Turning a $2.5B Acquisition Backlog Into a Global Digital Rollout

A Race Against Time

Situation

Two years after acquiring a company for $2.5 Billion, none of the acquired company's digital assets had been migrated to 3M.com, nor had any of the global vendor contracts been migrated. I was new to the role, and I had 9 months to complete a global website migration of 17 websites before contractual deadlines hit, and Europe was rejecting the new website designs.

Tasks

Migrate 25 global domains for 23 countries in 10 languages.
Launch new websites and shut down old domains, meeting country-specific record retention requirements.
Manage global agency and vendor agreements and relationships.
Set up a global A/B test for the best website design and IA.
Create a post-launch global digital strategy for the acquired portfolio.

Action

I immediately set up bi-weekly status calls with the global regions, took over the global agency and vendor relationships, and outsourced as many tasks as I could to internal 3M resources after creating a new project plan.

I helped Europe create a website design better aligned with SEO and CX/UX principles and set up an A/B test of the European design against the original designs and information architecture (IA).

Results

Within the 9-month time frame, I was able to coordinate the launch of the 25 global domains in LATAM, EMEA, USAC, and APAC regions, vendor agreements were terminated, old websites were backed up to meet local record retention requirements, and we were able to launch the A/B test, which set the standard for the global websites in that division.