Concept-strong & future-ready Chef.se

Sometimes "done" is the same as standing still. That wasn't what the newly merged company Chefakademin had in mind when they came to Äventyret. How do you build and plan a new website when everything is in flux?

A company in transition

Äventyret has supported Chefgruppen’s digitalisation journey since 2016. The results have earned several notable nominations over the years and won the industry award Developer of the Year at Tidskriftsgalan 2017. We have been an active part of Chefakademin’s exciting evolution — from being “a magazine with a website” to offering tomorrow’s leaders personalised, channel-independent coaching, with digitalisation as the natural infrastructure.

In the summer of 2021, the media company Chefgruppen Stockholm AB merged with the training company Mgruppen Svenska Managementgruppen AB. The new company is called Chefakademin in Stockholm. Chefakademin is one of Sweden’s leading training and development companies for managers and leaders at all levels.

When Chef magazine and Mgruppen merged, the need emerged for a new website that would communicate the new, unified brand. Beyond the brand value of a shared website, the site is also business-critical for selling all the products that make up the company’s offering.

In a previous project, Äventyret had created the foundation for being able to digitalise customer offerings in a meaningful way at all — by migrating and structuring CRM data from older systems into Microsoft Dynamics 365.

The best thing there is, is to challenge yourself and your assumptions, to venture into the unknown. Chef has long been at the digital forefront of the magazine market and sets high standards for those we work with. In Äventyret we have found an exceptionally strong digital partner who not only understands the situation, but also dares to challenge. We are only at the beginning of our journey together, and look forward very much to what comes next.

Calle Fleur
CEO and Editor-in-Chief, Chef / Chefakademin

Optimisation focus: time-to-market and flexibility

Chefakademin could not afford to wait for the new organisation to be “fully settled” before work on the website needed to begin — a large share of revenue comes via the website. This created two imperatives:

  1. The new Chef.se had to launch quickly
  2. Once Chef.se was live: the website had to be editorially flexible beyond the ordinary, as decisions about new business offerings and packaging would continue to emerge on an ongoing basis.

Method and execution

The product owner from Chefakademin and Äventyret identified which parts of the solution had both high business value and were more complex to produce. They specified requirements together via user stories and created a backlog that could be grouped into four parts.

  • 1: Advanced list template

    The template to be used as landing page, product page, and homepage, with modular content components.

  • 2: Simple list template

    Dynamically generated content listings, with identified editorial customisation options and accompanying listing components.

  • 3: Article template

    One highly flexible template for different content and product needs, rather than many different templates sharing most of the same content components. The editor activates different layout modes and features via the CMS to distinguish them. Different publication types provide presets to save time. This is also where the important paywall and checkout for leadership training programmes lives.

  • 4: Advertising logic

    Own advertising: Inspired by Google Ad Manager: the editorial team places its own ads and promotions in content blocks designed for the purpose — without disrupting the context of individual views. The setup also handles sponsored articles in an efficient way for the editorial team.

    External advertising: Logic for identified spaces, placements, and formats across different templates.

Can you design a website before the visual identity is complete?

Yes! At Äventyret we work in cross-functional teams, so it doesn’t much matter that the visual form isn’t in place when the project begins. You don’t need to wait for a finished brand identity to start work on your new website.

Our way of working allows development and design to be produced in parallel. Think of it like building a house: creating the floor plan and planning the foundations involves both an eye for form and engineering skills. Similarly, designers and developers collaborate from the early stages — even when there’s still a long way to go before colour and form are decided.

That was exactly the case with Chefakademin! The project accommodated the fact that their visual identity was not fully complete when design work on the website needed to begin. Thanks to the described approach, this was no problem: Äventyret could continuously align on the visual work and iterate on the global content components that form the building blocks of Chefakademin. In time, decisions were made on colours and logotype — putting the finishing touch in place.

How did it turn out?

Chefakademin is your personal trainer in the world of leadership! Here you can access content and services to excel in your leadership role:

  1. Asynchronously search, facet and filter training courses via a Vue app integrated with the WordPress database.
  2. Purchase and book courses found (including physical course sessions).
  3. Register for events organised by Chefakademin.
  4. Start and manage ongoing subscriptions to both digital and physical products (the print magazine, newsletters, Chefboken via a native app, etc.).
  5. Create a login for personalised content and manage purchased products.
  6. Access content that is either open or behind a paywall.
  7. Listen to and read content from Chefakademin’s editorial team.

Chefakademin’s editorial team now has great freedom to optimise content structure, templates, and conversion funnels via the modular interface and its flexible templates. This also means that tools for SEO optimisation and custom analytics are in place. Best practice for technical SEO indexing (and content sharing) is handled as part of Äventyret’s delivery. And we think it turned out really well!

Platform integrations:

  1. All customer data is stored in Microsoft Dynamics 365 and is accessible to customer service, marketing, and the editorial team. Microsoft Dynamics 365 has standard APIs to simplify the development of self-service apps where users manage their own data.
  2. Identity Server 4 is used as SSO, keeping users’ login and identity centralised across all Chefakademin’s services — providing flexibility for new services without compromising security.
  3. For newsletters, email campaigns, and automation, Chefakademin uses Apsis One, which has ready-made integrations with Dynamics 365.
  4. For purchases and checkout of both digital services and print magazine subscriptions, payment provider Qvalia is used.
  5. Courses and events are central to Chefakademin’s offering. Bookings and purchases for these are handled via the external service lyyti.fi.
  6. Analytics and measurement operate on three levels: Google Analytics for behavioural patterns on the site; Azure Power BI for analysing business events in Dynamics 365; and Application Insights for monitoring systems and infrastructure.
  7. Chefakademin offers premium users a range of templates and agreements, for which the external service formable.se (built by Äventyret) is used.
  8. Chefakademin sells job listings on the web, exposed via RSS feeds — making them easy to display on chef.se as well as other sites.

Additional technology stack

  1. The majority of Chefakademin’s systems are hosted on Azure, which provides integration platform / service bus capabilities that simplify integration between different system components.
  2. The main site, chef.se, has an efficient caching mechanism that gives articles and pages excellent response times.
  3. For dynamic apps and user profile pages, Chefakademin has a number of Vue apps embedded on the site or on separate addresses.
  4. Chefboken is available both in print and on the web, plus a custom mobile app built in React Native.
  5. Chefakademin has ongoing and frequent updates to all parts of its systems. For an efficient release flow, GitHub and Azure DevOps are used.
  6. All data is managed on Azure (Azure SQL Server and Dynamics 365), which guarantees reliable operations, fallback, and frequent backup routines.

Ongoing management

Chefakademin continues its partnership with Äventyret through dedicated projects and further development running in parallel with maintenance and support. The client and Äventyret hold monthly management meetings where changes in statistics are continuously discussed and, where necessary, acted upon.

The site has been live since June 2022.

Image of Magnus Eriksson

Is content an important part of your business?

Äventyret builds solutions that ship the best possible content in the best possible way. With a heart for both the reader and the editor — we handle both!

Kind regards, Magnus Eriksson,
Account manager, Äventyret media team

magnus.eriksson@aventyret.com 070-782 26 01

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