Background
Qatar Financial Centre (QFC) needed to modernize its corporate website and improve the way its internal teams managed digital content. The existing platform was difficult to maintain and heavily dependent on developer support, even for relatively routine changes.
Creating new pages, restructuring content, or making certain updates often required a formal change request. As a result, changes could take several days to implement, slowing down publishing and increasing the ongoing cost of managing the website.
QFC needed a more flexible approach—one that would give its marketing, communications, and business teams greater control over content while providing a modern digital experience for businesses, investors, and other visitors.
Solution
Applab redesigned and rebuilt the QFC website using Umbraco CMS, creating a flexible and user-friendly content management experience that enables non-technical employees to manage and publish content independently.
Rather than relying on fixed page templates, the new platform is built around a reusable component library. QFC teams can combine these components to create different page layouts, corporate pages, campaign pages, and standalone landing pages without requiring additional development work. A structured design system helps maintain visual consistency while still giving teams the flexibility to respond to different content and business requirements.
Alongside the CMS, Applab developed a custom responsive front end to deliver a modern experience across desktop, tablet, and mobile. The UI/UX and design system were developed in Figma to create a consistent foundation across the website.
The platform is hosted on Microsoft Azure, providing QFC with a secure, scalable, and reliable cloud foundation. Separate Development, UAT, and Production environments support controlled development, testing, approval, and deployment.
Together, the component-based architecture, Umbraco CMS, and Azure infrastructure give QFC greater ownership of its digital platform while providing a scalable foundation for future development.
Impact
The new website has transformed QFC’s approach to content management, moving the organization from a developer-dependent model to a more efficient self-service publishing environment.
Changes that previously required formal development requests and could take several days can now often be completed directly by QFC teams within minutes. This reduces dependency on developers and recurring change requests while helping lower the operational cost of routine website management.
The reusable component system also gives QFC significantly more flexibility. Marketing and communications teams can quickly create new pages and landing pages to support campaigns, announcements, initiatives, and changing business requirements without compromising design consistency.
For visitors, the redesign delivers a cleaner, more modern, and responsive experience across devices. Behind the scenes, the combination of Umbraco and Microsoft Azure provides a scalable foundation that can evolve alongside QFC’s digital needs.
The transformation is set to continue, with a second phase planned to introduce additional capabilities including AI-powered site search, push notifications, e-page functionality, and further platform enhancements.
