Earlier in the year, we were thrilled to see the Global site for Baker Tilly International go live, followed in quick succession by several of her member firms including Spain and Denmark.
A Vast Project
From Discovery
The launch of Baker Tilly International's global website has been the culmination of 12 months of collaboration that began with an intensive Discovery phase. We conducted research, surveys and interviews with a working group of 18 of the Baker Tilly firms from all over the world spanning several months.
The insight and opinions gathered during this phase were crucial to defining a flexible and capable design system that would work for a range of firms with a wide variety of specific priorities and abilities.
Through Design
The challenge came from needing a uniform design suited to a strong business network, but also fluid enough to work in all circumstances. With some of Baker Tilly International's members being smaller companies with just half a dozen employees, and others being much larger with hundreds, our design had to accommodate both.
It was important to Baker Tilly that the Global site and Member sites stuck to strict brand guidelines and portrayed the network's image, but that there were still differences between them to define their individuality.
Making the sites feel 'global' was important to BTI so we introduced elements such as discreet animation, clear statistics modules and stunning imagery.
It’s been a goal of mine to have a first-class website for Baker Tilly before I had even joined over 4 years ago, so it’s been great to see all the hard work come together. Daniel Griffiths, Senior Digital Marketing Manager @ Baker Tilly International
And Build
The biggest challenge came from managing dozens of sites from the same codebase, whilst accommodating their slightly different technical and language requirements. Alongside this was the complex task of importing content from existing sites which came in different languages and formats from various content management systems.
One of BTI's specific requests was the ability to share content between the Global and Network sites. This resulted in a library of imagery that the firms can access, along with content modules which include statistics and company copy.
To Launch
A handful of sites launched soon after the Global website, and the rest have followed suit over a period of 3 months. For such an enormous project, we are delighted with how smoothly the launches have gone!
It is a testament to Craft's easy-to-use CMS that dozens of accounting firms from across the world, many without technical departments to help them and some with limited English knowledge, have managed to create and manage websites that reflect their business and their vision.
Some of Our Favourites
Everyone across the network has managed to create a unique site but here are some of our favourites:
What's Next?
The plans for the websites over the coming months include an ambitious project to allow sharing of content between websites, which will allow the firms within the network to work better with one another for mutual benefit. News and insights will be made global to allow firms to utilise the content of other firms, which is a technical challenge for our team and a hugely beneficial feature for the network.
More intricate content builder blocks are also in the pipeline, to allow individual firms to display their content in a way that is most meaningful for them, and there are also some various CRM and ATS type integrations on the horizon.
