Wine & Spirit Education Trust

The Challenge 

WSET was looking to appoint a new Digital Partner to support its Umbraco CMS website, digital platforms, and provide strategic guidance and support as it looks to transform the digital experience for its customers.

It was vitally important the new partner had experience of integrating with Microsoft Dynamics 365 (D365) - their core repository of candidate and customer data. The new partner was expected to seamlessly transition support and hosting of WSET’s Umbraco CMS website and provide consultancy advice as they prepare to launch their Digital Transformation Programme.

WSET recognised that they had a huge amount they wanted and needed to do. Primary amongst that was to develop a roadmap for addressing technical debt, while enabling customer self-service to allow them to reduce costs and reinvest in further improvements.

True Partnership

Following a thorough tender process Wattle, an Umbraco Platinum Partner with experience both implementing and integrating with Microsoft D365, were appointed as WSET’s Digital Partner.

The partnership began with an onboarding process to align Wattle with WSET’s strategic goals, followed by an in-depth review of their current Umbraco CMS website, originally implemented by Trillium. Key components of the partnership include:

• Umbraco Onboarding: Guiding WSET through the transition to new support and hosting services for their existing Umbraco CMS website.
• Support & Maintenance: Providing ongoing support and hosting within a structured framework.
• Consultancy Services: Offering ongoing digital consultancy to leverage technical and creative expertise, achieving WSET’s strategic objectives.
• Regular Consultancy Workshops: Fostering collaboration between Wattle and WSET, generating ideas, creating a digital roadmap, aligning future projects, and addressing knowledge gaps.

• A smooth transition from their current provider Trillium with minimal disruption.
• The adoption of a flexible and more reliable support, maintenance, and development service.
• The swift resolutions of existing Umbraco CMS support backlogs.
• The development of a long-term digital roadmap.

What's Next?

With the onboarding process now complete, and WSET safely within Wattle's support, maintenance, and hosting framework, a collaborative consulting process is underway to define a roadmap to:

• Migrate WSET from Umbraco v7 to Umbraco v13.
• Define requirements for a new Customer Portal which includes exam ordering capabilities.