Hynds Pipe Systems

Hynds Pipe Systems, a division of Hynds Group founded in 1973, is New Zealand’s premier supplier of water and water-based waste management systems in the civil and rural infrastructure markets.

The company faced the common challenge of modernizing its product presentation—from traditional paper catalogs to a dynamic online presence. Due to the nature of their heavy-duty products, this proved a bit more difficult than expected.

With the help from a Kontent.ai-powered customer portal, they now provide a modern digital experience, serving their products to regional markets with speed and efficiency.

Digital shift for non-traditional online products

As a traditional manufacturing company, their products are simply not something the general public would buy on a whim on a Saturday night. Their robust product offering consists of concrete pipes, water tanks, and other industrial components, and their customer base consists of construction companies and the industrial sector. It’s no surprise that for the longest time, they heavily relied on more traditional distribution and sales methods. However, as customer expectations evolved, the need for modern technologies and better user experience became apparent.

When embarking on a digital transformation, they first tried to leverage what they had internally, carefully navigating their investment into an online world. The use case seemed simple enough: building an online product catalog to streamline and smooth out the authoring experience for content creators.

However, it soon became clear that their first choice for getting the job done, a document management system, was proving to be a bottleneck. Changes took a lot of time and effort, and publishing new content was less than ideal: more than 8 hours. So, they decided to explore other options.

To achieve their goals, Adrian Foo, IT Manager at Hynds, knew they had to think differently about the solution. He heard about the pitfalls of ending up in a vendor lock-in when choosing a monolithic DXP platform and instantly knew this wasn’t the right path for them. With guidance from their partners, Maker.Tech and Experieco, the company started looking into MACH (Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless) vendors early on.

“We liked Kontent.ai. Your solution, your story, your roadmap,” said Adrian.

A quality portal: The key to happy customers and empowered employees

Hynds Pipe Systems is now leveraging Kontent.ai at the core of content operations. The headless CMS powers their evolved customer portal, proudly showcasing all the products online.

Adrian noted the remarkable improvements in content management: “We’ve since seen the speed at which we can make updates, the speed at which we can make changes, and the ability to add more imagery.”

The adoption of Kontent.ai also significantly improved their asset management experience. Previously, content authors had to make do with a limited number of product photos of varying quality. For example, using generic group shots of the product family as individual product pictures simply weren’t available.

Now, they efficiently manage a 10 times larger and higher-quality image library, providing a better customer experience as a result. No more “Please wait, image coming soon” placeholders in their product catalog.

When publishing new content, their content creators not only took control over the content production, but it now takes them seconds to make changes. This level of efficiency was exactly what Hynds was after.

As a bonus, the portal, initially designed for customer use, has become an invaluable onboarding tool for new employees, allowing them to quickly familiarize themselves with the product offerings.

And they’re just getting started. Looking ahead, Hynds Pipe Systems plans to expand the use of headless CMS technology across more sites and brands, while exploring new opportunities such as utilizing the product catalog as a sales tool in the near future.

The main takeaway? Bring people on the journey

The journey to adopting MACH architecture was a learning curve for Hynds Pipe Systems. It also opened the doors to new, best-of-breed tools to integrate with Kontent.ai. They’ve already started utilizing a third-party search provider for their product catalog, Algolia, and are considering looking into personalization next. No matter the solution they choose, the freedom and flexibility of the MACH ecosystem will continue to benefit them.

And what were Adrian’s key insights from implementing a headless CMS?

Bring people on the journey. Think about the users and how they’ll use the platform. The bottom line is simple. “If it’s not easy to keep up to date, people won’t do it,” said Adrian. The way to design and set things up for content creators is crucial for future product adoption. Including clear guidelines and using the terminology that everyone’s familiar with is a small but effective way of setting your end users up for success.

“The more time you take in your design phase, the better, and the less rework you’ll have in the future,” said Adrian.

Adrian’s advice underscores the importance of a user-centric approach and forward-thinking design in digital projects. Thinking about not just what your organization’s doing today but what might come next will reduce a lot of pain in the future.

Through all this, Hynds Pipe Systems has set a strong foundation for ongoing growth and innovation in its digital strategy.