A globally recognized pharmaceutical leader with operations in over 80 countries approached us with a critical challenge. Known for its research-driven innovation and accessible healthcare solutions, the organization needed a scalable digital foundation to meet growing demands. Already on Drupal, they were searching for a strategic partner, not just developers, who could help them unlock the full potential of Drupal for Pharma. The mandate was clear: centralize operations, improve agility, and ensure compliance at a global scale.
The client needed a robust, scalable, and secure digital experience platform. They already used Drupal but lacked a specialist partner who could help them evolve from fragmented digital operations into a unified, enterprise-grade ecosystem. Their implementation lacked structure, consistency, and governance. Fragmented operations across business units and geographies slowed down execution and increased risk.
They wanted to partner with someone who could help them transition from patchwork systems to a centralized, governed digital infrastructure, without compromising agility. They didn’t need just developers. They needed a Drupal-first consulting partner who could think enterprise-scale, speak the language of security and compliance, and deliver consistently, all while working within the Acquia ecosystem.
The ask was for an experienced Drupal for Pharma partner who could streamline their digital ecosystem while aligning to regulatory and brand expectations. That’s where we stepped in.
Key challenges included:
- Lack of a unified content architecture- Regional teams operated their own websites without a shared framework. This led to branding inconsistencies, redundant work, and content silos.
- Inefficient internal collaboration- With no standard workflows, teams struggled with delayed rollouts, QA inefficiencies, and frequent version mismatches.
- Security and compliance risk- As a pharma major, the client needed proactive control over regulatory standards. Their existing setup lacked the ability to enforce enterprise-grade security across regions.
- Scalability constraints- Despite being on Drupal, their infrastructure couldn’t meet enterprise needs. Sites were slow to launch, performance varied, and scaling to meet global traffic surges was challenging.
- Underutilized Acquia Cloud- Though the client had invested in Acquia, they weren’t leveraging its automation, monitoring, or performance optimization capabilities.
When we began our engagement, we didn’t come in with code. We came in with ears — and a strategy.
We spent the initial phase deeply embedded with their internal teams, listening to their business goals, regulatory needs, and regional differences. Instead of jumping into development, we aligned first on the bigger picture: How could we help them reduce digital debt, accelerate launches, and ensure every team — whether in India or Germany — had the same quality of tools and governance?
Here’s how we approached it:
Introduced content publishing accelerators
Launching even a basic campaign page required developer tickets, manual QA, and multiple rounds of back-and-forth between teams. This slowed down time-to-market and made the platform feel like a bottleneck, not an enabler.
We identified the most commonly used campaign formats, such as product announcements, health awareness campaigns, and press releases, and converted them into turnkey templates with pre-built layouts, SEO fields, and approval workflows. We also introduced a content calendar module that allowed teams to schedule and preview campaigns across time zones and languages. This cut the publishing time by more than half.
Reduced manual effort through automation and reusable assets:
This consumed developer bandwidth and introduced human error into repetitive workflows. We created a comprehensive library of reusable content blocks, pre-approved landing page templates, and dynamic content elements such as tabbed interfaces, product cards, and FAQs. These were made available to content teams via a drag-and-drop interface in Drupal’s Layout Builder. Additionally, we automated form integrations and newsletter sign-ups across all regional sites, reducing development involvement by over 60%.
We developed a design system and a library of pre-approved content blocks that could be used across websites. This reduced the dependency on developers for every content update and allowed regional teams to move faster with confidence.
Enabled centralized governance with decentralized execution
Without a governance model, teams either operated in silos or relied on central IT for every update, leading to bottlenecks and inconsistent quality. We built a role-based publishing workflow within Drupal that empowered regional teams to draft and publish content while allowing global stakeholders to enforce branding, legal disclaimers, and regulatory guidelines through editorial approvals and content templates.
We also developed a centralized “Brand Configuration Layer” - a ruleset of design and compliance defaults inherited by every new regional site.
One of our key solutions was establishing a content governance framework. This allowed local marketing teams to manage their campaigns autonomously, but within guardrails that ensured brand consistency, security compliance, and shared best practices.
Collaborated across departments, not just IT
This led to mismatched expectations, unclear priorities, and solutions that didn’t account for the broader business context.
We embedded cross-functional rituals into the engagement from day one. This included joint planning workshops with marketing and product teams, weekly syncs with compliance, and shared dashboards to track deployment health, content velocity, and regional adoption. Our team acted not just as technical consultants, but as facilitators of cross-department collaboration.
Our engagement extended beyond the engineering teams. We worked closely with marketing, security, compliance, and even finance teams, making sure the platform served everyone’s needs. Whether it was campaign agility or audit trail requirements, we made sure the solution was inclusive.
Standardized their digital foundation for scale
Every new campaign or microsite had to be developed from scratch, causing duplication of effort and delays. There was no shared architecture or component strategy, making cross-team collaboration difficult. We conducted a comprehensive audit of their existing web properties and created a unified Drupal architecture based on a modular, component-driven design system. We built a shared base theme, standardized content types, and introduced flexible layout components, allowing regional teams to launch new sites by assembling pre-built elements rather than starting from zero.
We re-architected their Drupal setup to support multi-brand and multilingual operations from a single, centralized framework. Instead of building websites from scratch for each region, we introduced a modular system of reusable components. This helped ensure design consistency, saved development time, and drastically improved time-to-market.
Integrated seamlessly with Acquia Cloud
Deployments were semi-manual, monitoring was basic, and performance tuning was inconsistent across environments. Our team overhauled their infrastructure workflows by implementing Acquia Pipelines for automated deployments, configuring Acquia Shield for enhanced security, and integrating New Relic for real-time performance monitoring. We also set up Acquia CMS best practices for multisite management and conducted knowledge transfer sessions with their internal DevOps team.
We optimized their platform to take full advantage of Acquia’s capabilities. This included setting up automated deployment pipelines, security monitoring, and performance tuning. Our team worked closely with Acquia to ensure the environment met pharma-grade performance, uptime, and compliance benchmarks.
The real success wasn’t just in delivering a better Drupal implementation — it was in how we helped the organization operate smarter, faster, and safer in the digital world.
- Accelerated website launches: With reusable templates, automation, and a centralized content model, teams were able to launch new regional sites and campaign pages in weeks instead of months.
- Reduced maintenance and development overhead: By consolidating systems, eliminating redundant code, and streamlining operations, the client saw a significant drop in vendor costs and internal resource requirements.
- Improved platform security and compliance posture: With Acquia’s tools fully integrated and monitored, the platform met stringent global compliance standards. Security patches and updates were automated, reducing manual oversight and eliminating vulnerability windows.
- Enabled a globally consistent brand experience: Whether you visited their site from Canada or Korea, the experience now felt aligned and cohesive. This not only improved brand perception but also reduced rework for local teams.
- Created agility across marketing and IT teams: By introducing automation, component-based development, and a governance framework, we helped marketing teams run faster and IT teams sleep better. Campaigns that once took months to roll out were now live in a fraction of the time.
Impact
The impact of our Drupal for Pharma solution was measurable and transformative:
40% faster launches
With templates, reusable components, and standardized workflows, campaign and site launches accelerated dramatically.
35% cost reduction in maintenance and development
By consolidating infrastructure and reducing repetitive tasks, the client saved significantly on both vendor and internal resource costs.
Brand consistency across 80+ markets
Every site, regardless of geography, now reflected the same brand tone, structure, and messaging, reinforcing trust and recognition.
Conclusion
This engagement wasn’t just about building websites. It was about rethinking how digital could work at scale for a global organization. The client came to us with fragmented operations and a need for a Drupal partner who could work within the Acquia ecosystem. What they got was a strategic partner who could think enterprise, act agile, and deliver results.
At Valuebound, we don’t just write Drupal code — we design digital foundations that fuel enterprise growth. This project was proof that with the right architecture, governance, and collaboration model, even the most complex organizations can turn digital into a strategic advantage.
