In a world of deep-pocketed enterprise CMSes with widespread name recognition, it can be challenging to convince clients that their sites can run just as well, if not better, on a platform they may not yet have heard of. Brand ubiquity is incredibly compelling and may feel like the safe option for an organization… but that’s not always the case. Sometimes you’re fortunate enough to partner with a client open to the right solution instead of the prevailing one. Umbraco Gold Partner, Turn Agency, is here to tell you all about it 🎤
Skills used
- Accessibility
- DevOps
- Branding
- Digital Strategy
- Security
Sector
- Finance
- Professional services
Partner doing the case
- Company:Turn Agency
- Website: https://turnwith.us
- Type: Gold Partner
A Meeting of the (Open) Minds
We found exactly that client in Vantage Bank, a family-owned financial institution proudly serving Texans for a century and counting. They came to us frustrated, having spent years with a previously poorly-executed CMS implementation powering their marketing site. With 22 locations across the Lone Star State and business interests beyond U.S. borders, they knew they had far better things to do than fighting with their authoring system.
Their list of grievances came as no surprise:
👉 Simple content changes often required developer time
👉 Little-to-no scalability
👉 Lagging performance
We supported the site as-is for a time, getting to know Vantage Bank and their needs in the process, but quickly hit the limitations of the CMS as it had been developed. This reality (coupled with the fact that Vantage had recently completed a refresh of their branding and content with the excellent Gloh Studios) meant that it was a great time to start talking about re-platforming onto something more accessible, nimble, and performant.
We confidently proposed Umbraco (an open-source CMS), and were poised to make the inevitable hard sell – Vantage Bank’s intense security and performance requirements ostensibly placed them squarely in the “We should probably go with Sitecore or AEM” camp – but the hard sell didn’t happen. After demoing some of our previous Umbraco implementations, it was clear that it was competitive in its capabilities, refreshingly author-friendly, and incredibly secure.
Yes, even secure enough for a banking site.
Umbraco takes security seriously; it’s neither marketing nor lip service. The company submits its platform to biannual third-party security penetration tests, provides developers code and architectural reviews upon request to identify performance and security issues, and offers its partners comprehensive security training. (Having been through the training ourselves, we were able to speak to its legitimacy and value.) Ultimately, Vantage Bank was impressed, we were thrilled, and development kicked off.
Of Progress and Pivots
Well into the development phases, the site was coming together beautifully: ADA accessibility across the board, a powerful and scalable new infrastructure on Azure, a fully functional mobile site. Umbraco’s uSync package was adeptly handling syncing schema changes across multiple instances, sparing us the nightmare of making database changes and adding fields on different servers the “old way.” We were just wrapping up testing complex new features like real-time global and branch-specific alerts via GeoIP and the integration of third-party branch location data synchronization when the proverbial wrench in the works was thrown: Vantage needed to add load balancing into the mix.
So, nearing launch, we pivoted to implement load balancing. While the timing would have very likely derailed a project on another platform, the challenge turned out to be a resplendent feather in both our and Umbraco’s caps: the platform was able to accommodate this mid-stream request with style and grace, a real testament to its flexibility and versatility.
High Fives All Around
In the end, despite the late-breaking shift in requirements, the project launched on time and under budget. We had – and continue to have, two years on – a very happy client. Umbraco’s intuitive authoring capabilities have allowed Vantage Bank to grow its team of content contributors from one to many, enabling their marketing team to publish content at speed and on demand. Customers enjoy lightning fast load times and transparent transitions between the marketing and transactional sites.
“We came to Turn with a request for a website overhaul. Immediately, Turn recommended Umbraco. With Umbraco as the CMS, Turn has used their expertise and skill to “turn” our vision of our website’s functionality and design into a reality. Umbraco gives us maximum functionality and it is easy to use. It has proven to be everything that the Turn Team assured us it would be. And because Turn is as skilled as they are with Umbraco, they have made our onboarding as seamless as we could have possibly imagined. Thank you, Turn, and thank you, Umbraco!”
As for us, we have a stellar example of Umbraco’s technical virtuosity out in the world and in our portfolio, as well as uncommonly happy and productive developers as a result.
So, would we recommend Umbraco in high-risk, high-security scenarios? Yes, wholeheartedly. At no point in the Vantage Bank project were there regrets or misgivings about the platform’s ability to handle the rigors of banking security and accessibility. Plus, it’s a real joy to develop and author in (no joke), and the folks at Umbraco are genuinely supportive and responsive. We’re huge fans, and think you will be, too.
Skeptical? Curious? Reach out! We’d be happy to share our experience and demonstrate what an exceptional CMS Umbraco is.
