Build better digital experiences with market-leading APIs. Innovative teams of all sizes use GraphCMS to scale their technologies and build ambitious market-leading applications.

Solutions and use cases made possible with GraphCMS

BioCentury

<CustomerQuote />

```stats
{
  "120%": "Increase in content engagement",
  "81%": "Decrease in time from idea to publishing"
}
```

## About BioCentury

[BioCentury](https://www.biocentury.com/) helps C-level biotech executives and investors make business-critical decisions by providing independent deep-dive analysis, high-quality data, and business intelligence on a global scale.

They report on and dissect trends before others, helping you to better position your company for change and to capitalize on that change before your competition. No matter where you are in the drug development process—from idea to patient—they help you answer critical questions, decipher strategic trends, objectively evaluate product and business strategies, and assess competitive, financial, and policy risks.


## The Original Setup and the Challenge

Prior to switching to GraphCMS the team at BioCentury worked with a monolithic setup built using Drupal6, with a sitemap of over 50,000 indexed pages. The website had a complex structure of academic articles, archives, whitepapers, and conferences, to name a few. This structure became an overly complex “ball of rubber bands” about to snap at any moment according to Jenny Nichols, Director of Publishing at BioCentury. 


The team struggled to maintain the infrastructure, to deliver the content that they wanted to meet their business needs, and to provide a better UX to their subscribers. These challenges made it clear that they needed to completely reevaluate their infrastructure and start over. 


Over the years, the BioCentury vision for how to organize and deliver content evolved. Originally the team used a rigid page-based structure that worked - templates with content blocks, headlines, among others. As content trends changed, the BioCentury team needed to be flexible with their content and add other embeddable visual components to make their entries more engagement-friendly and interactive. When beginning their evaluation of a new system, one priority was to find a Headless CMS that would let them migrate all their carefully maintained content that accumulated over the last 30 years and accommodate the ever-evolving content ideas from the content teams. 


## Moving to GraphCMS

It was necessary for the team to use a tool that could enable greater flexibility for different content types without creating a convoluted infrastructure. During the evaluation phase, GraphCMS stood out for a variety of reasons, but according to David Smiling, CTO at BioCentury, the winning moment was the ease of content modeling, and the way in which relations were instantly populated. The ease of use and intuitiveness of creating structured content is what convinced the team to opt for GraphCMS.


> My eyes lit up at how easy and intuitive it was to do content modeling with GraphCMS. 

Jenny Nichols, Director of Publishing at BioCentury


Having made the decision, the team set out to complete the implementation. They chose to work with one of GraphCMS’ [implementation partners](/partners), [AE Studio](https://ae.studio/) to complete the implementation in two phases - the migration, and the new content creation.

For the first phase, the team started migrating their content from Drupal to GraphCMS, whilst still maintaining both systems alongside one another. The team set up GraphCMS’s schemas to align with their business goals, and to ensure that everything was going smoothly, started transitioning towards depreciating their reliance on Drupal.


In parallel, the publishing team worked closely with the team at AE Studio to model all the content portals, conference pages, and other content types that were necessary for the daily publishing workflows. The implementation with AE Studio went exceptionally smoothly, allowing the two teams to progress quickly and stay on track.


As they neared the end of this phase of their migration, news began to emerge surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. This resulted in a flurry of new content and recent developments that were time-critical and needed to be published on the website. Adapting quickly using GraphCMS and flexibly generating new content enabled the team to seamlessly react to the crisis and disseminate up-to-date information about response to the COVID-19 outbreak.


## Experience with GraphCMS

From a technical standpoint, GraphCMS empowers the BioCentury team to create any form of content they imagined. As the team adjusted to the new platform and started to model their content, the transition from a monolith system to a headless one had a slight learning curve. With the help of the GraphCMS team, the BioCentury and AE Studio teams were able to find solutions and create workflows that were quickly put into action without falling behind on deadlines.


Today, the content team is easily able to publish and maintain content on their frontend, using GraphCMS as a content hub to programmatically create, edit, direct, and deliver content to the necessary places. The ability for GraphCMS to act as a programmatic content hub with read-and-write operations via API was critical to the BioCentury team. Part of their evaluation was to continue working with WoodWing Studio, as well as their CRM and eCommerce systems. GraphCMS can easily read and write content into the system via GraphQL Mutations. This enabled the team to consolidate all their content into GraphCMS from multiple sources, without sacrificing any of their preferred workflows, and query everything from a single endpoint when required on the client-side.


> “The actual subscriber content is sent to GraphCMS programmatically via the Mutations API (sourcing from WoodWing Studio), and GraphCMS acts as a “Content Hub,” connected with our CRM and eCommerce systems, to have our frontend query everything from a single endpoint. The time to market has drastically reduced from over 2 weeks to 3-4 days.”

David Smiling, CTO at BioCentury


The BioCentury team considers the implementation a success after working to migrate and using GraphCMS in production. Having moved from their older stack, BioCentury’s new website is a high performing project powered by **Angular, NodeJS, ZoneJS, Express, HammerJS, Stripe, and GraphCMS.**


> “Realistically for me success is when there’s a content idea and I can easily see my toolkit, and know yes, it can work. And GraphCMS gives me that because the content modelling gives me unlimited possibilities of what we can connect and build based on what we’re looking for.” 

Jenny Nichols, Director of Publishing at BioCentury


On the customer success side, the primary success criteria were to judge the efficient delivery to users. By continuing to use their existing publication workflows and stack, the team at BioCentury has managed to build a better frontend experience for their users without making sacrifices on the operations side. After having evaluated their content performance, the BioCentury team found that their user engagement increased by up to 120%, and incorporating GraphCMS into their stack has led them to create an ecosystem of best-of-breed solutions working in harmony, as opposed to a clunky monolithic structure.


> “GraphCMS has given us better flexibility to showcase a better UI, incorporating more ideas, and in turn, have let us deliver a better experience to our users. We’ve seen higher engagement and interaction on the content we publish”. 

Aaron Gadowski, Director of Product Management at BioCentury

## Why GraphCMS?

- Flexible Content Modeling where content editors are no longer limited to rigid content blocks

- It is easy to create relations between the fields in GraphCMS is a straightforward and powerful feature

- Smooth migration which allowed the team to meet deadlines thanks to GraphCMS support

- Content teams are able to take a hybrid approach with some content being automatically generated through the GraphCMS API while other content is manually put into the CMS

- GraphCMS easily fit into their existing workflow while giving content teams more power 


Jenny Nichols

Director of Publishing at BioCentury Inc.

BioCentury embraces programmatic content unification and structured content with GraphCMS's powerful content APIs.

Case Study: GraphCMS and BioCentury

Telenor

<CustomerQuote />

```stats
{
  "2k": "New videos programmatically added per month",
  "100ms": "Max latency on millions of monthly API calls"
}
```

## About Telenor


[Telenor (TEL.OL)](https://www.telenor.com/) is a Norwegian multinational TelCo which is one of the largest mobile telecommunications companies in the world. Founded in 1855 as a state-owned telegraph services provider, Telenor is now a significant global player in a full range of telecommunications. With operations across the Nordics and Asia with 182 million global customers and annual sales of around USD 12 billion. A leading Nordic provider of mobile, broadband, and TV services, the Telenor Group is 19,000 people strong. In addition to their Nordic operations, Telenor has many subsidiaries and joint ventures ranging from mobile financial services to online classifieds in the Asian region. 

The Telenor TV distribution was founded in 1997 as a joint venture between French TV company Canal+ and Telenor called Canal Digital. Since 2003, Telenor has gained full ownership of Canal Digital. Canal Digital began as a direct broadcast satellite service but has since started offering cable television as well. 


## The Project

In 2013, Telenor created a video streaming service where users could stream content from several local television stations. The streaming platform for Telenor was previously a way for local television stations to make their content more accessible to a broader audience live on the platform for a longer time hosting adding around 2,000 videos/movies a month. As this was the first endeavor into a video streaming platform, there were many lessons to be learned. 


The previous tech stack consisted of a common onboarding platform, which was a homebrew solution, that received content from the TV stations and then made the content available via the CDN. This tech stack, however, lacked a way to store and easily distribute metadata of video content in a central location. The lack of central storage and distribution of metadata meant that team members would manually edit metadata as needed, having to write new scripts every time there was a change. As the project grew, the necessary workarounds became more cumbersome and time-consuming, requiring significant manual work with limited ability to automate the processes with the tech stack was a priority. These manual workflows also lead to inconsistencies within the data set because of the decentralized file-based workflow. Data inconsistencies required the team to address these issues manually, further slowing down the process. 


When the project received the green light to expand, it gave the team an opportunity to reevaluate the tech stack for the new project. There were several factors that were critical to choosing the new tech stack. Perhaps the most important being to remove this time consuming, manual process. The team needed to free up the development team’s time for more engaging tasks other than editing metadata. Centralizing the data and simplifying the process would also make it easier for the team to enact changes quickly. Another significant aim was to reduce the likelihood of incorrect information by creating a structure and organization to the centralized metadata hub so that the team could quickly adapt the information without a hassle.


## The Evaluation Process

It was clear that the team needed a powerful database solution to achieve flexible content modeling and metadata aggregation. With the Telenor team being nearly 100 people with a mixture of technical and commercial users, the solution needed the feature-heavy nature of a highly technical solution and a clean UI to make it easy for team members to work with the data. 

Initially, the team evaluated both monolith and headless systems. It quickly became clear that a monolith system would not be conducive to a more agile development process where teams could quickly get the first iteration of the tech stack off the ground. This iterative process was important for the Telenor team. With many of the monolith vendors, the initial project setup takes at least six months. To change a single field in a model, it may take two months to write custom plugins. With GraphCMS it can take seconds to change a field, and teams are able to have an initial structure in days rather than months. 


When evaluating the monolith systems, it quickly became difficult to justify the high price tag for longer development times, a high degree of vendor lock-in and technical limitations of being dependent on a specific vendor.

>  “When you work with a monolith, you become a spec writer. Basically, for each new requirement, you write extensive documentation and hand it over. The vendor then builds something that might miss the point. So, you have to be a good writer and there is a risk that the newly added tech is not resolving the initial issue”

Lars-Flemming Clausen, Senior Engineer, Telenor

Taking the SaaS approach was more conducive to the working styles of the Telenor team. In reducing the overhead, the team was able to focus on features and workflows which were important to the project, rather than having to work around irrelevant features. Because the streaming platform is constantly evolving, as the Telenor team has a continuous delivery model, GraphCMS enables the team to work with agility. The Telenor team needed the scale of a database and ultimately chose GraphCMS to provide the same power with an abstraction layer for content, native localization, and schema builder. With GraphCMS, teams are able to programmatically feed content from multiple sources into GraphCMS which simplifies the work for content editors. 


The flexibility that GraphCMS provides to set up and change the project schema as the project grows and develops makes the development of the projects faster and less of a hassle for developers to make changes later on in the development process. The clean UI and roles make it easier for content teams, in addition to developers, to add, fix, and change data points manually. 


## The Advantages of moving to GraphCMS


It was a key priority for the Telenor team to choose a modern tech stack that optimized for speed and standardized documentation. Implementing a GraphQL API quickly became a priority for this reason. The performance benefits as well as the impressive ecosystem of external consultants who can aid in development was also important. GraphCMS specifically offers API write mutations as well which allows teams to write directly in the database programmatically, eliminating manual work. Teams are able to direct content from multiple sources through GraphCMS programmatically which simplifies workflows and creates a centralized hub of data. 


GraphCMS is native in GraphQL and supports the broad range of its functionalities. Because the API is GraphQL native, rather than being built on top of a REST API, GraphCMS realizes the performance benefits that GraphQL promises. GraphCMS strikes the balance of a modern tech stack without sacrificing robust feature set and reliability. The GraphCMS API is able to support the sustained high performance necessary for Telenor’s project of approximately 100 messages per second. 


The team had previous experience with other database options and had worked with them extensively in the past; however, the lack of a simple UI and abstraction layer made it unfeasible. As Lars explains, 

> “we needed the abstraction layer and UI on top of it, which would have used a large amount of development resources, which we don’t have easily on hand in-house.”

The GraphCMS UI solved this problem with both a clean, simple interface and the inclusion of a no-code editor. 


GraphCMS now provides the metadata through a database in order to create a centralized metadata hub. In addition to being more structured and organized than the previous collection of XML files, GraphCMS has significantly improved the workflows surrounding the metadata. The manual work that still remains is significantly more efficient with GraphCMS. Minor changes are now quick fixes done through the GraphCMS UI. For larger changes, the GraphQL API is leveraged to quickly make mass changes. The flexibility provided by GraphCMS allows the team to work quickly and create a first iteration of the project in just three months, a significantly faster timeline than competitors or a homebrew solution can offer. As the project continues to grow and evolve, Telenor is aided by the flexibility and power of GraphCMS to keep their project on time and high performing. 

## Why GraphCMS: 

- Full GraphQL Native support, including a powerful API and ecosystem support 

- API meets performance needs of less than 100ms latency on millions of API calls, making it significantly faster than other commercial GraphQL APIs on the market

- High degree of flexibility with the tech stack 

- GraphCMS enables a quick time to market 

- Sleek UI, which makes it easy to add quick fixes to the content 

- No heavy licensing fees like that of monolith systems 

- Fast feature development 

Lars-Flemming Clausen

Senior Engineer at Telenor

Telenor programmatically unifies content from several APIs, to deliver immersive media experiences across the Nordics with GraphCMS.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Telenor

### Headless CMS for Knowledge Bases, Portals, and Intranets

Give customers the information they seek, and employees the information they need, all with using fewer resources to maintain a better service. It’s a win-win.

One of the UK’s leading multinational banking and insurance holding companies, with £700b+ in managed assets, uses GraphCMS to power their corporate intranet, providing employees across the globe access to critical information at scale.

Delivering critical information to 100,000+ employees across 3,000+ regional offices in time.

Whether you seek to deliver operationally critical information to your employees, empower your customers to interact with your support portals, or provide go-to resources for how users interact with your business, GraphCMS is the strong content infrastructure powering your content delivery to all stakeholders.


Empower all stakeholders

Modular and reusable content infrastructure with strong security & governance features make it easier than ever to maintain and reuse content across portals, so you can keep your branded content consistent across devices and up to date.

Maximize your content's reach

From a simple FAQ page to more complex applications like localized online learning, enterprise intranets, and partner support portals, GraphCMS puts you in control of defining the content delivery lifecycle of your portal solutions, with added benefits of content permissions, governance controls, and granular publishing rules.

Easily build and manage portals

Empower Customer and Employee Knowledge. From support portals to sophisticated enterprise intranets, GraphCMS helps businesses deliver critical and updated information at scale.

Portals

Enable users to solve simple problems quickly and efficiently, and find resolutions to enhance the customer experience with your products.

Increased Loyalty

Empower customers with the knowledge they need to reduce waiting and relying on your team, unlocking more efficient workplaces and resource allocation.

Reduced Support Costs

Deliver internal information at scale to your employees across the globe to ensure high standards of consistency when onboarding and updating colleagues.

Employee Training

Invest less time and resources in team training, hiring, and infrastructure by delivering reusable cross-platform structured content across locales, platforms, and formats.

Reduced Overheads

With enterprise security & governance controls, audit logs, and granular content based permissions, ensure sensitive information created and shared is intended for the viewer and no one else.

Strong Governance

Handling the spread of personalized information, courses, and knowledge across the globe is easier than ever with powerful localization, fallback locales, and locale based publishing.

Powerful Localization

Cleveland Clinic

<CustomerQuote />


Cleveland Clinic, a world-famous academic medical institution, is home to world-class art and architecture which can be experienced with its newly released AR+ mobile app. The application is developed by the New York studio Line Break and powered by GraphCMS. It enables users to explore the art and architecture of nine Cleveland Clinic facilities across the globe by accessing information both on-site and remotely.

![02_Location.png](https://media.graphcms.com/JBx5IgjSfC1TSyEP2TIW)

**AR+ features Augmented Reality technology plus everything you need to:**

1. Interact with the environment through augmented reality when on-site at specific locations.
2. Discover architectural facts and features that make each location a healing space.
3. Learn about selected artists and artworks in Cleveland Clinic’s contemporary art collection.
4. Engage with buildings and artists through video and audio recordings.
5. Participate in Cleveland Clinic events and performances by following updated listings.
6. Find patient and visitor amenities like cafes, boutiques and special resources.

**The Organizations**

The Cleveland Clinic is an American academic medical organization with 10 regional hospitals and 19 family health centers in the U.S., Canada and the U.A.E. and employs over 52,000 people. Cleveland Clinic is consistently ranked as one of the best hospitals in the United States and it became the first American healthcare provider to become a signatory to the United Nations Global Compact and the second in the world.

Line Break Studio is a New York City based design and development studio. Their websites, games, apps and installations are a blend of art & design, engineering & architecture, coding & creativity.

![06_Artwork.png](https://media.graphcms.com/wqIY7OLSkSpDaLu94Cxg)

**Why GraphCMS**

When Line Break started qualifying a Content Management Solution for the project, they looked at some of the hosted solutions which were too big and expensive (for example IBM Websphere). Homebrew solutions like combining a MongoDB-based backend with a React frontend are prohibitively expensive to maintain. Many of the newer CMS companies were simply not ready to go to market.

GraphCMS hits the sweet spot. The software has the simplicity and intuitive design which the established solutions miss. The pricing is flexible and the company proves to provide high-quality support. The software has become a daily flexible tool for both the Developers and the Content Editors of Line Break and Cleveland Clinic.

In the past, Line Break built RESTful APIs for its clients. Building the AR+ App was the first time that Line Break worked with GraphQL and they benefited from its advantages immediately. The syntax is concise and logical; you can set up powerful APIs in minutes. Most importantly, you know what you are doing: when your first code draft of the API does not function, you understand why that is, and you can easily fix it.

After the success of AR+, Line Break hopes to work with GraphQL and GraphCMS for future projects.

## What Mattered most to Cleveland Clinic when choosing GraphCMS?

- The software has the simplicity and intuitive design which the established solutions miss.
- The pricing is flexible and the company proves to provide high-quality support. 
- GraphQL's syntax is concise and logical; you can set up powerful APIs in minutes.

Nien Lam

Co-Founder at Line Break

One of the best use cases for a headless cms, is augmented reality applications. Check out how Cleveland Clinic is doing it with a Headless CMS For AR.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Cleveland Clinic

Asana Rebel

<CustomerQuote />

## About Asana Rebel

Asana Rebel ([asanarebel.com](https://asanarebel.com)) is a Berlin-based startup founded in 2015. They are the company behind the Asana Rebel app. They describe themselves as the healthy lifestyle app for anyone who wants to get in shape, have more energy, sleep better, and increase their productivity - and are currently used by millions of users primarily across North America, and Western Europe, averaging at a 5-star rating across app stores from over 50,000 reviews.

## The Challenge and the Project

Asana Rebel’s main app was built on a custom homebrew CMS composed of their application content, marketing content, promotions, assets (videos, images, classes), and a host of other user-specific content.

In parallel, they were planning to release a multitude of micro-apps for specific use cases like weight loss, dieting, and other wellness-related topics.

Internally, they deemed it infeasible to continue building upon their CMS to support these new initiatives, and sought a CMS that would allow them to fulfill the following requirements:

- A quick development process to bring their applications to market faster
- An agile workflow, allowing their development and content teams to work in parallel
- A modern tech stack that gave them future flexibility should they require to modify their products
- A product that allowed them to rapidly iterate on multiple apps without being tied into a solution that restricted them.
- A cloud-hosted SaaS solution that would enable them to build native mobile apps without any infrastructure or labor overheads.

The first phase of the project would be to launch 2 pilot apps to test their hypothesis, for iOS and Android. For this, their development team worked hand in hand with their CRM team and content creators, choosing GraphCMS, and successfully launching the apps.

The second phase would be to use the learnings from the new apps and roll out additional micro-apps, potentially up to 20 per OS, which could all be controlled from a single system (GraphCMS), with granular user permissions and roles per project. 

## Why GraphCMS

After a long and comprehensive selection process of multiple Headless CMS, the Asana Rebel team opted to choose GraphCMS for several reasons.

GraphCMS allowed the team to get up and running quickly. The ability to build the basic structure through schema building quickly and effectively in GraphCMS was one of the stand-out features. GraphCMS required very little onboarding for the technical team; schema building struck the perfect balance of the required functionality without needing workarounds and embracing the truly headless mindset. This saved the development team a lot of time as they no longer had to build and maintain a CMS but could focus their energies on building the core application.

The content editors have gained much-needed independence and flexibility. While new team members do require a brief onboarding, they are now able to customize their content where they were previously limited to minimal styling choices. Content can now be formatted and styled the way that the content teams see fit. GraphCMS balanced robust features and functionality with a simple, straightforward UI which improved development times and gave the content team more freedom and flexibility.

The standout reasons mentioned during the onboarding process were the key differentiators:

- The content team has more independence and flexibility. They are no longer limited to minor styling or developer availability.
- Simple, straightforward UI which requires very little onboarding for new users
- Fast response and resolution times with the customer support team
- Optimized workflows allow content to be published in minutes rather than weeks
- Relations feature enables complex connections between content types
- Sleek app interface creates a straightforward user experience for content editors and developers alike
- Rich-text Editor and Markdown Editor allow you to create content hassle-free and preview the style immediately
- Included API playground allowed the team to start working immediately without time-consuming onboarding with programmatically generated documentation and queries.
- GraphCMS offers an extremely flexible API that can satisfy any custom content modeling and API design needs.

Rudi Seelig

Senior Backend Engineer at Asana Rebel

Asana Rebel accelerate their time to market with a modern Headless CMS for Health and Fitness related application content.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Asana Rebel

### Headless CMS for Structured Content

GraphCMS gives you all the tools you need to define clearly structured content into models that can be delivered via API to all digital frontends.

Leading Touring Car Motorsport, DTM, accelerates with a successful user-centric digital transformation by embracing structured data across their websites and applications.

“I love the idea of pure content data in GraphCMS. All applications simply retrieve content via GraphQL and serve it the way we need to at different touchpoints.”

In today’s digital age, users expect content to be available across platforms and to have a consistent experience whether they are consuming content on a website, streaming platform, TV app, mobile application, or from a voice assistant.

Break away from the “page builder” mentality

Creating a core of structured content that can be adapted to fit the use case de jour will make it easier to get new projects off the ground as well as quickly make changes to existing projects, resulting in more sustainable content management.

Structured content gives teams the opportunity to leave their options open for future endeavors when new devices and platforms align with the business model.

Unlock a truly omnichannel stack

When you work with structured content, you unlock the opportunity to integrate countless services like CRM, CDP, eCommerce, and Automation to have them communicate with one another via API.

This allows you to deliver better digital experiences and gather data from wherever your customers engage with your content across every digital touchpoint, not just your website.

Build your DXP with confidence

Structure and organize your content and information in a predictable way and, classified with metadata. GraphCMS lets you create cleaner content once to be reusable across devices, saving you time and resources.

Structured Content


Rapidly store, manage, and query content to render at scale without sacrificing on performance.

High performance


GraphCMS serves as your single source of truth for all content needs, and serves them as and when required via API.

Programmable content


Experience true flexibility in delivering native content across all locales and devices, from web and mobile, to wearables and other smart devices.

 Omni-channel content distribution


Content teams can deliver all assets across regions from a single repository, whether they be landing pages, banners, microsites, or a variety of other collateral.

 Centralised Content Hub


Flexibly connect with any distribution service, inventory management, booking engines, and other travel APIs.

Seamless Integrations

Whether you’re adding more products into your portfolio, evolving your tech stack, increasing your project’s complexity, or expanding into new markets, GraphCMS can scale horizontally, vertically, and globally. The scalability of GraphCMS makes it an excellent headless CMS for enterprise companies or up-and-coming startups. 

Scale in every direction

Leviathan

<CustomerQuote />

Based in Chicago, Leviathan is a digital design and innovation agency which is part of the Envoy Group. Leviathan uses its network of experts to create immersive, digital experiences that bring an essence of innovation to its customers’ content through a variety of channels. Working with companies like McDonalds, Universal and Nike, its projects range from interactive museum installations to digital promotional experiences in retail spaces.  


## Project Overview

Leviathan chose GraphCMS to bring their vision for a new client project to life. Large 18ft x 18ft (5.5m x 5.5m) Advertising Displays serve a mixture of generative content, advertisements, and video on residential and commercial buildings. GraphCMS manages and schedules content to be delivered to the screening walls positioned in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, and San Diego. 

Leviathan used to work with legacy CMSs which could not be adapted to the multi-channel setting of the project. Moreover, the development team aimed to cut down on developer time by using a more up-to-date solution. The team was new to working with GraphQL and needed a system that is flexible and easy to master, which they found in GraphCMS. Because GraphCMS is a GraphQL-native system, it offers GraphQL mutations (write operations). These give developers more control, which opens the possibility to manage user-generated content. The Leviathan development team was able to go from having no experience with GraphQL to building the customized UI integration with GraphCMS in just one month’s time. 

![Screenshot 2019-12-10 at 12.29.44.png](https://media.graphcms.com/PIv5KgIxRQqqPSskxJHA)

## Leviathan’s tech stack for the project

A react front-end powers a UI client that interacts with GraphCMS. The media display is powered using TouchDesigner. The UI client and TouchDesigner project also communicate via a websocket server for various control purposes. The content is centralized and housed within GraphCMS.

## 2020 Technology Trends:
Matt Greenberg sees three major trends that will shape the technology landscape in 2020 and the years to come:

“**GraphQL**. It seems as though every day there is a new article explaining how Big Tech Company moved over their REST APIs to GraphQL, or at least put a GraphQL layer on top of their existing architecture. The whole Javascript ecosystem is moving over to more declarative technologies (i.e. TypeScript) and GraphQL is leading the charge. 

**WebGL.** Major web browsers only started supporting WebGL, a JavaScript API for rendering very efficient interactive 3D and 2D graphics, in 2011.  Since then, the use of WebGL in complex, professional projects has become popular and is rapidly gaining momentum.  As powerful GPUs become cheaper, and companies start differentiating their application UIs from more basic aesthetics, we will see a boom in interest. 

**New design patterns on the web. ** We’re living through an era of homogenous web design. The influence from Google Material’s design can be felt on most sites today. As with all trends, this will not last.  In the next couple years, we will see a rebirth of unique user experiences.”

## Recommendations for Engineering Teams
Matt’s key recommendation for engineering teams is to use GraphQL. Even if your project is running on a stable REST API, it is worth investing the time and implement an extra layer.  “As a mostly front-end developer, it has made my relationship with back-end technology so much better. For example, instead of relying on meticulous documentation of back-end endpoints, I can now go to a project’s GraphiQL URL and see its entire schema, and even interact with its db! Moreover, it saves your application from making extraneous requests, eases code readability, and gives the front-end a quicker feel with prefetching and optimistic UI updates.”

## What Mattered most to Leviathan when choosing GraphCMS?

- GraphCMS was very easy for someone with limited backend experience to learn and start building right away with features such as the GraphCMS API Explorer.
- GraphQL Mutations are essential for importing content in the system or powering custom editorial interfaces.

Matt Greenberg

Creative Developer at Leviathan

### We work with a global network of partners to bring your projects to life.

We team up with a network of qualified GraphCMS solution experts in their fields to help organisations build and deliver digital projects at scale. Interested in accelerating your projects with an implementation or technology partner?

Find an agency or partner from our network to assist you in your next project.

[Learn more about GraphCMS's partner network](/partners)

Embracing GraphQL to provide innovative product creation and launch immersive omni-channel advertising with a Headless CMS for ad-tech.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Leviathan

Prym

<CustomerQuote />

```stats
{
  "50%": "Reduction in time to market",
  "3x": "Increase in content velocity"
}
```

## About Prym

[Prym](https://prym.de) is one of the oldest family-run companies in Germany, founded in 1530, selling products made from brass and copper, as well as haberdashery. Since its founding, Prym has become a global player in haberdashery accessories and sewing tools. Prym is divided into three different independent subsidiaries, Prym Consumer, Prym Fashion, and Inovan. Prym Consumer specializes in sewing and needlework accessories while Prym Fashion produces fastening systems and accessories. Prymtec creates contact and electronic components. 

Traditionally, Prym has sold its products through third-party retailers such as craft stores and home goods stores. Their first online presence followed this indirect shop model, with a website that showed their product offerings and links to where you could buy them online or which crafting stores sold the specific product. However, with eCommerce steadily on the rise, Prym knew that it was time to throw their hat in the ring to create an eCommerce system. It quickly became clear that they needed a tech stack that would be able to support their high volume of product offerings and specialized user journeys. Because it was an entirely new project, the team at Prym needed to familiarize themselves with the content management landscape and possible combinations of tech stacks. 

## The Evaluation Process

Initially, the team considered both traditional and Headless CMSs to manage the content for their online shop. After evaluating several traditional CMS, the team was faced with the difficult quandary of sacrificing flexibility or marketing features.

For the marketing team, the most important considerations were that the tool is easy to use with a clean UI and a powerful WSYWIG editor.

The technical team, however, needed the flexibility to create a robust site in this format, but also wanted a future-proof solution that could store the content and potentially distribute it to a variety of channels without needing to perform cost and time-intensive processes, such as data imports, multiple times.

The technical team felt that in many ways they were catching up with the competition in building an online store and insisted that they needed to position themselves as industry leaders with the next technological shift rather than following trends. 

The team began the evaluation process to strike the balance between the traditional marketing features that the team already knew and loved, and the flexibility the technical team wanted to have using a headless system. Detaching the frontend from the backend was critical for Prym because they wanted to be able to customize the entire tech stack to their use case and adopt the API first mindset. Headless content management offered the possibility to connect the services that were relevant to that particular project and create a [central content hub](https://graphcms.com/use-cases/content-federation) within the headless CMS for a variety of projects. 

In evaluating the headless market, there were several key factors that were important to the Prym team. The chosen system had to be built with a truly headless mindset that would allow for the traditional page builder approach but also much more than that become a central content repository. As new projects were experimented with or new channels discovered, the technical team hoped to connect the headless CMS via the API and have speedy access to the content stored in GraphCMS. The system needed to be enterprise-ready. Being a long-established company in Germany and abroad needed a system that could handle the strain of an eCommerce website of a market leader. The marketing team expected some of the functionality that was present in traditional systems, such as a powerful WYSIWYG editor, straightforward relations between content, and speedy customer support for the occasional time in need. After evaluating the headless market, Prym saw that GraphCMS ticked all of the boxes and would be a great fit for their team. 

## Moving to GraphCMS 

Prym chose to integrate GraphCMS into their new microservices-led tech stack for a wide variety of reasons. The sheer flexibility of GraphCMS was an important opportunity for the Prym team. As soon as the team decided to shift their mindset from traditional content management to content modeling in a future-proof headless system, with the help of the GraphCMS team they were able to create a powerful content hub that aims to host nearly 100,000 unique products.

Now that they have seen the power of structured content, creating a well-executed content hub where new projects can pull from a centralized pool of content, they plan to implement GraphCMS in future projects as well. 

> “GraphCMS is what we need for the future.”

_Michael Urban, Director of eCommerce and Digital Solutions_


GraphCMS offers the power and flexibility that the technical team needed to justify the transition away from a traditional approach to content. It does so without sacrificing the marketing and content editor features that are necessary to the success of the project. With the API first approach, it is easy for the teams to add in functionality by connecting another microservice via the API without being bogged down by rarely used functionality that can slow the system and workflows. 

The new tech stack combines [Frontastic](https://www.frontastic.cloud/) to manage the frontend, GraphCMS to handle the content and backend, [Medici](https://www.viamedici.com/) as a PIM, and [Spryker](https://spryker.com/de/) for the shop capabilities. Other tools that focus on user experience include [Dynamic Yield](https://www.dynamicyield.com/) which delivers individualized experiences and allows the team to easily implement A/B Testing. The Prym team is able to customize their tech stack to suit their use case and can work with microservices and systems the team was already familiar with. 

Prym is working to create individualized user journeys that allow customers to be inspired by the creations of other customers and purchase the materials needed for these projects seamlessly. The ability to easily test these individualized journeys without needing to do significant manual double work is possible thanks to the new microservice approach led by GraphCMS. The team has been able to power their [primary eCommerce site](https://graphcms.com/use-cases/agile-ecommerce) with this new tech stack and speed up many workflows. If Prym is experiencing unforeseen changes, such as long shipping times due at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team is able to work to update messaging on their website quickly. The team is able to adapt to changes in the market or circumstances quickly in order to ensure that they are always a reliable partner operating ahead of the curve rather than lagging behind. As their current project expands the team at Prym is already looking forward to furthering this microservice approach with GraphCMS to more projects in the future.

## Why GraphCMS

- The flexibility offered by GraphCMS is unmatched by other systems 
- GraphCMS has the enterprise-ready features for content editors without sacrificing flexibility 
- GraphCMS enabled the team to be more agile and experimental 
- GraphQL offers a very flexible and highly performant API
- API first approach makes it easy to integrate with other microservices 

Michael Urban

Director of eCommerce and Digital Solutions

One of Germany's oldest companies modernizes its approach to agile eCommerce with a Headless CMS.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Prym

<CustomerQuote />

## About 2U

[2U, Inc. (NASDAQ: TWOU)](https://2u.com) is a global edtech (educational technology) company that contracts with non-profit colleges and universities to power online graduate and undergraduate degree programs, professional certificates, short courses, and boot camps. The company supplies its client institutions with a cloud-based SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform, coursework design, infrastructure support, capital, and more. They are a trusted edtech partner to some of the world’s top universities, like the University of Cambridge and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, helping them launch world-class digital education for over a decade.

Acclaimed as one of the [“Tech Companies Helping Humanity”](http://www.inc.com/dave-kerpen/10-tech-companies-impacting-humanity.html) by Inc. Magazine, and a [“Most Innovative Company”](https://www.fastcompany.com/company/2u) by Fast Company, 2U also acquired GetSmarter and Trilogy Education Services in July 2017 and May 2019 respectively.

## The Project

With over 500 total offerings and 300,000+ students enrolled across all products, 2U operates a high-volume Learning Management System (LMS) empowering students at a global scale to embrace digital education.

To ensure that the metadata for all their university partners is accurate, updated, and available to students, 2U handles 100+ data points per brand (assets, configurations, etc.) that need to be reflected within the LMS itself, along with their marketing websites, course collateral, product pages, and other user-facing interfaces.

2U uses GraphCMS as a centralized content hub to house all these assets in a single repository to ensure that they don’t suffer from fragmented content. All the metadata for partners is [programmatically aggregated](/use-cases/content-federation) from several partner-facing UIs into GraphCMS, before being distributed to their Amazon S3 buckets to be hosted behind Cloudfront. It was critical for the team to have all assets stored in a single repository, and within a few weeks, they managed to move approximately 90% of their brands’ metadata into GraphCMS, with 15% already served in production.

> “Our goal was to have all our brands’ content moved into GraphCMS within half a year, but we’ll have them done within half that time.”

_Jason Kaye, Director of Engineering at 2U_

Given the success of moving to GraphCMS and having their business goals met ahead of schedule, there are early conversations of extending their adoption of GraphCMS to handle further aspects of their [application content](/use-cases/application-content).


## The Process

To manage their workflow, 2U had built an in-house Headless CMS that the editorial and content teams could manage their content in. This was intended to serve a specific use case, however, and was eventually rolled out to service other products as well. While it worked for some time, the solution wasn’t scalable.

The team was adding several new partners and products at an accelerated pace, and their system wasn’t scalable. When deciding whether to build on top of this solution further or adopt an external solution, 2U opted to go for a hosted solution and avoid “rebuilding the wheel,” avoiding any further singular points of failure or performance issues that their CMS could encounter, to prevent spending resources away from focusing on their core business model.

2U was all in on GraphQL, and while looking for solutions to replace their CMS, they considered several combinations of Headless CMS and DAM platforms before coming across GraphCMS. After an extensive proof-of-concept phase, it was apparent that GraphCMS fits their needs entirely - Headless, hosted GraphQL backend, and an editor-friendly UI - and opted to go with GraphCMS. Given that their business model was heavily using GraphQL, the choice was simple.

## Why GraphCMS

Given that 2U was heavily into the GraphQL ecosystem, working with GraphCMS was an easy decision. In addition, there were several observations and criteria that led to them choosing GraphCMS:

- Load time improvements on the frontend with GraphCMS’s API serving content at high speeds.
- Security and authentication was a strong factor for the team, and implementing SSO with GraphCMS for their organization’s OneLogin accounts was a breeze.
- The increase in performance with GraphCMS’s API led to higher conversion rates and lower bounce rates.
- With 2U rapidly adopting a mobile-first approach and ramping up their focus on mobile, the team needed a solution to improve their cross-platform user experience.
- GraphCMS’s audit logs (and with content based permissions on the way) made it easier for the team to monitor the changes and additions made to their content.


Jason Kaye

Director of Engineering at 2U

2U programmatically federates metadata from over 500 ed-tech offerings, ensuring up-to-date information is distributed to 300,000+ students.

Case Study: GraphCMS and 2U

### Headless CMS for a Federated Content Hub

Time matters when delivering content on an ambitious scale. GraphCMS provides you with central control of your enterprise content from multiple sources through a unified content layer.

The BioCentury team uses GraphCMS to programmatically consume and enrich content from several services, sources, and destinations across their organization, resulting in an 81% drop in time to market, and 120% rise in content engagement.

“My eyes lit up at how intuitive content modeling is. GraphCMS gives unlimited possibilities of what we can connect and build...”

Content Federation is the concept of bringing all your services together from a single GraphQL API, managed out of GraphCMS. Connect various data sources, such as headless e-commerce, PIM, or CRM systems, and join information across systems with a single API call to speed up your development process.

Content Federation unlocks programmatic possibilities to let content travel in multiple directions across all your frontends and backends.

Goodbye, fragmented content silos

Your stack is killing your business. The high overheads of maintenance are stopping your teams from working on valuable tasks. Challenge the status quo and meet your ambitious business goals by having your stack work for you, and not against.

Focus on your business model, not maintenance

The modular nature of your content models allows you to create content once and reuse it across all digital channels. This ensures consistency across digital touchpoints, whilst eliminating the need to recreate the same content across multiple locations.

Break down your content silos

Unlike most Headless CMS, GraphCMS can let you consume customer interactions with your frontend and programmatically distribute them back to your systems.

GraphCMS not only unlocks new possibilities for you with the GraphQL Mutations API, remote fields, and granular webhooks, but gives you complete control on controlling how your information travels in both directions.

Content management, no longer a one-way street

Control information silos with federated content hubs. Provide your teams with a central repository to create, enrich, deliver, and consume content, ensuring true content federation.

Content Federation

Stop creating and duplicating content for several frontends across CMS, files, and folders. Unify your content and query everywhere from a single GraphQL API endpoint.

Goodbye, fragmented content

Take control of your content, and direct where and when it goes. Use a unified platform to deliver to and consume from websites, stores, applications, portals, you name it.

Win the omnichannel race

GraphCMS programmatically connects with external APIs via API extensions, webhooks, and integrations, to aggregate all your content into one schema to be queried from one GraphQL API endpoint.

Endless extensibility

Embracing structured content with GraphCMS lets you create content once, and deliver it across all digital touchpoints in an optimized and native format.

Unleash structured content

Overhauling a stack that is unable to scale and mature with your needs is expensive and risky. Extend their capabilities with GraphCMS to eliminate any overheads.

Supercharge your investments

With industry leading performance, security, and scalability, GraphCMS is trusted by companies ranging from the Fortune 500 to governments and public service companies.

Get set up for success

Travel Weekly

<CustomerQuote />

## The Company: 

[Jacobs Media Group](https://www.jacobsmediagroup.com/about/) owns a variety of leading UK hospitality publishing brands including trusted brands like Travel Weekly and the Caterer. [Travel Weekly](https://www.travelweekly.co.uk/), started in 1969, is an authority in the hospitality sector in the UK keeping readers informed on the latest trends, giving travelers more information on exciting destinations, sharing the latest news in the industry, and providing travel agencies tips on how to market to the latest trends. [The Caterer](https://www.thecaterer.com/) is the largest hospitality magazine in the UK giving analysis on the industry, monthly reviews of restaurants, spotlights of important players in the industry. The Caterer highlights the work of some of the most notable British chefs, from Gordon Ramsay to Jamie Oliver to Mary Berry. With around 400,000 monthly visitors for Travel Weekly alone, the Jacobs Media Group was limited by an overly complicated tech stack and an outdated approach to content management. 


## The Case: 

The Jacobs Media Group decided it was time to reevaluate their approach to their tech stack, including their approach to content management, and create a better performing website, but the team was faced with the dilemma of whether to try to improve on old systems or create a new tech stack. Previous development teams created a plethora of systems that did not consider mobile-friendliness, SEO optimization, and used technology which was not suitable for their use case. As each development team attempted to create their own version of a CMS for new projects or updated a previous version of the homebrew CMS. The team was working with the sixth iteration of the tech stack and had chosen to build their own CMS which quickly became cumbersome and time-consuming to maintain. 


The new development team, headed by Imre Nagy, aimed to create a resilient tech stack that would focus on optimizing the frontend and security. It was clear that the team needed to move away from a homebrew system and instead find a reliable, flexible headless CMS which would take away the trouble of having to maintain an outdated homebrew system. The previous website, which was not optimized to be performant, had a Pagespeed Insights score close to 0. It was clear that the new website needed to be built with modern and resilient technology which would lead to a better performing site. 


In evaluating a headless CMS for their project, there were a couple of drivers that were essential to the team. The new system must be extremely flexible, reliable, have easy onboarding for the technical team, and be fairly priced. GraphCMS checked all of the boxes for their team and fit the needs of the use case. 




## The Project:

GraphCMS is just one part of the totally redesigned modern architecture to create a much more performant website. Travel Weekly began the lengthy task of creating the new architecture which included a homebrew database and middleware that pushed the data to the newly designed website. The team chose to host the architecture on AWS and build using the [LAMP stack](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LAMP_(software_bundle) technologies. GraphCMS interacts directly with this core application that relays information from the CMS to be stored in Travel Weekly’s database application. 


GraphCMS is used primarily as a way for editors to have access to the 100,000 articles that are stored in their GraphCMS projects and continue to add content to the website. The developers set up the schemas for the various brands and gave the content editing teams a brief onboarding. From there, the team of nearly 40 content editors was able to add content, upload assets, modify wording, and style the content exactly as they please.


The Travel Weekly team was able to cut their development drastically using GraphCMS. Previously, projects required 4-5 months to get off the ground. Now with GraphCMS, this process just takes several weeks. This streamlined approach to architecture has freed the development team from having to maintain the CMS and focus on more deployments, which can now be done multiple times a day rather than only when absolutely necessary. With the new highly optimized tech stack, their Page Speed Insights have jumped to 90 on desktop, a significant improvement from before. 



## Why GraphCMS:

GraphCMS allowed the team to get up and running quickly. The ability to build the basic website structure through schema building quickly and effectively in GraphCMS was one of the stand-out features. GraphCMS required very little onboarding for the technical team; schema building struck the perfect balance of the required functionality without needing workarounds and embracing the truly headless mindset. This saved the development team a lot of time as they no longer had to build and maintain a CMS but could focus their energies on building the core application.  


As the team continued to work with GraphCMS, they were impressed by the high velocity of new features and development that went into the application. When the Travel Weekly team requested new features, a common response was that that particular feature was already in development and would be released soon. Over the two years that Travel Weekly has been working with GraphCMS, this pace has been maintained and the customer support of the GraphCMS team has continued to be excellent. 


The content editors have gained much-needed independence and flexibility. While new team members do require brief onboarding, they are now able to totally customize their content where they were previously limited to minimal styling choices. Content can now be formatted and styled the way that the content teams see fit. GraphCMS balanced robust features and functionality with a simple, straightforward UI which improved development times and gave the content team more freedom and flexibility. 




## Benefits of GraphCMS:

- The content team has more independence and flexibility. They are no longer limited to minor styling or developer availability.

- The great user experience when building the project schema; GraphCMS finds the sweet spot between having the necessary functionality and being overly opinionated on how to build the schema

- Simple, straightforward UI which requires very little onboarding for new users

- Fast response and resolution times with the customer support team 



Imre Nagy

Head of Technology at Travel Weekly

A modern approach to high-volume publishing for the hospitality industry with a Headless CMS for News & Publications

Case Study: GraphCMS and Travel Weekly

Discovery

```stats
{
  "220": "Countries served by Discovery Inc.",
  "50": "Languages maintained"
}
```

<CustomerQuote />

Discovery, Inc. is a global leader in real life entertainment, serving a passionate audience of superfans around the world with content that inspires, informs, and entertains. Available in 220 countries and territories and nearly 50 languages, Discovery is a platform innovator, reaching viewers on all screens. Discovery’s portfolio of premium brands includes Discovery Channel, Travel Channel, Animal Planet, Science Channel, and Eurosport.

![Discovery.png](https://media.graphcms.com/TjjkyLRGSBwOZkfA8uxq)

Within Project C.A.T. (Conserving Acres for Tigers) Discovery Inc. has partnered with World Wildlife Fund and others to support a worldwide effort to double the number of tigers in the wild by 2022. By conserving nearly two million acres of protected land in India and Bhutan, this collaboration aims to ensure a healthy habitat for future generations of tigers. The support Discovery provides to WWF goes towards improved security measures, increased monitoring of tiger populations, maintenance of land corridors, and implementation measures to reduce human-wildlife conflict. Discovery uses GraphCMS for global news stories, celebrity news, stories about wildlife conservation as it relates to Project C.A.T.

## What mattered most to Discovery when choosing GraphCMS?

- The content authoring interface that enables simple and quick editing and curation process of stories so that the website can stay up-to-date in real-time as news breaks.
- Content creators need no technical know-how to use GraphCMS, leaving them with more time to focus on creating excellent content.
- Pre-defined permissions for users in different roles (e.g. contributor, editor, developer, admin) ensure a smooth and effective team collaboration.
- GraphCMS enables Discovery to maintain its high standard of content creation while having the flexibility to react to breaking news stories.

Matthew Falco

Manager at Discovery Communications

### GraphCMS is battle-tested to deliver enterprise projects across platforms and geographies at scale.

Our custom plans include SLA-guaranteed uptime of 99.9%, global CDN caching, and auto-scaling. Custom origin policies, ASN and IP Firewalls, data encryption, and choice of datacenter ensure compliance.

Whether you’re adding more products into your portfolio, evolving your tech stack, increasing your project’s complexity, or expanding into new markets, GraphCMS can scale horizontally, vertically, and globally.

[Learn more about GraphCMS for Enterprise](/enterprise-headless-cms)

Accelerated speed of content curation and publishing breaking news stories with a Headless CMS for Media & Publications

Case Study: GraphCMS and Discovery

Neat

<CustomerQuote />

[Neat.hk](https://neat.hk), a Hong Kong-based FinTech company, is a modern alternative to a bank that gives entrepreneurs and SMEs multi-currency accounts that can be opened and managed entirely online. Supporting HKD, GBP, EUR, USD (and counting),  Neat empowers account holders to complete their transactions in the currencies of their customers, all without the bureaucracy traditionally associated with banks. A rapidly growing company, Neat needed a content management solution that was able to scale to match its growing customer base and evolving brand, opting to use GraphCMS as a [Headless CMS for Fintech](https://graphcms.com/customers/fintech-and-insurance). 

## In the past
With a smaller team size and more limited requirements, a simple drag-and-drop visual CMS was used in the past. The constraints led to compromises in both functionality and design.
As the team grew and the company rebranded, it came time to find a new CMS which could serve as the backbone for the redesigned website. 

![neat.png](https://media.graphcms.com/BZMcnB5zS9C1wlVFGmpW)

## Why GraphCMS?
To complement their cutting-edge tech stack (which includes GraphQL and next.js) and the need for high powered localization tools, they chose GraphCMS for their new website redesign. The straightforward UI and the ease of GraphQL mutations were added bonuses. While initially considering open source options, like Wordpress, Neat found GraphCMS’ headlessness would reduce maintenance costs in the long run as they continue to scale.

## What Mattered most to Neat when choosing GraphCMS?

- GraphCMS gave Neat the opportunity to integrate GraphQL naturally into their tech stack without a large learning curve. Developers could take advantage of the benefits of GraphQL despite being new to the technology. 
- GraphCMS gave content creators freedom from designing and building the website. Instead, they have more time to focus on delivering great content. 
- The headless nature of GraphCMS allows Neat to reuse content on a granular level, saving the valuable time of content creators.
- Based in Hong Kong and with operations worldwide, Neat serves both the English-speaking market as well as the Chinese-speaking market; GraphCMS provides essential, easy to use localization capabilities (currently for Simplified Chinese and English).

Albert Yu

Software Engineer at Neat

Tackling cross-border trade with a Headless CMS for FinTech.

Case Study: GraphCMS and Neat.hk

### Headless CMS for Modern Marketing Websites & SEO

GraphCMS provides your content and development teams complete flexibility, so you can focus on building exceptional web experiences on your terms.

Up implemented GraphCMS to power their high-traffic marketing website and deliver personalized coupon experiences to millions of users.

"With GraphCMS, the marketing team virtually needs no further support from our developers..."

Store all your content in several languages for onsite promotions, landing pages, banners, posts, and more, within a single content hub. Distribute them natively across platforms to engage your customers on whichever device they’re on.

Create modern websites to delight customers wherever they are

With a strong technical SEO foundation in place, take full operational control over metadata, social shares, URL structures, image optimization, asset transformations, crawling priorities, and sitemap enrichment.

Headless CMS for SEO in context

Designed to work with the workflows you’re accustomed to, GraphCMS provides granular user roles, content stages, retention, and versioning - you have full control over what gets published and when.

Efficiency by design

Combine the best of structured content, asset management, SEO, and localization with an intuitive Content Studio to deliver modern, immersive, and resilient website experiences.

Websites and SEO

GraphCMS powered websites have been proven to reduce bounce rates, increase Lighthouse scores, and provide stronger Web Vitals metrics.

Performance First

GraphCMS unlocks powerful workflows to reduce co-dependence between development and content teams. Work in parallel and reduce time to market.

Agile Workflows

With webhooks, remote fields, and integrations, connect GraphCMS with all your favorite tools and services to make meaningful business decisions.

Endless Extensibility

Follow SEO best practices with a CMS that is built to accommodate exceptional technical and operational SEO results so you can focus on creating content.

Streamlined SEO

As one of the few Headless CMS to support in-built localization and locale-based publishing, you can reach your customers across borders wherever they are, to make them feel at home.

Localization out of the box

Gain access to our global implementation and technology partners to ensure you’re building the best digital experiences without compromise.

Extra Firepower

### Headless CMS for Localization and Internationalization

GraphCMS provides an industry-leading localization API that you can use to publish content for all or specific locales in your project.

The Discovery team uses GraphCMS to serve content across over 200 countries in 50 languages, ensuring their high standards for content are maintained at breakneck speeds.

50 languages maintained, with the ease of one.

Use GraphCMS’s Content Localization API to publish content for all or specific locales in your project via the GraphCMS interface or API.

Require instant on-the-fly translations for your localized fields? Our enterprise plans come with automatic AI translations.

i18n from the get go

Whether you're fetching a single content entry, or multiple, you can fetch all localizations of that entry. Set default locales and fallback locales to ensure you’re never without content, and publish content per locale or to all at once.

Granular locale permissions

Just like you can query localized content, you can also create, update, upsert, and delete localized content using our GraphQL Mutations API.

Programmatic localization with GraphQL mutations

GraphCMS is the flexible Content Management Platform for Localization, with in-built i18n and locale-based publishing.

Content Localization

With powerful content based permissions, onboard your colleagues to combine best-in-class localization features with granular visibility across content.

Accelerated Localization

Deliver sophisticated and personalized campaigns with cultural nuances that your users expect from you, to engage, convert and retain them across global markets.

Global Marketing

Move beyond just websites, and localize content for your apps, streaming platforms, products, and more from within GraphCMS.

Immersive local experiences

You’re in full control of defining your localization via default locales. Get advanced with the option to set fallback locales and locale-based publishing.

Truly Locale Based

Our enterprise plans come with AI translations to automatically generate translations for your localized content entries based on your configuration and workflows.

Automatic Translations

Countries have a wealth of cultural references unique to them, so why settle for just de, when you can truly personalize content across de-de, de-ch, and de-at?

Goodbye, faux pas

<CustomerQuote />

```stats
{
  "20%": "Reduction in bounce rate",
  "2": "Months from idea to launch"
}
```

## About DTM

<iframe width="100%" height="450" src="https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/8pIePmu-wpU" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Founded in 1984, the [DTM](https://www.dtm.com/en) builds on more than 35 years of history and offers a spectacular, passionate, and emotional wheel-to-wheel racing experience for millions of fans every year. The DTM series reflects the core product of the so-called “DTM Platform” which also integrates further products and events such as DTM eSports, the DTM Trophy, and in the future, the DTM Electric series. With its global live TV coverage (+30 countries) and more than 600,000 spectators on-site during the 2019 DTM season, the DTM series underlines its status as one of the biggest racing series, not only in Europe but worldwide.

## The project

In 2019, DTM’s leadership decided to fully commit to a user-centric strategy for its entire digital presence. Tasked to lead the challenging transformation is Marvin Weiland, a marketing expert and product owner for DTM’s digital platforms such as websites, apps, OTT video streaming, and eCommerce platform.

The transformation project aimed at creating an excellent user experience along the digital touchpoints of DTM. This means being visible and attractive in the early phases of the customer journey with website features that show the emotional, exciting and ambitious character of DTM as well as offering ways for users to become integrated into the sports: via “Datatainment” second screen solutions, customizable video streaming or an enhanced event companion app that makes sure fans never miss any action while visiting the motorsport festival that DTM is.

![DTM Homepage With GraphCMS.png](https://media.graphcms.com/yyA0UNy1QAap7QU5Cyp1)

Creating a simple yet exciting and adaptive UX is the philosophy of Marvin’s team and partners. It is essential to be able to relaunch at any time, allowing the team to react to any change in customer behavior. Fan expectations change all the time, so being agile and acting without a delay is paramount for survival and success. The transformation included a complete re-platforming of DTM’s website and the re-launch of their native mobile apps.


>“User expectations change constantly and your digital architecture must be built for extensibility and adaptation. We build with the user in mind, not given software features. It is not responsible to only build with one specific software framework in mind. Our goal is to retain the users who have entered our ecosystem, to make them happy in every step of their life-cycle, to build true fan loyalty. There are so many superfans who can not necessarily attend race events on-site. We have a responsibility to them as well to bring them the enjoyment of the sport – in a digital way. That mindset proves even more important now in times of Covid 19 and limited fan allowances.”

Marvin Weiland, DTM Digital Product Owner, and Marketing Manager.

## In the past

Previously, DTM’s website ran on several content management systems including a monolithic Drupal instance. The UX was not appropriate for the demanding fan and not adapted to the various user segments of DTM. The legacy technical setup quickly became obsolete as it no longer fulfilled the ever-changing user requirements. As the team spent time adapting the legacy system, one question was pushed to the forefront: “What is the tech architecture that will lead us into the future?”.

## The tech stack

Microservice architecture with a user-centric approach rather than a tool-centric approach defined the direction of DTM’s transformation. GraphCMS, as an API-first headless CMS, is used for the management of all DTM textual and media data. GraphCMS’ GraphQL API delivers the content to the company’s website and its iOS and Android applications. The central content hub ensures data quality and integrity. Instead of having multiple content management systems for the website and for the mobile apps, DTM uses GraphCMS for all its content. The tech stack also contains a middleware with NodeJS and a frontend with VueJS.

> “I love the idea of pure content data in the headless CMS. All applications – and who knows what we will come up with –simply retrieve content via GraphQL and serve it the way we need to at the different touchpoints. Tomorrow we could build an Alexa skill with the existing content structure we already have in place.”

Marvin Weiland, DTM Digital Product Owner, and Marketing Manager

## The project development
 
Once onboarded to GraphCMS, Marvin Weiland’s team implemented the first pages of the dtm.com website on the brand new tech stack in just 2 months in Autumn 2019.
 
> “Our digital user should be able to relive the offline experiences of somebody attending our races. The acceleration, the heat, the emotion, the spectacle – they are alive on our website and in our mobile app”.

Marvin Weiland, DTM Digital Product Owner, and Marketing Manager

In the second phase of the transformation, the DTM team worked with an agency to extend the web platform functionality and introduce a partially new frontend design. In parallel, another team relaunched the DTM mobile app which also consumes the same content from GraphCMS. Although both teams didn’t have extensive prior GraphQL experience, they became fully productive within just a few days. Revealing the content structure and all API features through the GraphQL API Explorer helps immensely to achieve proficiency without any additional backend or database experience. Two separate development teams working in parallel on different mobile platforms is possible thanks to the API-first nature of GraphCMS and features such as Development Environments. Parallelizing implementation work means a drastically reduced time to market for DTM’s products and any new features they wish to implement.

## The website

![DTM Website With GraphCMS.png](https://media.graphcms.com/bcaqk5o5Su2t6hoIC62r)

DTM’s website is a gateway to experience thrilling motorsport in a digital way. It gives fans full access to relevant sporting data and news to keep up with the sport, live data-tainment features to individualize the watching experience during race weekends, and further event guidance that leads users to the eCommerce site. The website is localized in German and English. It features fast-loading video headers captivating both veteran fans and newcomers to the motorsport world while also surprising the user with a self explorable 3D model of a DTM Electric demo car. With a Google Lighthouse score of 85-95, dtm.com is an excellent example of the performance optimizations that can be achieved with a modern JAMstack-based platform. Additionally, there has been a 10-20% reduction in bounce rate thanks to an improved content architecture, a new content strategy, and the decreased page loading time.

## The app

![DTM Mobile App with GraphCMS.png](https://media.graphcms.com/0hzTbKCoQ7ONITmbJgFk)

DTM’s mobile application for iOS and Android is a trusted companion of the true racing fan. It gives real-time access to breaking news, live standings, and competition results. Fans at home can use the app as a second screen to check a driver’s history while fans on-site use its location map as a navigation tool. The app provides fans with the ability to plan their own personalized event schedule: activities in the fan village that make DTM events a beloved motorsport festival. This content is all hosted on GraphCMS, an essential part of creating the fan-centric experience that DTM strives for. 

## Benefits of GraphCMS:

- 10-20% reduction in bounce rates after moving to GraphCMS 
- GraphCMS drastically reduced the go-to-market time, making it possible to launch a new site in just 2 months 
DTM easily embraced the content hub approach by using GraphCMS as their repo, simplifying their execution to deliver omnichannel content 
- GraphCMS made it possible to create a powerful Backend-as-a-Service with a GraphQL core quickly. 
- Despite no prior experience with GraphQL, the teams were able to rapidly embrace the new query language, making their implementation even easier with the API playground and self-generated GraphQL documentation
- Best-of-breed tech stacks, including GraphCMS, enabled DTM to deliver better performance and measurably greater user experience as compared to their previous website.

Marvin Weiland

Digital Product Owner and Marketing Manager at DTM

Europe’s leading motorsport platform, DTM, accelerates with a successful user-centric digital transformation.

Case Study: GraphCMS and DTM

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The Telenor team depends on GraphCMS to deliver an HD TV streaming platform for millions of viewers across the Nordics, relying on us to programmatically enrich over 2k new videos each month on their platform at <100ms latency on millions of API calls.

“We needed the flexibility of a database, with the abstraction and UI of a CMS, which would have used a large amount of resources…”

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Content to interact with

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The structured content approach to application content production makes it easier to launch new projects, refine existing ones, and introduce new enhancements, all while reusing existing content models.

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Structured content driven applications

Build beyond today. Breakaway from the restraints of traditional CMS and embrace structured content to deliver experiences across SaaS, mobile apps, web applications, streaming platforms, and more.

Application Content

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Solutions and use cases made possible with GraphCMS

Portals

Headless CMS for Knowledge Bases, Portals, and Intranets

Structured Content

Headless CMS for Structured Content

Content Federation

Headless CMS for a Federated Content Hub

Websites and SEO

Headless CMS for Modern Marketing Websites & SEO

Content Localization

Headless CMS for Localization and Internationalization

Application Content

Headless CMS for Interactive Application Content

eCommerce

Headless CMS for eCommerce

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