RetailHow Panini frees its teams and reduces time to market with Storyblok

• Headquarters: Modena, Italy 
• Technology Stack: Nuxt.js

Panini began by working with a restrictive and traditional PHP-based CMS, which increased the complications in their ongoing projects. Then, they found Storyblok. Panini brought Storyblok on board to help manage several product and corporate landing pages across different languages and regions worldwide. 

With Storyblok, Panini’s team reduced their go-to-market from days to hours. This saved them time and costs in the long run and improved team collaboration. Panini uses Storyblok across 7 main websites, including their global Panini Group website, hosted in more than 20 languages/regional versions.

Main challenges with a traditional PHP CMS

Before Storyblok, Panini used a traditional PHP ‘Kubernetes-based’ CMS infrastructure. They discovered over time that this workflow limited them due to their requirements and website setup. The CMS could not manage more complicated projects and the complexity of the workflows that would continue to evolve.

The main challenges that Panini faced with their previous CMS included the following: 

• Complications faced by developers: Having to build entire frameworks and customize them  before content editors could come in 
• Problems with their workflow and content production: Any new product version needed to be updated yearly, requiring heavy lifting from developers, an entire restyling, and adding new features/changes to the site
• Difficulty collaborating: Each new project had to use an old code base to start, creating a heavy reliance on developers
• A ‘Kubernetes-based’ infrastructure: In the PHP-based CMS, projects usually comprised around three containers per instance, making it complicated to manage over time 

Solutions provided by Storyblok

For Panini, implementing Storyblok significantly improved overall optimization and resulted in faster performance as fewer complicated technologies were involved. On top of this, Storyblok enables Panini to access a range of features in handling their multiple global websites. Such benefits in Storyblok’s features include: 

• Duplicating content from existing projects to new website projects according to Atomic Design: The team can simply duplicate a Storyblok space, and editors can jump right into their work
• Promoting collaboration with content editors and other stakeholder teams: The ease of collaboration means they can work in one place asynchronously
• Optimizing geolocation efforts: Panini can direct website visitors to the appropriate landing page, depending on where they come from. For the content editors, this is easy as everything is hosted in one place and can be easily adapted, linked, and directed per user, region, and market (for example, one change for twenty versions of the website)
• Storyblok’s scheduling feature: Panini’s marketing team can publish content on the weekend and provide the web development team a way to deploy and publish updates automatically
• All-in-one container: With Storyblok, everything runs in one container, reducing the traffic and resources needed 
• Integrate with third-party applications: An automation feature was integrated to allow content automation for publishing

Streamlining for global content management

Panini is the world leader and distributor of trading cards, stickers, magazines, books, comics, and other collectible and publishing items, selling across more than 120 countries. Storyblok helped streamline Panini’s global content efforts, providing content and support to its product and corporate websites (Panini Group, Calciatori Panini, Panini Adrenalyn, Panini Comics, Panini Digital, Panini Sports Academy, and Panini Euro 2020). 

Storyblok’s lean project structures help to speed up their entire workflows and releases. With the shorter technology stack, there is no direct database involvement. This allows the team a hands-off database optimization approach without needing caching optimization. 

Cutting down on time to market

Building a project used to take a few days, whereas now, it takes just half a day of cloning git-repos and changing some configurations to be ready. Non-technical/non-dev teams are able to then work with it and publish directly. This is even easier for content editors: they can open a new project or clone a previous one depending on the need and insert the content accordingly when ready.

Saving time and resources

Storyblok helped reduce budgetary strains initially as its infrastructure is hosted in the cloud. There was a decrease in resource-spend and no need for a database to be constantly monitored, updated, and optimized.

Saving time and resource-spend also meant a reduction of technical resources and effort into the infrastructure, allowing developers to focus on innovation. This also reduced the time on a project and workflow pile-ups. Storyblok’s presence has provided flexibility to other teams with a new workflow setup and the ability to work more streamlined than before, giving more freedom to focus on creating quality content and innovate.

One CMS to fit all

For Panini, bringing Storyblok on board aided in managing several product sites and corporate landing pages across different languages and regions worldwide. However, it also allowed Panini’s team to cross-collaborate with ease. Storyblok returned flexibility to their development, content editing, design, and marketing teams so they could focus on creating and innovating rather than surveilling.