Mortgage fintech firm speeds up content delivery with a headless CMS

For years, the company used WordPress and switched to Kirby CMS, which is a flat-file CMS. Kirby CMS did not enable direct access for stakeholders to make updates. Instead, stakeholders were required to submit a ticket to the development team. If they needed to correct a typo, change a piece of copy, or post a blog, all content updates required a development ticket. As a result, much of their developers’ time was spent managing content and resolving tickets.

The company needed a CMS that would give its stakeholders more independence to make content updates and free up developers’ time so they could focus on innovating. They also did not want a monolithic CMS that would bind them to whatever was built into it. They were looking for a solution that would give them the freedom to integrate, use best-of-breed apps and components of their choice, and enable omnichannel delivery.

During the company’s CMS search, they learned the power of an API-based, headless CMS. They found that Contentstack answered all their CMS questions. It even resolved issues that, at the time, they didn’t know needed to be addressed. Contentstack has met the company's expectations and more in the following ways:

• Version control has given the company peace of mind. If content is accidentally published live, it can be rolled back to a previous version with a click of a button.

• The CMS’s intuitive UI made onboarding stakeholders a breeze. Business users can delve in and make content updates with little prior training.

• Setting up and developing in multiple environments (e.g., staging, production, etc.) has allowed developers great flexibility in building and testing before committing to any live deployments.

• The ability to schedule publishing has freed up early mornings for one of the company’s junior web developers. She no longer has to wake up at the break of dawn just to publish a new press release on the website because she can schedule it days or weeks in advance.

Before Contentstack, a regular update took about 30 minutes. A simple content edit needed to be repeated multiple times in different development and production servers. Contentstack cut that process down to 30 seconds. Contentstack has helped the company free up its development resources. Previously, one developer was dedicated to content updates. At times, two other developers would jump in to help with content updates. Now, developers don’t do content updates at all.

Inside a pandemic pivot

When the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted plans for its annual in-person conference, a leading mortgage fintech company had just four weeks to pivot to its first virtual event: Virtual Experience 2020. The company faced the challenge of accommodating more than double its typical attendance, with 7,500 professionals registering. 

To meet their goals—engaging attendees, uniting their partner network, and delivering product updates—the team relied on Contentstack’s API-first headless CMS. The platform’s flexibility allowed them to repurpose existing content seamlessly, integrate live and on-demand sessions, and implement features like commenting, bookmarking, and real-time Q&A. Contentstack significantly reduced development time, empowering non-technical stakeholders to manage content efficiently and enabling the team to focus on delivering a superior user experience.

During the virtual event, attendees accessed live "Town Halls" and interactive sessions like “Cocktails and Conversations,” resulting in 9,000 unique views and 2,000 hours of video watched. The event achieved over 100 million engagement data points, with more than half of attendees classified as engaged users.

By leveraging Contentstack, the fintech company successfully transitioned from in-person to virtual, delivering a robust digital experience that exceeded expectations while cutting costs and maintaining flexibility.

“Contentstack isn’t just a CMS of today. It’s a CMS of the future," said the Senior Manager of Digital Experience. "We’re looking forward to the continuous ROI that Contentstack provides our organization as we continue to build technology that powers the American dream.”