Case studies

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Case:
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Unilever
Website policies
Website governance structure review
Retail and consumer

The company

Unilever is a global organisation, with over 400 brands in the nutrition, hygiene and personal-care markets. It has a turnover of more than €40 billion and employs 174,000 people in around 100 countries worldwide. It is headquartered in London.

The challenge

Unilever has a complex web presence, with over 60 sites in 22 languages worldwide. All sites adhere to Unilever’s global web policies, but are managed locally on a devolved publishing structure.

With such a multifaceted, global web presence, Unilever needed to ensure that there was a shared understanding of responsibilities and processes across their web team.

The solution

In 2008, Unilever commissioned Magus to help them create a website governance policy.

“We saw a website governance policy as an invaluable tool when it comes to managing a complex, global web presence like ours.” says - Johannah Bailey, Programme Director, Global Communications - External Channels, Unilever. “We needed an unambiguous guide to the governance framework: the overall remit of the web presence, the way it’s structured, the roles and responsibilities, and what to do when issues arise.”

Magus worked closely with Unilever to review and document all aspects of its web governance framework. “It’s an exercise we’ve carried out for a number of our clients,” says Nicola Thompson, Head of Standards Services at Magus, “and one that they find very useful. It’s surprising how few large organisations actually document their governance framework. The exercise itself can help to improve and clarify the structure.”

The result

Unilever now has a comprehensive website governance policy covering their entire global web presence. This policy ensures that all stakeholders in the organisation have a shared understanding of roles, rules and processes. 

This includes:

• Overall website structure, including the relationship between the corporate and country sites, the function of sites, the correct place for content to be published (country/corporate)
• Organisational structure and responsibilities. This breaks down ownership between central and country web teams, designates a website owner, outlines skillsets for key players, and ensures that all the critical functions are covered
• Content strategy and publication levels. These set criteria for content goals, freshness and accuracy
• Working with agencies. The guidelines cover key aspects of selecting and working with a web agency. Making sure that agency content meets corporate standards, and ensuring that sensitive information isn’t compromised.
• Crisis management. Policies include technical crises (e.g. external hack, disaster recovery) as well as organisational crises (e.g. brand/PR issues) and give a detailed, structured response with clear roles and responsibilities

 “The website governance policy has been very helpful indeed,” says Bailey. “It has allowed us to get high-level endorsement of our governance structure, avoid key risks, and get a shared understanding of lines of responsibility. This makes the job of managing our web presence so much easier.”

Working with Magus

“The global website governance policy was very well received, and led to a similar exercise focusing just on unilever.com. It’s always good collaborating with Magus,” says Bailey.