HMS Networks Drives Global Growth and Brand Unity with Progress Sitefinity Cloud
Challenge
As HMS Networks expanded, its five separate websites—stemming from acquisitions—caused confusion and inefficiencies. The company needed a solution to consolidate its digital ecosystem, improve website performance and simplify content management.
Solution
HMS leveraged the expertise of Sitefinity partner Siili and chose to standardize on Progress® Sitefinity®, integrating enterprise systems like Microsoft Dynamics, InRiver and Cloudinary, and transitioning to Sitefinity Cloud along the way.
Result
With the consolidation of five websites into a single platform, HMS has achieved unified digital presence and future readiness. The marketing team is now empowered to independently manage content and the integration with enterprise systems such as InRiver and Cloudinary has resulted in improved product information management.
Full Story
Challenge
With operations in over 20 countries and a team of over 1,200 employees, HMS needed to manage and present diverse, scalable product information across multiple platforms. A loyal Sitefinity customer since 2013, HMS has been using it to meet their evolving digital needs. As their product portfolio grew, the company needed to streamline and mature its fragmented digital presence—spread across five sites due to acquisitions—and offer a unified experience to their global customers.
To achieve this, HMS sought to rearchitect their web infrastructure to reduce systems, establish a single source of truth for complete, accurate and up-to-date product information and leverage the cloud to host their solution.
The seamless integration between Sitefinity and Cloudinary has been a huge help. It’s so much easier to access all our images, which are now optimized for better performance.
Amanda Löfving
Web Content Manager at HMS Networks
Solution
HMS chose to standardize on Sitefinity for its flexible, scalable and user-friendly digital ecosystem. To support this endeavor, HMS partnered with Siili for their extensive Sitefinity experience, product information management expertise and strong technology background.
The seamless integration capabilities in Sitefinity allowed HMS to connect various systems—including enterprise software solutions, Microsoft Dynamics and InRiver for product information management (PIM) and Cloudinary for digital asset management (DAM). These integrations provided a “single source of truth” throughout all digital properties and enabled easy access to accurate, up-to-date product information presented more effectively while doubling the previous speed.
Moreover, a Sitefinity connector for Microsoft Azure Translation was implemented, utilizing AI and custom-trained language models tailored to domain-specific vocabulary, enhancing their translation capabilities.
When HMS decided to adopt Progress Sitefinity Cloud, the Siili team ensured a smooth transition from on-premises instances without disruption to marketing or information delivery operations for employees or customers.
Result
The transition to Sitefinity Cloud delivered improved performance, enhanced security as well as reduced technical complexities and infrastructure costs. The overall modernization of HMS’s digital architecture along with the critical PIM and DAM integrations resulted in a more cohesive experience for their customers, with improved navigation and content discovery.
Their enhanced digital presence now supports a unified product presentation, making it easier for customers to find products and interact with them, which is crucial given HMS’s diverse technical product portfolio. The new platform also facilitated better collaboration across the content, marketing and product teams and improved the translation process, making the website more accessible to a global audience.
Additionally, their customer journey consolidation unlocked cross-selling and growth opportunities. Customers now have a clearer understanding of HMS’s offerings, which drives brand loyalty and customer satisfaction.
"Sitefinity has allowed us to consolidate five sites into one platform, significantly improving our user experience and internal collaboration, which has made us so much more efficient,” said Thomas Carlsson, Global Marketing Communications Manager at HMS.
Impactful Integrations
HMS improved the consistency and accuracy of product information across its digital properties through direct integrations with two key systems.
One leveraged a built-in Sitefinity connector with Cloudinary (DAM) and the other, a custom connector with InRiver (PIM) built by Siili. The PIM system helped establish a single source of truth for the rich product information that gets automatically updated on the website.
The combination of Microsoft Azure Translation, AI, and custom-trained models greatly enhanced the translation quality and efficiency. Machine translation became the primary method for translating the website into all HMS market languages, with minimal manual proofreading needed afterwards.
UI and Productivity Enhancements
The user-friendly interface of Sitefinity empowered HMS’s marketing team to be self-sufficient, eliminating reliance on development and IT for the team to manage and update content.
According to HMS’s Web Content Manager, Amanda Löfving, "The seamless integration between Sitefinity and Cloudinary has been a huge help. It’s so much easier to access all our images, which are now optimized for better performance."
Scalability and Reliability
As HMS’s business grew, Sitefinity adapted seamlessly at every step of the journey. The platform’s architectural flexibility supported easy system integrations and enabled a more composable digital experience. The company is already planning to introduce personalized customer portals to further expand customer engagement through personalized product offerings and information.
Sitefinity has allowed us to consolidate five sites into one, significantly improving our user experience and internal collaboration, which has made us so much more efficient.
Thomas Carlsson
Global Marketing Communications Manager at HMS Networks