Planeta Formación y Universidades is an international network of educational institutions, belonging to one of the largest publishing and communication groups in Spain and Latin America.   

This network aims to connect students of 114 nationalities with knowledge through open, flexible and useful models, in multiple areas and at any level.

Since its creation in 2003, the network has been incorporating specific portals for each institution, aiming to reach all future students who will join this great project. 

However, the growth in training offerings brought an exponential increase in costs, both financially and in time, every time they needed to build an institution's site. At the same time, they realized that all these sites had common elements that they did not need to develop from scratch at the beginning of each new project.

Thus, we proposed a solution that began by addressing the need to simplify and optimize the process of creating the websites of training institutions. From there, we began a close technological collaboration that has allowed Planeta to improve its student recruitment procedures, and the performance of its portals and will culminate with the renovation of its cloud infrastructure.

Building solutions on a common basis

The main challenge was to provide Planeta Formación y Universidades with a tool that would allow them to start up the portals of their training institutions in a diligent manner and without an exponential increase in costs.

It was, therefore, a challenge with a double aspect: on the one hand, the objective implied providing answers to specific business and marketing requirements (analytics, SEO...), but it also implied a change in Planeta's digital culture, going from addressing a customized development for each brand to establishing solutions with a common base that would allow customizing key elements and facilitating their maintenance.

The solution proposed not only had to optimize time and economic costs, but also had to allow iteration and updating according to the needs that the institutions might require in the future.

For Planeta, tackling this first challenge meant the beginning of its digital transformation, a lengthy process for which they needed the support of a trusted partner that could offer new solutions as new challenges arose.

Fast and optimized construction of sites

To address the challenge, a multidisciplinary team was assembled, with business profile, Product Owner, architecture, and Drupal developers, at the disposal of Planeta Formación y Universidades. This group of professionals has been adapting in size and roles as the project requirements changed, offering maximum flexibility thanks to the agile methodologies we work with.

The proposed solution was the construction of "SiteBuilder", a product that allowed to develop in an efficient and practical way the websites of training institutions aimed at attracting leads.

Since all the sites had similarities that, until now, were built from scratch every time a new website had to be started, the solution contemplated the development of a series of common components and configurations that were predefined in each site. With this shared base, the only thing left to do was provide each institution's look and feel.   

At the same time, in view of the changes implemented by Google in its algorithm, the team carried out an important work to improve the performance of all the portals built in SiteBuilder so that they can maintain their positioning in SERPs. The visibility of these sites is crucial for Planeta Formación y Universidades, since the main objective they pursue is to attract students for the different training programs. 

To achieve this, changes were made to the product, both in its backend and frontend layers, following Google's indications for WPO (Web Performance Optimization) in relation to a series of KPIs that evaluate the performance of a page. 

One of the drawbacks detected throughout this digital transformation process was related to the infrastructure, which prevented the sites from performing well. To take on this new challenge, Cloud Computing specialists were brought in to redesign the current infrastructure they have in the Google cloud.

Among the advantages offered by SiteBuilder to Planeta Formación y Universidades are the following:

• A single editing system for all institutions, making it easy for one team to manage several sites. This system has a modular structure, which provides creative freedom and constant innovation in terms of content, gaining in editing capacity and independence of the development team. 
• Flexible components that allow displaying the same content with different visual designs and default templates in the contents, which make editing easier. The different display modes and page structures allow you to create original content that differs from the project's base designs. 
• Leveraging the developments of other institutions, which means that each site receives new functionalities on an ongoing basis.
• Default linking with internal integration systems: forms, geoip, GTM, optimize, etc. Responsive components, SEO configurations and predefined analytics, optimized for performance with a base that guarantees the correct positioning in search engines.

Cost reduction and process improvement

Since the start-up of SiteBuilder, outstanding results have been achieved:

• Thanks to this optimized construction system, the team has managed to put 6 sites into production, reducing the economic and time costs derived from this process.
• Prioritization and launch of new components based on market trends, the division's corporate guidelines, and the collection of proposals from institutions. 
• Optimization of the digital channel for attracting and interacting with leads and other stakeholders (students, professors...) through a constantly evolving product. Being a showcase for all the teams involved. 
• The work processes of the Recruitment, Communication, and Portfolio Management teams have been improved, with a new experience in the use of the product and support in the implementation and subsequent deployment. 

In addition to all this, there is the reinforcement of security in the collection of lead data.