Reimagining Editorial Workflow Through Composable Architecture

Context

Our digital ecosystem was built on a legacy Java-based monolith with an outdated WCMS.

Key challenges:

• Deployments every 6–8 weeks
• Strong dependency on developers for marketing pages
• No drag-and-drop or modular editing
• Large text fields misused for inline HTML
• Manual asset resizing in Photoshop
• Re-uploading multiple image sizes into the DAM
• No dynamic media transformation
• Limited performance optimization (static JPG/PNG)

Publishing a simple news article required:

1. Marketing writes a Word brief
2. Publisher downloads assets
3. Manually resizes images
4. Re-uploads assets
5. Rebuilds page in CMS

The workflow was slow, rigid, and operationally expensive.

Trigger

As Web Designer & Developer, I was directly exposed to these inefficiencies daily.

At the same time, technological benchmarking showed how far modern headless CMS and media platforms had evolved.

What started as frustration became a structured initiative: I proposed building a proof of concept to validate whether a composable architecture could significantly improve speed, autonomy, and performance.

Strategic Vision

We needed:

• A composable architecture (replace tools independently)
• A flexible headless CMS
• Greater marketing autonomy
• Dynamic media transformation
• CDN-based optimized delivery
• Measurable performance improvements

After auditing multiple solutions, I selected:

• Contentful (flexible content modeling)
• Cloudinary (on-the-fly media transformation and CDN delivery)

I built a POC aligned with our existing e-commerce content model to ensure structural compatibility.

Experiment Design

To validate impact, I ran a controlled test:

• 2 News pages
• 2 Athlete pages
• 2 Story pages

Each was published:

• Once in the current system
• Once in the POC

I measured publishing time end-to-end using a stopwatch.

Result

Publishing time was reduced by approximately 60%.

This meant:

• Same team could publish significantly more content
• Or free capacity for higher-value initiatives
• Reduced manual resizing and upload work
• Increased clarity and consistency in workflow

Additionally:

• Dynamic media delivery improved Lighthouse scores
• Eliminated manual generation of multiple image sizes
• Reduced dependency on frontend developers for marketing execution

Trade-offs & Resistance

Main resistance: budget.

Tool licensing costs were visible. Time savings and long-term scalability were not.

Another constraint: We avoided testing directly with marketing teams to prevent frustration in case the initiative was paused.

Validation was therefore conducted internally within the web team.

Strategic Insight

This project was not just a tooling upgrade.

It revealed that:

• Editorial workflows can be fundamentally restructured
• Marketing autonomy can scale
• Performance and flexibility are directly linked
• Platform architecture directly impacts organizational speed

It shifted the conversation from “which CMS?” to “how do we design systems that enable velocity?”