Improving time to market is a key goal for most businesses — but businesses often lack the technology that enables them to get there. Rangle used Contentful’s content platform to launch a new .uk regionalized website for the telehealth company Hims & Hers in just 30 days. It accomplished this speed by implementing a light design system — they call this the design system launcher — in Contentful that allows for fast builds and changes to websites.

The design system launcher gives builders control

The power and flexibility of Contentful’s platform provides businesses with the toolkit they need to move fast. An integrated design system ensures that a company’s marketers can create content and ship experiences without the support of design and development by using on-brand components those teams created. We call this system the design system launcher.

The power of the launcher is in the decision making. Most businesses know that plugging in a number of platforms and data tools to their CMS causes delays and failures in communication. The operations and governance models of a design system are created to streamline work and communication — and are more powerful than many tools stacked together. 

With the launcher, the Rangle team builds a custom foundational layer, unique for their clients’ businesses, which underpins the business goals and sets their technology and teams up for success in achieving those goals. The aim is speed, so the company can get the customer data that informs their strategy and planning. 

But the goal is not to simply give businesses an integrated design system in Contentful. It’s to enable and empower the client’s builders to innovate and create better customer experiences on top of their foundational system.

“Too many companies are blocked by their CMSes. They were told that investing in these products would negate the need for more engineers and IT professionals, but they’re finding that the reverse is true. Our goal is to help clients achieve a modern digital experience platform that takes care of much of the costly and confusing decision making.”

Bertrand Karerangabo, vice president of digital strategy at Rangle.io

Most enterprises know this scenario too well: the inability to independently make changes to digital experiences blocks ecommerce teams, including digital marketing and merchandising. However, those marketers and merchandisers take responsibility for the performance of those experiences. 

This pressure sours the relationship between the cross-functional departments, as demands are made and deadlines are missed. With an integrated design system in Contentful’s content platform, marketers can build on-brand, accessible experiences without worrying about high error rates or non-compliance. The designers and developers, having created the design system according to best practices, have time to solve the higher-order problems of the business.

“I’ve been on one side of the marketing-development tug of war when it comes to ecommerce websites in previous roles. With Contentful, it’s easy for me and my team to build pages without consulting a developer, and without worry that we don’t have the necessary design skills. I don’t think marketers in most enterprise ecomm teams even realize what they’re missing, or how much time and effort they could save.” 

Rebecca Holland, content strategy director, Rangle

The launcher is part of an ecosystem of tools that enables you to move faster. It’s also future-focused. It’s impossible to predict what the future will hold for your business, but it is possible to make decisions that won’t have a detrimental effect on your ability to deliver in that future. In other words, choosing a content platform with a design system ensures your technology will not be an impediment to your growth.

Want to learn more? Register for our webinar on June 30 to hear from our experts on all things design systems and the future of content platforms. 

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