Case Study: GraphCMS and Avec

It took us about 1 week to set up our GraphCMS-powered ad server. In contrast, in a previous job our team needed 2 months to implement an ad server based on a traditional CMS.

Bruno PardoHead of Marketplace at Avec

Avec is the leading business management platform for beauty salons and beauty entrepreneurs in Brazil. Headquartered in São Paulo, the company employs over 160 people. Millions of businesses and users benefit from their revenue management system, payment solution, beauty and wellness product marketplace and booking mobile app.

GraphCMS is Avec’s Ad Management System. Avec serves banners, displays special offers, and runs time-limited promotional campaigns in its e-commerce platform, main website and mobile app. Information about cosmetic products and new salon partners, seasonal promotions, product images – all of which are hosted and managed with GraphCMS. Moreover, website and app locations (e.g. homepage vs. specific product page) are also managed with the CMS.

In the past, Avec’s marketing team uploaded promotions and banners in two separate content management systems – one for the mobile app, one for the webshop. Marketeers were frustrated by the repetitive task and the mistakes that inevitably occurred. Synchronising the promotional activities in the two platforms was time-consuming and frustrating.

Their former legacy CMS was hard to use for content creators. Technically, it was not possible to simply modify the legacy CMS to Avec’s needs.

What mattered most to Avec when choosing GraphCMS?

• The flexibility of GraphCMS saves Avec’s IT team massive amounts of time and enables them to adapt the system to their specific needs. The marketing team’s promo activities are now streamlined: reducing repetitive work and increasing the team’s independence.
• Several hundred hours of developer time were saved during the setup of the Ad Management System alone. Using GraphQL, defining content architecture as you actually need it and making architectural changes – the next day or next month without an entire team and a new budget – was a complete game changer. Developers can spend all the time saved from not maintaining the CMS to new end-user facing features.
• The marketing team now has a single source of truth for all their promotional activities. GraphCMS eliminated repetitive tasks and inconsistencies when running complex personalized advertising campaigns on mobile and web platforms. Crucial processes such as adding new content, setting up new parameters for a campaign, and publishing it nationally now only takes minutes. A feature particularly useful for marketers is GraphCMS’ reference field. It enables Avec to use one banner in multiple campaigns without the need to upload it multiple times and risk inconsistencies.
• Several other state-of-the-art technologies easily complement GraphCMS in Avec’s tech stack. The company’s web shop is powered by the ecommerce platform VTEX. Its mobile app is built on the javascript framework React Native. The front-end of its main website is AngularJS-based.