Shungham

In light of recent geopolitical events such as Brexit, the European Union has become the subject of much discussion, which means the need for synthesized, up-to-date information on the union has never been more pressing.

Stepping up to this challenge is Shungham, a company dedicated to providing organizations with the latest information about recent EU regulations and legislation. Shungham is a one-stop shop for news about events that impact EU policy and offers businesses two unique tools to help them track regulatory and policy change: the EUIssueTracker and EUCalendar.

Founded in 2010, the Shungham brand has been established as a go-to source for organizations looking to monitor and track regulatory and legislative change in the European Union. By 2016, the company had several websites running on different platforms and communicating with a SQL database to display different EU events and dossiers. Given the sheer scope of content creation, combined with the need for faster delivery, Shungham realized its current portfolio of websites needed to be overhauled to improve usability. 

To achieve this goal, Shungham required a complex integration process between multiple systems and a consolidation of its websites into a single property with a mobile-first presentation. After exploring different options, Shungham selected Sitefinity as the platform of choice to take its digital presence to the next level.

To help with the project, Shungham turned to Sitefinity Partner Argo Ventures Digital. With a track record for success working with clients in the private and public space, Argo Venture Digital worked with Shungham to relaunch the website with a better user experience and improved functionality.

Sitefinity played a vital role in consolidating content across multiple sites and enhancing the overall user-friendliness of the website. The major challenge with this project revolved around the integration of two key technologies into Sitefinity:

1. Microsoft Dynamics

   
   All dossiers and events are imported into MS Dynamics using Scribe. The Sitefinity website had to be able to consume the data from MS Dynamics and display the most recent dossier updates on the website. 

2. ClickDimensions

   
   Shungham needed Sitefinity to be integrated with ClickDimensions so that three types of contacts could be created into MS Dynamics:
   
   

   • Free trial requests
   • Job applications
   • Contact us form submissions

   Furthermore, the client had two specific requirements of the functionality:

   • Dossier updates must be refreshed every single hour so that users will see the latest info in EU Issue tracker section
   • Users should be able to see the latest upcoming events in the EU Calendar section

Despite these challenges, Shungham was able to seamlessly integrate MS Dynamics with the Sitefinity CMS with the Portal Connector from Pavliks.com. This enabled the data to be refreshed constantly—without negatively impacting overall website performance. Sitefinity CMS also aided in bolstering SEO and usability.

“I could not see any better fit than Sitefinity CMS in this project,” said Veronica Milcheva, CEO and founder of Argo Ventures Digital Ltd. “Shungham received so many improvements in terms of scalability, performance and usability with a little development effort. In this case, less is definitely more.”

With Sitefinity, content editors can now easily create new internship programs without needing any extra help for development. Furthermore, this minimizes website downtime due to constant redeployments.

From the customer perspective, Shungham also launched a company blog with regularly published content about company news, commentary on EU developments, analysis of institutional or procedural matters and more. As a brand that strives to position itself as a thought leader in the field of regulation and legislation, this is a significant improvement to Shungham’s digital marketing efforts. Not only is writing new content and managing the blog easy, the blog itself is enabling Shungham to boost engagement and raise its popularity.

Additionally, for an audience that cares deeply about up-to-the-minute news and industry coverage, the implementation of a mobile-friendly design ensures customers have access to the information they need at every hour of the day. Whether they’re in the office or on the road for business, Shungham customers can easily browse the website whenever they want from their phones.

Since launching the new site, visits have increased more than 120% and referrals from social media are up more than 100%—a substantial lift in key metrics.

“Sitefinity CMS has led to a measurable increase in traffic and lead generation and has contributed significantly to the effectiveness of our recent rebranding,” said Michel Ehrlich, CEO and founder, Shungham.