Cancer Research UK

From Legacy CMS to Oracle UCM

Client Profile

Cancer Research UK is the world's leading independent organization dedicated to cancer research. With a scientific spend in the hundreds of millions, it supports research into all aspects of cancer through the work of more than 4,500 scientists, doctors, and nurses. It is ranked among the top three biomedical research organizations in the world.

It was important that end-users should be able to search and retrieve relevant information more efficiently by improving the search classification model. When undertaking this, we would need to migrate all of the existing digital assets such as images and other media files.

All existing metadata needed to be extracted from the source content often transformed using complex rules and then re-associated to the new Oracle UCM (Stellent) web pages. Finally, CRUK wanted us to generate reports detailing the migration status for each item along with error reports detailing all the exceptions – which would be dealt with using a mop-up process.

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Location

UK

SECTOR

Charity

SOURCE

Legacy CMS

DESTINATION

Oracle

The Complexities of the Project

There were several detailed requirements within this work that ensured that it was by no means trivial to achieve:

It was necessary for us to be able to understand and interpret the existing custom built WCMS that stored its content in a database.
All the existing page URL forwards and re-directs had to be managed to be in line with site studio customisations and automatic hyperlink resolution.
It was necessary to apply the new Cancer Research taxonomy across the entirety of the migrated content.
Our Discovery phase found several new file types that also needed migrating such as Flash, podcasts and web forms.

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Solving Cancer Research UK’s Unique Challenges

Content discovery

Our consultants analyzed the source content to identify any inconsistencies before migrating anything.

Migration plan

We have a predefined migration methodology that actively involves our customers in creating the agreed solution.

Custom-built WCMS

It was necessary for us to be able to understand and interpret the existing custom-built Web Content Management Service that stored its content in a database.

URL redirects

Hyperlinks within the web pages were trapped and automatically corrected to direct to the correct page in the new structure.

Automatic structuring

The site navigation structure was built automatically.

Reporting

Detailed reports were produced to satisfy internal and external audit.

The Results

File identification

Our expert team discovered multiple different file types that were previously unknown and were able to migrate them all successfully. This discovery process shortened the length of downtime and therefore minimised impact.

Additional assistance

As part of Proventeq’s dedication to the project, we added extra resources to help CRUK resolve the final few remaining requests, even after the project had officially finished.

Project goals exceeded

Our expert team ensured the project goals were not only met but exceeded, giving advise on best practice throughout the migration project to ensure all needs were met.

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We used our Proventeq Content Migration Suite to generate an end-to-end migration plan for CRUK. Our migration experts were able to help guide CRUK through the complex aspects of the migration so that they could settle on a solution that answered all their business needs.

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