Future-Proofing digital experience for Southern California Gas Company

SoCalGas wanted to move away from the previous content management system to a more robust platform that met their compliance mandates as well as catered to customer needs. They wanted to upgrade to a more performant cloud-based solution increasing reliability and reducing dependencies with more flexibility in content authoring with collaborative and decentralized solutions.

Our Solution

A sound architectural and functional set-up was envisioned to ensure a consistent and cohesive brand experience. One of the primary objectives behind the solution was to address the content authoring experience avoiding bottlenecks and making content updates smoother. Also, introducing scalability into the system by automating the transition process for future migration requirements.

Project Highlights

Improved efficiencies through automated migration at scale

The shortcomings of the previous website were due to outdated technology that directly impacted performance. It also resulted in dependencies on specialized skills that were scarce in the market and impacted efficiency and increased downtime. We addressed this gap through the migration of both dynamic and static components of the previous OWCS (Oracle WebCenter Sites) powered website to a cloud-based content management platform, Acquia Cloud that supported Drupal 8 deployment workflow processes. The implementation was driven by a well thought out content model, with clear definitions of content types, metadata, and taxonomy and the development of new components, compatible with the new platform. The migration process increased efficiency by leveraging 75% automated scripts that could be re-run on-demand, increasing scalability, and adaptability.

Fluid Workflow for improved content optimization 

The prime focus of the migration was to simplify the content updation process. Leveraging Drupal’s robust platform capabilities, we created effective editorial workflows to avoid bottlenecks in the content publishing process with separate publishing and authoring servers as well as an in-context preview for viewing changes implementing a draft state.  

Rich user experience through a hybrid approach for content integration

Implementing both native as well as a decoupled headless rendering of content, we created hybrid pages with a combination of content and apps attaining the flexibility needed to evolve and optimize the experience over time without impacting multiple layers of the architecture.

Effective content publishing through decentralized creation

Content consolidation and optimization were successfully enforced through a decentralized approach encouraging large stakeholder participation in the content creation and review process. This provided a more effective and fine-grained control over the content publishing process.

Multilingual content provision

Leveraging Drupal’s comprehensive language modules, we enabled the flexibility of content adaptation to Spanish using a combination of machine, human, and community translation, thus avoiding the complexities involved in one-to-one text translation. Also, facilitating a review of translation prior to publishing.

Enhanced and effective search

Our focus was on building a robust search that could integrate with a wide variety of content to provide quick and relevant responses to queries. It had to support features like Faceted Search, Indexing, Autocomplete, Filters, etc. We incorporated the ability to index external data and accept queries in natural language. We, also, ensured seamless integration with Drupal search with the ability to index API through readymade connectors or plugins. 

Leveraging Drupal's Multisite Architecture

Implementing the platform's flexible multisite capabilities, we developed the new and redefined SoCalGas Newsroom—an independent informational website—built on the same codebase as the main site.