Global tech firm drives 200% more website sales with Sitecore

Avanade is the world’s leading expert on Microsoft. Trusted by over 5,000 clients worldwide, it delivers reliable, AI-driven solutions that solve business challenges of all sizes and unlock the full potential of people and technology. It empowers organizations to use Microsoft technology to optimize operations, drive growth, and foster innovation, enabling them to excel in delivering exceptional customer experiences.

The business had seen a dramatic change in client demand and expectation for better, faster, agile, and personalized digital experiences. Although Avanade had a good website—it attracts 90% of clients and creates 8,000 new candidates yearly—it was getting old. While most customers used the website, only around 10% engaged with the content. Avanade did not think the website in its current form could meet shifting expectations and, critically, be able to scale and change quickly in the future.

Avanade knew it needed to constantly improve to succeed, especially in the fast-moving technology sector. As Ruth Rowan, Chief Growth Officer at Avanade, said, “I engage with many different audiences, including our own talent-attract teams, so the ability to move at pace and deliver a service to the business and our customers is critical. Taking a week to get new content on the website is not fast enough anymore. It has to be hours, if not minutes.”

The vision was not just a rebuilt website, but that Sitecore was at the heart of Avanade’s digital engagement strategy. This included an intelligent, AI-centric content management system integrated with marketing automation and sales and delivery platforms for a consistent client experience.

Avanade migrated from on-premises to a Sitecore Content Cloud solution comprising Sitecore XM Cloud and Sitecore Content Hub DAM. Sitecore integrates with the company’s martech stack to enable an end-to-end client experience journey. At the center is the new Sitecore-powered website connected to Marketo for organizing marketing automation and Microsoft Dynamics as the CRM platform. The new, streamlined website is faster and simpler to navigate and reflects the refreshed, modernized Avanade brand.

Through its partnership with Sitecore the new site was completed in five months, 50% faster than a typical rollout. Avanade is using the experience and lessons learned by transforming its own website to help inform and enhance services for its customers.

As a result of Sitecore, a fresher looking website, rebrand and other improvements, Avanade has realized better engagement, better sales, and better experiences. Via the website, pipeline leads are up by 100% and sales by 200%. Before, 40% of leads came from the website, but only 10% were converted to qualified sales opportunities. Now, that has increased to 66%. Features such as call-to-action and next-best-action on every web page drive more sales. Visitors looking at three or more pages have increased by 43% with return visits up by 13%, and 111% more people completing contact forms.

A streamlined set of templates for products and services enables marketers to improve updates and time-to-market. They can build pages 33% faster. Manual, people-intensive processes for CMS content tagging are easier with users able to self-serve and self-publish content.