Cambridge University Press & Assessment

The Client

Publishing its first book in 1584, Cambridge University Press is the oldest publishing house in the world. Cambridge Assessment was established as the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES) in 1858 to administer local examinations for students who were not members of the University of Cambridge, with the aim of raising standards in education. 

In August 2021, the global academic research and education publisher, Cambridge University Press, and worldwide assessment and education experts, Cambridge Assessment, came together to form a single organization: Cambridge University Press & Assessment.

The Situation

Cambridge University Press & Assessment had two key goals: 

• To launch an updated Cambridge.org corporate website that represented the combined organization following the merger of Cambridge University Press and Cambridge Assessment
• To move the previous website from a legacy CMS to Drupal, ensuring ease-of-migration and scalability 

The Challenge

One of the project’s biggest challenges was the timeline. The project commenced in April 2021 and had a hard launch deadline of August 2, 2021 — the date that the merger of the two organizations would be in effect. Coordinating several external agencies (e.g., branding, design, etc.) and internal stakeholders and teams was potentially tricky. And the Cambridge team was new to Drupal, meaning they would need additional support. 

The Solution

Working with digital partner Zoocha, the teams completed a discovery phase that documented the project’s requirements, ensuring the whole team shared the same objectives and vision for the new website. Using agile methodology, Zoocha began an iterative development process that allowed it to dovetail with the ongoing design process.

Thanks to Acquia Site Studio’s low-code interface, the teams were able to rapidly roll out content, creating engaging, tailored user experiences for each business area. And Acquia Cloud Platform made the transition from legacy CMS platforms to Drupal a low-risk process, providing the Cambridge team with the tools and infrastructure needed to ensure a high performance, secure and scalable website.

The Results

The teams launched the new corporate site by the deadline, despite the tight timeline, interdependencies and challenges.