At FFW, we talk a lot about Drupal as a digital experience platform. But what does that mean?

Forrester defines a digital experience platform as "Software to manage, deliver, and optimize experiences consistently across every digital touchpoint.” A digital experience platform, then, is exactly what it sounds like: the center of your online presence.

What makes Drupal such a great digital experience platform is its incredible flexibility. It's a perfect integration platform for consolidating all of your organization's other systems. Drupal is not only endlessly customizable, but also can integrate with any application or structure that uses a web API, which allows software to integrate and share data across systems.

Flexibility With Proven Results

We’ve seen this flexibility help our clients time and time again. For organizations that are using a number of systems that don’t easily integrate with each other, Drupal can be a great unifier. Having trouble syncing information between your CRM and your marketing automation software? Using Drupal as your integration platform can help address those problems. Need to pull information from outside feeds and display it on your site, while offering customizable ad space for sponsors—much like NBC did for the Rio Olympics? That’s easily doable with Drupal.

This really is the key that makes Drupal such an excellent digital experience platform. It truly unifies all of the different (and often disparate) systems that organizations use, offering one central location where you can manage every digital touchpoint that your customers visit. For proof, look no further than the YMCA: one YMCA’s switch to Drupal has inspired a movement for all YMCAs to adopt the new Open Y Drupal distribution, which was built to integrate with tools and touch-points for any YMCA.

Another benefit of Drupal’s flexibility is that it offers far greater control over how your brand is represented online. As we saw with GE Energy Management, having a cohesive platform lends itself to a cohesive strategy and a cohesive presence, even for organizations that have tens (or even hundreds) of sub-sites.

Want to learn more? We're sharing our knowledge in a webinar with our friends at Acquia on Tuesday, March 17, at 1 PM EDT. It's called "Built for Integration: Why Drupal 8 Should Be the Glue to Your Stack" and we'll be discussing more about how Drupal is an ideal hub for digitalized organizations.

For specific questions about how Drupal can integrate your different digital systems, contact us. We’re here to help you get the most of every touchpoint and system you use.