Aligning digital strategy with corporate direction
Canpotex plays an integral role in global food security as a vital link providing nutrients to farmers in export markets. Responsible for selling and shipping 225 million tonnes of Canadian potash to over 60 countries around the world, Canpotex is one of the world’s largest potash exporters.
Canpotex, having determined a new corporate vision and strategy, needed a website aligned with the reinvigorated approach and ready to form a foundation for the digital future. This required a complete overhaul to reflect key messaging, positioning and branding. Canpotex felt it was time to leverage digital tools to improve the world’s awareness of its role in global food security.
Stakeholder engagement for digital direction
With a high-level need for a new website, zu was engaged to define the remaining questions and details that would form project goals. We started small, with a few workshops to gather feedback from many internal stakeholders. We began to paint a larger picture of where digital could be applied to meet current and future needs. Communications, Marketing, Strategy, IT and HR were eager to review current digital efforts and provide direction on how a website redesign could lay the groundwork for future success in their respective areas.
The initial workshops served two purposes. First, exercises designed to spark discussion on key challenges and opportunities led to prioritization of project goals. Second, a common definition of project success was uncovered with the broad team providing input and achieving buy-in on the next steps. With this foundation in place, our production team got to work crafting a new experience reflective of the goals and priorities established during our workshop sessions.
Designed for today, built to scale
Information architecture and wireframes defining content hierarchy and workflow were circulated among the internal website team. Leveraging the refreshed brand guideline, a digital style guide was built and page designs were generated for executive approval prior to the development kickoff. With approvals in place, developers began building the website using Drupal 8 as the content framework.
Over the course of the project our team worked collaboratively with the Canpotex communications and IT stakeholders. The result is a vibrant website designed for today’s communication needs, built on an extensible foundation for future optimization.
Canpotex was always on my radar as brand that could do so much more. Having followed them for a long time, I've always thought of them as this sleeping giant of an organization. That was until we were able to work with them and understand the truly global scale of their operations. We're proud to be able to get them started on their digital journey and are excited for what the future has in store.