Moving the State Into the Friendly CMS

When a document- and detail-focused state office needs an easy and robust way to manage their new website — on a budget, obviously — we often turn to Umbraco, an editor-forward, open-source wonder of a content management system. And that’s where we went with the South Dakota Department of Revenue as we worked alongside their marketing agency to launch a new website.

While it might seem like working with both a government agency and a marketing partner would lead to a lot of complicated conversations, that’s actually one of Blend’s sweet spots. Our partnership with Lawrence & Schiller, South Dakota’s largest marketing agency, included dozens of redesigns and forklifts, including moving from homegrown CMS to systems like Umbraco.

In the case of the Department of Revenue, Umbraco was indeed the final destination. The site was built to include a component-based set of reusable blocks, allowing for freedom within each major content template, and was built to a high level of usability and accessibility standards — not an issue, honestly, as this is the standard with all Blend sites, regardless of agency affiliation.

Beyond that, we outfitted the Umbraco install with a handful of unique integrations — configuration of Solr for custom search, SeamlessDoc integration to more effectively surface documents, and integration with Campaign Monitor and Google Translate.