Composable architecture for a Belgian-rooted reference investment house

How a headless CMS and composable architecture are the basis of exponential results

Degroof Petercam is a Belgian-rooted reference investment house built on more than 150 years of integrated financial knowledge. They create responsible prosperity for all by opening doors to opportunities and accompanying their private, corporate and institutional clients with expertise. The marketeers at Degroof Petercam were intrigued by the opportunities a headless Content Management System (CMS) could offer them, allowing them to combine their separate blog and corporate website in one platform as well as support the creation of multiple campaign sites throughout the year. This would simultaneously be an opportunity to freshen up the brand and lay the foundation for a design system and a truly scalable brand in line with the composable architecture strategy of Degroof Petercam.

A solid foundation as the essential condition for scaling up

As is so often the case with the proverb, well begun is half done. Within the first three months of working together, Degroof Petercam launched its first blog including an extensive content model, as well as a component library and front-end implementation. We continued to launch the corporate website next with fully integrated blog and three different campaign websites shortly after. Over the same period, we made the content model more scalable, paved the way for content authors to build dynamic collections and add dynamic content blocks, and added a fully custom personalisation layer.

How we enhanced flexibility and scalability in content management

A better blog

We started with the basics (but better). We built a new blog platform with a component library and a quite extensive blog content model. Then we integrated the blog in the corporate website and improved the content model by including smart features and dynamic content to make the work for the marketing team as effortless as possible.

Multi-channel content management

The introduction of ‘channels’ allowed us to work on the development of the corporate site while the blog remained in a separate channel until the corporate site was ready to go live. At the same time, this setup allowed Degroof Petercam to spin up separate campaign websites using the same content model and components.

Dynamic & personalised content model

With the launch of the corporate website, Degroof Petercam's marketing team could include multiple layers of dynamic content. Content authors can create collections with dynamic content that are automatically updated when a new entry is published while taking into account a layer of personalized content as well. Both were created without the use of any additional platforms, and are currently managed entirely through the content model and data layer.

Achieving flexibility and scalability with a headless CMS

By adopting a headless CMS and composable architecture, Degroof Petercam transformed their content management, enhancing both flexibility and scalability. The new system allowed them to seamlessly integrate their blog, corporate site, and multiple campaign sites, while a dynamic content model enabled faster deployment of personalised content. This streamlined approach has empowered their marketing team to manage and publish multi-channel content efficiently, positioning Degroof Petercam for continued growth and agility in the digital landscape.