Lactalis scales brand consistency and speeds up web development by 60% with Contentful

Very few companies can honestly claim to be leaders in their industry, but Lactalis is one of them. Known as the leading global cheesemaker, Lactalis has spent more than 90 years perfecting its craft while also acquiring over 124 other brands, including Président, Galbani, Lherdammer, and Kraft. 

As a legacy brand, Lactalis needed to keep up with the demands of B2B and B2C customers — by providing a digital experience that’s just as high quality as their products. But this proved difficult given the company’s size and global distribution.  

“Each brand and regional team had a different way of working and different tools. It was costing a lot to maintain these websites, and there was no consistency or compliance in terms of SEO, security, or legal,“ said Aurélien Devaux, IT Head of Digital and Ecommerce. Many of these tools required technical skills to use, which, in turn, required agency support and additional funds.  

Eager to manage content more efficiently while balancing global and local content, Lactalis explored alternative solutions and soon adopted Contentful.

Building the blueprint for a global web factory

Before deciding on a solution, the Lactalis team did plenty of research and evaluated the market. Contentful quickly stood out.

“Contentful was the only one that met our needs and seemed capable of helping us build our website factory,” said Aurélien Devaux, explaining the importance of scalability and agility. He wanted his team to be able to create new websites for new brands and locales without having to create them from scratch. 

Lactalis was strategic with its implementation. During the first few months, they partnered with Contentful Professional Services to create a single content model that could flex to the complexities of their multi-brand, multi-product portfolio.

With a single content model, Lactalis would have some consistency across its brand. They’d also be able to stand up new websites faster — with no dependence on developers.

Optimized content management, simple onboarding

After establishing its content models, the Lactalis team migrated 33 of its websites to the new platform and began training marketers to use it. Aurélien Devaux and his team were surprised to see that it took the team less than half an hour to understand the tool and feel comfortable navigating its interface without technical skills. 

“This autonomy is a huge benefit. We can make and test changes quicker than ever before," said Grégory Dupuis, a key project manager during the transition to Contentful. Grégory Dupuis also emphasized the importance of giving teams a second environment dedicated to experimentation. In this space, team members can try new tools or make changes to a duplicate version of their website and share it with stakeholders for review. This is inspiring Lactalis team members to be more innovative, as they can’t accidentally break something on the live website.

This newfound editorial independence not only accelerates workflows but also ensures that local teams can efficiently adapt content to meet market-specific needs. According to the team, Contentful enabled Lactalis to reduce the time to build new, templated websites by 60%. The company is having similar success with brand updates.

This level of consistency will encourage brand recognition and strengthen customer trust at both the global and local levels.

In addition to empowering autonomy among marketers, Lactalis is enjoying how easy it is to integrate other tools with Contentful. So far, they’ve added tools to enhance technical and business capabilities.

Milking Contentful for all its worth

While Lactalis undoubtedly delivered on its vision to develop a global webfactory, Aurélien Devaux and Grégory Dupuis see their Contentful implementation as infinitely iterable – up next: accessibility, for a more impactful, inclusive digital experience.