How Tender Service built 15 custom multi-country portals with Storyblok

• Headquarters: Trnava, Slovakia
• Technology: Angular

Tender Service manages a large database of public tenders for businesses in 15 different European and Latin American markets. By using Storyblok, Tender Service can manage their multi-country portals all in one location. The team moved from a self-made Grails application and started using Storyblok in just 1.5 months. They also created a custom deployment script in only 1 week. With Storyblok, TenderService simplified their multi-country portal management and embraced lightning-fast startup times.

Challenges that restricted flexibility over time

Tender Service’s previous website was based on a self-developed Grails application, with a homegrown CMS. Over time, the team realized a few challenges, including:

• The previous CMS solution was closely tied to the entire Grails application, making it difficult to create new layouts and designs
• A lengthy deployment process for developers
• An increasing need to simplify the management of multiple country portals. It was key to make them localized and aligned with the corporate identity
• An increasing lack of flexibility in the application. Marketers and developers needed to do a lot of manual heavy-lifting on edits

The team realized they needed a new way of organizing their system with a headless CMS. This could give content managers and developers more flexibility in the long run.

Solutions for a multi-country portal setup

Storyblok came into play thanks to CloudFlight (agency partner). Storyblok was able to tick off all the requirements that Tender Service was looking for, including:

• Clear documentation during implementation: To ensure a smooth migration and prototype development with Angular
• Multi-language capabilities: Handling Tender Service’s 15 localized sites in a centralized location for country managers
• User Roles: (opens in a new window) Preventing content managers from breaking the design (corporate identity) on all pages and help them manage page layouts flexibly
• Image Service: (opens in a new window)Content editors are able to automatically and easily optimize image assets
• Easy-to-use Visual Editor: A user-friendly and streamlined experience for marketers and developers
• Management API: (opens in a new window) Enabling developers to deploy custom script within a week, leveraging an existing command line client with additional features

Managing over 15 multi-country portals

Tender Service began by creating a simple Angular demo/prototype project to build the basic foundation. After connecting the Management API, they could easily move their old content into Storyblok.

A designated country manager is responsible for managing each country portal. Each portal is organized in folders (root folders), so that every country manager can only access the folder of the country they're managing.

Tender Service uses Storyblok across the following sites:

• Tender Service (opens in a new window)
• Tender Service Slovakia (opens in a new window)
• Javne Nabavke (opens in a new window)
• Tender Ertesito Hungary (opens in a new window)
• Verejna Soutez Czech Republic (opens in a new window)
• Tenderi Hungary (opens in a new window)
• Javni Razpisi Slovenia (opens in a new window)
• Tender Service Bulgaria (opens in a new window)
• Licitatie Publica Romania (opens in a new window)
• Promitheies Greece (opens in a new window)
• Licitaciones Spain (opens in a new window)
• Tender Service Austria (opens in a new window)
• LATAM Compra (opens in a new window)
• Licitaciones Colombia (opens in a new window)