Challenge explained
New sites often require more or less the same content that already exists on current sites. There are of course the various compliance-type items that differ per region – which means additional disclaimers and specific content is required for the target audience. Another major consideration for new sites is region/investor-specific data and funds that should be presented to users in those regions.
All of this work can take months to complete as it involves the crucial step of compliance sign-off as well. Compliance teams typically require the “full end-user journey” to be in place to ensure the new site will adhere to their standards. The full journey comprises of a user coming onto a site, selecting his desired location, language and investor type and then entering the site.
Since this user journey can obviously not be presented on the live site, it will need to be built in a non-production environment. This step also prevents the development teams of the new sites access to the live site, therefore reducing the risk of errors.
The issue however, is that content keeps getting updated on the live site, and this needs to feed into the new sites as well (as most content is being shared from a central site which is live). We find that the complexity of this issue is consistently underestimated.
We need to ensure the wheels keep on turning for the Production environment, whilst not hindering the new site development in any way. Thus work needs to continue in two separate environments without interfering with one another. However, when the time is right, they need to come together to enable the launching of the new sites.
Our solution
Kurtosys is busy fine tuning an elegant solution to this scenario: the ideal is to allow website editors to build and set up their new sites in a non-production environment with all the bells and whistles of the “full user journey”. At the click of a button our clients can easily publish only approved changes through to an environment where it can be reviewed by third parties. No unexpected risk to manage. Agencies retain access to one environment, with the compliance teams having access to the approved pre-production environment for review. More flexibility to our clients.
Once the new sites have been approved by Compliance and everything is ready to go, the final check would be to do a comparison between the current live site pages and the pre-production environment where the new sites are ready. This step ensures that both the new sites as well as the live list of sites are as they should be. The last thing an Investment Manager needs is a mistake on their current site that was introduced by a change in a new site. As you can imagine, checking the current sites can be a mammoth task as some of our clients have tens of thousands of pages on their sites.
For this reason we thought of making the process effortless and at a click of a button the comparison process will be scheduled and the results will be available the next morning.
This way any differences between the current live sites and the pre-production environment can be spotted easily, rectified and then be made live.
This will make the process of adding new sites effective, secure and seamless. Dealing with a multisite adds some additional complexity to your digital strategy, but it does not have to result in additional effort. We aim to take the pain out of managing large multisites for global investment managers.
If you’d like to learn more about managing investment websites across multiple regions, get in touch today. Talk to our team and arrange a demonstration of how our tools and services can seamlessly deliver data and insights to your clients.
