Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH

The Client

With a company history dating back more than 150 years, Dr. Willmar Schwabe GmbH & Co. KG is one of the oldest pharmaceutical manufacturers in Europe. It is the parent company of the Schwabe Group, which is composed of several different affiliated companies in the pharmaceutical and health industry. All of the Schwabe Group companies focus on plants as the basis for developing pharmaceuticals and health products.

The Situation

Operating in 16 different markets worldwide, the Schwabe Group faced problems managing its online businesses, with maintenance costs increasing and security updates causing complications.

The Challenge

The Schwabe Group’s existing websites were a mix of different CMS systems and static websites — created with a minimal budget. This led to significant inconsistencies between the web properties and no coherence between its markets. Additionally, security and compliance proved challenging; updates had to be done manually on each platform, which was a time-consuming task. 

The Solution

Schwabe Group chose to replatform on Drupal because of its flexibility as an open source solution combined with enterprise features in areas of security, scalability and availability. The company then tasked digital partner 1xINTERNET to develop this new web platform, one that would solve its problems, offering a consistent brand and user experience across all markets. The platform needed to allow brands to show their individuality while allowing the company to consistently deliver high quality, relevant and well-prepared content to all markets — ultimately increasing product awareness, generating more leads and boosting sales. 

The teams worked together to identify each brand’s corporate design to determine how it could best be reflected in a larger design system. 1xINTERENT used Storybook to create a design system that allowed all of the organization’s websites to share assets and components. The team started by implementing four basic templates for the first set of product websites, and in just a few weeks, added more than 10 brands to the design system.

After the successful design system launch, 1xINTERNET needed to create a powerful CMS to sustainably run the Schwabe Group’s sites. The implemented the 1xDXP Multi-Site Management System, a Drupal backend-based technology hosted by Acquia Site Factory. The multisite solution allowed centrally managed code to be gathered in a single code repository, meaning that as the team developed new components, all websites were automatically updated with new features. 

Built with Paragraphs, the site gives editors maximum flexibility and ease of use when creating content. The new system made content creation easier for Schwabe Group’s worldwide editorial team while ensuring a uniform design for all future websites. And Acquia Site Factory allowed Schwabe Group to effectively manage all of its websites from a single dashboard. Now, it only takes about 15 minutes to spin up a new website, select a template, grant access to editors and start adding content.

The Results

According to the Schwabe Group, “implementing this multisite solution for our company has been a game changer.” Company leaders note that in a highly competitive market, their new site lets them act fast while still providing an overview of all of their websites. “Amazing results have been achieved in such a short period of time,” the company commented.