to gain control over all the web properties of the company.

One of the main reasons for this shift was that the digital landscape of the company was run on many different CMS systems or using static websites with a very limited budget. There was a lot of inconsistency between the web properties and no exchange between the markets.

One of the main challenges was the lack of focus on security and compliance. The web properties were hosted on different platforms and supported irregularly.
For Schwabe, market coherence is essential and even though not all website designs are demanded to be the same, flexibility and consistency are required to be able to grow in a competitive market.

Schwabe asked 1xINTERNET to build a new Web CMS platform that would solve their problems and offer a consistent brand and user experience across all markets. The platform should leave enough space to show the individuality of each brand and at the same time enable the company to deliver high-quality, relevant and well-prepared content for all markets. The ultimate goal was to increase awareness and visibility of all products on the web and thereby generate more leads and boost sales.

This was achieved by breaking down the corporate design of each brand to see how it could be reflected in a design system. A design system, using Storybook, was created for all needed components that could be shared between all websites across the organization. Starting with implementing four basic templates for the first set of product websites: Umckaloabo®, Gaspan®, Tebonin®, Lasea®, few weeks later, over 10 brands had been added to the design system.

After the successful design system launch, 1xINTERNET needed to create a powerful CMS for it to run sustainably. A Multi-site solution allows centrally managed code in one code repository. When new components are developed, each website gets an update and all new features can be used immediately on all websites. The components were built with Paragraphs, which enables the editor to have maximum flexibility when creating content. The system had to be optimized for editorial experience and ease of use as Schwabe has multiple and worldwide operating editors, working with the web properties with different skill sets. Allowing editors to choose between defined and existing brands of the implemented Design System, a uniform corporate design for all future websites is guaranteed.

More features and highlights for the editors:
* Intuitive UI, easy onboarding
* Drag and drop functions
* Direct frontend editing
* System-wide content templates and features
* Automatic content checks
* Quick and easy website launch (approx. 15 min)
* Economic & modularly expandable (Brands can be easily added)
* Efficient security and code maintenance

Within only few months we went live with the first two brands in Switzerland: https://www.lasea.ch/de and https://www.umckaloabo.ch/de . Currently we are planning to go live with 8 more sites within the next few months and up to 20 in this first year.
This session will focus on showing how this was accomplished in such a short time. The Director Global Digital Marketing from Schwabe will join the session and tell us some insights from their side.