Partnering with external companies for the development of your websites and apps allows you to achieve specific goals, such as developing the product roadmap and growing the pipeline, without the expense or delay of hiring or scaling in-house teams. Rather than recruiting a whole tech team, many companies partner with a software agency that specialises in creating and supporting digital products within specific sectors or business models.
Here are some of the key reasons companies outsource their software development needs:
1. Focus is on your success ?
The two most common drivers for using external companies are time and cost. Building a CMS in-house team means hiring developers, designers, QA testers, and potentially a DevOps team. The opportunity to partner with experts provides so much potential for companies to grow as they benefit from having a team of specific experts who are there to help them grow their business and let them focus their efforts elsewhere.
Why do it? You get a full team that already knows what they’re doing and can deliver a finished product faster. This work is not a one-time task; it requires ongoing SEO updates, performance improvements, and UX optimisation. Many businesses don’t have sufficient internal resources to keep up whilst also managing the day job at the core of the company, so outsourcing these skills gives them a more efficient and sustainable solution.
2. Faster Go-To-Market, Better Results ?
When you work with a software agency, you’re not starting from scratch. There's no need for training or onboarding. You’re working with a team that already understands how to scope, design, and build digital platforms.
The difference between a good agency and a great one is that the great one won’t just build what you ask for; they’ll create a product roadmap with you that will achieve your business goals. With project managers and technical leads overseeing the process from concept to delivery, you get a platform that’s ready to drive results quickly and efficiently.
3. Ongoing Support and Roadmap ?️
Digital platforms need constant attention, and we believe our customers should focus on their business rather than the everyday running of their website. Let your partner (us) handle the integrations that occasionally break, plugins that need to be updated, and anything else that requires the web to run smoothly.
This is where outsourcing adds real value. Whether you need a few days per month or ongoing support to iteratively improve your product by releasing new features and polishing, you can do so without hiring additional staff.
4. Scaling With Your Business ?
A website should grow with your company. It’s often the first place customers go to understand what you offer. If your business evolves but your website stays static, you're leaving opportunities on the table.
The benefit that comes from having a partner create a product roadmap with you and take that journey from concept to creation is unmatched. Imagine getting exactly what you want instead of a pre-made platform. The great thing about having an ongoing partnership is that when your business grows and changes, the roadmap will follow and adapt to where you need it to be. We use open source, which means it scales with you, and we simply build magic on top of it.
What’s great about open source scaling with your business is that the costs are scalable as well. Initially, costs are higher as you need a digital product to be built, but once it has been built, costs can significantly drop, and what you pay for is the running of your website, including updates, integrations, etc.. A few years later, you may want another site or even a microsite, and again, these costs will change and scale with your business.
Choose Your Partner Carefully ⚠️
Outsourcing is only as good as the partner you choose. We believe delayed timelines, overpromised features, or lack of transparency reflect poor service and shouldn’t ever be expected by customers.
There are a lot of great agencies out there, and many do the same thing. How do our customers choose us? We are known in the industry for being transparent, trustworthy, and informal. We think that works well and our customers value exactly that. Our customers care about the service they receive, and we make sure to provide them with the service we promised. The proof is in the pudding.
Why Customers Work With Full Fat Things ?
One thing of which we’re super proud is that we have customers who stay with us for years. They even take us with them when they move jobs. At Full Fat Things, we focus on delivering high-quality, open-source solutions, particularly in Drupal, where we’re diamond-certified and home to some of the best developers in the field. But we’re not limited by allegiance to specific tech; we choose the right tools based on what your project needs rather than what’s in it for us.
Our customers value our attention to detail, our commitment to doing the job right, and our open, straightforward approach to working together. We keep communication clear, we listen carefully, and we manage projects with a level of professionalism that builds trust. It means a lot to us when our customers appreciate the service we provide, not only for the build and roadmap but for our communication, the support, and always finding the impossible solution. Our team is hand-picked, we take it very seriously with who we hire, and we love that so many of our developers have been developing since they were young. When our customers come to Full Fat Things, they come because of the humans behind it.
We may be informal in how we talk, but we’re serious about our work — and even more serious about the long-term partnerships we build.
“Full Fat Things has been invaluable for us to actually be able to challenge ourselves, be challenged and actually come up with better outcomes.”
When you're running a university or public sector organisation, there are usually two things of which you don’t have much: time or budget to waste. And that’s exactly why so many choose open source.
Historically, universities have been hubs for the development and promotion of open source technologies, acting as incubators for innovation and community-driven projects. Public sector organisations favour open source to maintain control over their digital infrastructure, ensuring that they are not dependent on any vendors, and their roadmap, they need to be able to adapt their systems to national requirements.
Strategic benefits of open source
Cost-efficiency
Yes, open source software is technically free. However, that’s not why universities and governments continue to choose it.
The real value lies in not being tied to a single vendor or locked into a license fee that increases annually. You’re not paying for access — you’re paying for what you build with it, how you use it, and how you grow it over time. You can shift priorities without writing on the community forums, desperately waiting for a platform update, or begging your account manager for a change in the product roadmap. Investment in open source by public sectors and universities reflects a dedication to building common digital resources and infrastructure, benefiting citizens and promoting technological independence.
Flexibility
Universities are often managing dozens of faculties, departments, and microsites. Governments are working across services, from healthcare to public information portals. They need to run things their way, not a one-size-fits-all way or an off-the-shelf system tells them to. They need something unique and flexible to meet their needs, allowing them to tailor software to their specific needs and diverse departments without being constrained by vendor lock-in.
With open source (like Drupal, about which we know a thing or two), you get complete control over content, data, permissions, and integrations. Universities have a federated system to manage their users, staff, students, researchers, and research, which means a group of independent teams playing on the same side. With this type of system architecture Drupal is a strong fit thanks to its flexibility, modular design, and built-in support for systems working together to maintain a unified voice.
Collaboration
Universities and governmental departments don’t want to reinvent the wheel every time they launch a project — and with open source, they don’t have to.
They can build on what others have already done, share modules, and contribute back. That collective development model means better quality, faster improvements, and a sense of shared ownership that fits well with how public sector organisations work.
We love that our work with open source has made a real impact with our government and university customers.
Case study:
A leading UK university partnered with Full Fat Things to modernise its digital platform, which had become difficult to manage and scale. Our team began by improving the developer experience — merging code into a unified repository, cleaning up legacy modules, and introducing automated testing, security alerts, and modern dependency management tools. We upgraded their platform, ensuring long-term performance and stability.
On the editorial side, we redesigned workflows with clearer roles and permissions, making it easier for different teams to manage content while maintaining quality and consistency. Being a federated system, it was of the utmost importance to have that flexibility and consistency across their users, research data, staff & students. To improve how data was handled, we replaced outdated custom scripts with Drupal’s Migrate framework, simplifying future imports and reducing errors. We also helped the design and development teams work more efficiently by integrating Storybook into the development workflow. To support a better content editing experience, we reviewed and optimised their page-building tools, weighing up Layout Builder versus Paragraphs based on real editorial needs. Finally, we migrated their infrastructure to Azure — including DevOps integration and production hosting — resulting in faster deployments, improved scalability, and better global performance.
Result
A faster, more reliable, secure, and easier-to-manage platform ready to scale. Let's chat
Scability
Starting small? That’s fine. Growing into something massive? Also fine.
Open source platforms can handle complex user journeys, multilingual content, accessibility standards, and massive traffic without falling over. And because it’s yours, you can keep iterating as your needs evolve.
There’s no “outgrowing” a good open source setup. You just keep building on it. Whereas often, product vendors can’t keep up with the pace of their users.
Conclusion
Choosing open source isn’t about being trendy or ticking a box. It’s about building something that works for you, on your terms, without unnecessary limits or inflated costs.
We’ve helped many organisations across multiple industries with their open source. We’ve seen the benefit in integrating it, especially within governmental organisations and universities. Check out our customers who chose open source.
The online publishing landscape and the industry’s revenue from it is under attack.
Traditionally, publishers on the internet have followed a route of advertising supported products selling traditional print content online; a model that’s increasingly less sustainable. Here's why.
Data privacy
Privacy invasions over the last twenty years by “big internet” have eroded customer trust and resulted in legislation, like the GDPR and the CCPA. This makes it harder to find out who our customers are and what they want. We have an idea of who is visiting but not a complete picture. This data is valuable. We can sell to advertisers with better reader profiles and improve our service to our audience if we understand who they are.
Customer experience
The industry has increasingly complex advertising solutions but often at the expense of the reader’s experience. Advertising ‘intrusion’ and the belief they are being watched has reinforced their sense of mistrust.
Publishing revenues
Publishing revenues are hard to come by online. The internet advertising market is costly and mature - ad networks are making more money than the publishers - producing diminishing ROI.
These factors combined creates a compelling case for moving away from a solely ad supported model for digital publishing.
Enter stage left, the paywall
We’ve been selling subscriptions and advertising for centuries. Readers are more used to paying for content than we think. The web temporarily stalled this whilst we figured out online revenue. Readers still want high quality trusted content, from brands that distill their view of the world.
Paywalls – a way of restricting access to online content based on payment – have been successful for many that have chosen the route. The FT boasts over 1 million subscribers, three quarters of which are online subscribers. The New York Times has over 3 million digital only subscriptions while maintaining good advertising revenue showing the two can easily mix.
Types of paywalls
Paywalls come in various options. They form a sliding scale from the “hard” paywall blocking all content, like The Athletic to “soft” paywalls like The Guardian’s supporter paywall which blocks nothing but suggests a subscription or donation at the end of each article. Some publishers choose to paywall content types, for instance opinion being paid and news being free. Others used a metered paywall, which places a cap on the number of free articles over a period of time.
A harder paywall presents a sales challenge as there are fewer opportunities to show the quality - which needs to be high - of the product or breadth of content it offers. So there’s a need to lean more heavily on marketing efforts to attract subscribers. The reward is a more consistent revenue stream, being less reliant on advertising.
And, while softer paywalls don’t necessarily enforce payment, they have a larger advertising footprint. For those that meter their content, the product is easier to sell itself by being more readily available without subscription.
The Economist is a fine example of selling subscriptions online. They have in the past put less content behind the paywall in times of large advertising markets and more content behind in challenging advertising markets. They mix their model of advertising and paid content to suit the global advertising market whilst retaining paid audiences.
The paywall doesn’t have to kill search rankings. Several publishers use Google’s Flexible sampling which allows Google to collect content but in return a small number of articles must be given to readers from Google search results.
Publications worldwide have spent the past few years trying to define what it means to "transition to digital."
You'll see some publications take a minimal approach by posting the print article to a basic CMS, with little thought to user experience or engagement. Others commit to adapting the article to its digital audience. They focus on the reading experience, optimising the article for search engine visibility at the same time.
The key contrast between the two lies in recognising the difference between print and digital user experiences. Print can be a refined experience, albeit static and limited. Digital offers a variety of options. For example, using visual storytelling tactics to improve the reading experience can lead to deeper engagement and an increase in subscriptions.
For the Key.Aero content team, moving articles from print to digital was a manual and long-winded job. Time constraints meant they didn’t publish articles as promptly, or as regularly, as needed. And this limited their potential to develop their digital subscriber base. By automating the print to digital process, Key.Aero could publish content to their site easily, including thousands of historical articles and scheduled future pieces.
Full Fat Things' focus turned to the user experience – a crucial factor on b2c platforms. We worked with Key.Aero to design a new logo and website, keeping the customer in mind at every stage. By taking the time to understand Key.Aero's audience and style direction, we developed several design concepts and refined them following client feedback. We worked unobtrusive Google Advertising into the design, embedding it within the website content, maximising both the reading experience and revenue for the company.
Transforming the content management of the site made a big impact to their operations and the efficiency of the business. New ‘premium’ articles gave Key.Aero the vehicle to drive their digital subscribers too.
Where digital transformations failed
Not every digital transformation project is a success. According to Forbes, 70% of digital transformations fail. Digital mobilisation without the correct strategy is one of the most common causes, with fatigue and poor communication meaning ineffectual changes and a digital transformation which under-delivers.
Yahoo Magazines
Yahoo launched a number of digital magazines in 2014 with the aim of convincing advertisers they would reach the same audiences as glossy print magazines had done before them. The advertisers who tested the platform seemed unimpressed, with Yahoo digital magazines failing to spark en masse interest in their target audiences.
In 2016 Yahoo phased out or consolidated seven of their magazines, streamlining the remaining content to four areas: lifestyle, news, sport and finance.
The Daily
Another example of a failed transformation is News Corp's 'The Daily', shut down in 2012 by CEO Rupert Murdoch. Murdoch reported that The Daily’s audience didn’t grow rapidly enough to make it a sustainable business model for the long term. It had launched under two years before as a standalone publication with a 120 strong team – a large overhead for a rumoured 100,000 paid subscriber base. Had it taken advantage of News Corp’s existing resource, it could have run with much greater efficiency.
Zoo & FHM Magazines
In late 2015 the UK magazine and media powerhouse Bauer Media announced the closure of FHM and Zoo 'lad mags', having failed to translate their audience appeal of the 1990s and early 2000s to a digital age. As their target audience moved more and more to social media and mobile phones, and the 'lad' culture began to show signs of decline, the hard-stay fans who made the transition to digital subscription were too few in number to provide a legitimate business model. Where these magazines failed, social media based brands such as LAD Bible and SPORT bible gained enormous digital success.
Staying print-first in mindset charts a non-sustainable path for a publication. Companies that invest in their digital platforms are learning to meet people where they are. They’ve developed a deeper understanding of how to reach their target demographic through effective engagement and SEO. And by doing this, they have learned how to serve unique experiences with high-value content.
It’s not an instant solution. The New York Times is a shining example of a publication that places value on its subscribers. To achieve maximum subscriber growth, they took the time to research and develop an easy-to-use experience that organically deepens page views per visit, maximising the time spent on each page.
Online and print versions of the most popular publications remain the top source of information for consumers, with nearly 50% of people accessing their news online. The increase in smartphone use means that number is growing.
Developing a digital transformation strategy is a complex task which, if not carried out perfectly, can damage a company's finances and reputation. Full Fat Things can help create a bespoke strategy customised to your existing systems and processes, and digitise your operations for a clearer, more agile future.
In the “exponential age of digital”, you’d think digital transformations would be more successful. 70% of digital transformation projects fall short of their goals (Forbes, 2020). We attended the #DIGTRA conference to discuss and reflect on the successes and challenges of digital transformations.
Keeping up to date with the latest industry trends is important in delivering successful digital transformations for our customers. Roar Media’s Digital Transformation Conference in October allowed us to gain inspiration and maintain best practices from fellow professionals in the digital industry.
There was such a great variety of speakers who all told the stories of their own experiences in digital transformations. Each speaker took a unique approach to their presentations – from memes to a metaphor about pockets on women’s clothing (don’t ask). But seriously, there were also some reality checks about what it means for businesses to make the move to digital.
What were the key takeaways?
Be disruptive
Be customer obsessed
Be convincing and educate
Be aware of the obstacles – or they’ll trip you up
Be disruptive
Nick Hodder from Imperial War Museums grabbed everyone’s attention. Where digital innovation has grown rapidly over the past 30 (or so) years, the biggest players in the field have been disruptors. Apple didn’t get to be the digital leaders in the world by playing it safe and following the lead of other tech giants.
To be successful in positive disruption - start with WHY? Then figure out the HOW and the WHAT. Not the other way around.
Tariq Maonah from Legal & General told us that digital innovation should be centred around a problem, and adding value. There’s no point trying to fix problems that aren’t there or don’t exist yet. It won’t work.
Be customer obsessed
Digital transformations and innovations should always be created for the customer – whoever they may. Maybe they’re the business’ customers, or maybe they’re the business’ employees but are the main users of the digital platforms.
In any case, be Agile. Define the users. Define their pain points. Be user driven in your approach. As Louise Smith from Lloyd’s said – “be customer obsessed”.
A digital first approach for both the customer facing ecosystem and for internal operations will ensure a successful digital platform. But beware – don’t just try to move ‘in-person’ processes to digital, it won’t work. Processes need thought leadership to be transformed to digital in their own right.
Be convincing and educate
It’s all about trust. Why should people trust you?
Louise Smith from Lloyds described digital change as a leadership change. Without the right leadership in place, employees’ attitudes towards digital transformations will be poor, and therefore the change will not be successful.
Of course, as a supplier of digital transformations, our clients have approached us after they have gone through a leadership change internally – otherwise they wouldn’t be talking to us. But we recognise that even where businesses self-identify the need for a move to digital, there will always be opposition in team members if they don’t lead the team to the same conclusion too.
We support our clients, where possible and if needed, to help educate their team on what a move to digital could mean for their business. Read more about how we do this in our guide to simplifying digital transformation.
Be aware of the obstacles
Liam Dyson from BT described the biggest challenge in one sentence – “you can’t implement digital transformation products without having the supporting culture internally first”.
This challenge connected all the speakers at the conference. There is a need for a company culture that is accepting of change and willing to do what is necessary to improve in the digital age. Of course, the pandemic forced a transition to digital whether they liked it or not. But many are still resistant.
We’ve seen this challenge too. But as mentioned before, we will help you in any way we can to improve the position of your company, both internally and externally.
Reflecting on the day
Matt Mawdesley from Together summarised the day perfectly in a collection of memes, with the following high level points:
Set up infrastructure for the new world
Data will always be key
New people typically bring new ideas
Leverage the broader ecosystem, within reason
Culture is the big one - create culture change
Image
When embarking on a digital transformation project, we take time to understand your needs and build a solid relationship. That way we avoid the kinds of challenges discussed at the #DIGTRA conference – and we don’t fall into that 70%.
Be disruptive, be customer obsessed, be convincing and educate, and be aware of the obstacles – or they’ll trip you up.
Drupal 9 has launched – the first Drupal major release for nearly 5 years. It marks a good time for organisations using Drupal 7 to take stock of their situation and plan an upgrade.
No business wants to be running on a platform that is two versions behind. The latest versions are always where the development focus lies. More to the point, in November 2022 official support for Drupal 7 will end completely. So if you don’t have an upgrade plan soon, it poses questions about your commitment to security and whether you’re doing all you can to move your business forward.
This new version will be exactly the same as the latest version of Drupal 8 apart from removal of deprecated code and updates to third-party dependencies. One advantage of this approach is that you can clearly identify all the benefits of Drupal 9 to your business. Another is that there will be no surprises on release day – you can be fully prepared if you get started now.
Drupal 9 features that will benefit your business
The latest version of any operating system or platform is always up to date with bug fixes and security updates. It is also the only way to access any new features – and with Drupal, as an open source platform, the latest release gives access to beta features to enable you to get ahead of the pack.
In addition, you’ll benefit from a raft of brilliant developments added during the various minor releases of version 8, as they're also be available in Drupal 9. It's an opportunity to considerably boost your organisation’s applications and efficiency.
These are among our highlights, which you can read more about in our Drupal 9 upgrade guide:
Mobile first – build fully responsive applications and give your internal users a responsive admin panel for work away from their desks.
Easier and faster content editing, multilingual support, spellchecker and improved media management.
Internal workflows with different permissions, offering moderation and pre-publication testing.
Improved accessibility.
‘API first’ for content reuse and links to other applications.
Together, these and other features mean that your internal users end up with a better set of tools, their working environment is improved, and it’s likely you’ll be able to make some of your backend processes more efficient. Your external users benefit too, with a better experience all round, and you may be able to make more of your content available in different ways.
The Drupal 7 to 9 upgrade process
As the latest version of Drupal 8 will be virtually identical to Drupal 9, we previously advised a two-step upgrade – that is, move to version 8 first, then identify any deprecated code in your Drupal 8 implementation and move to Drupal 9 soon after its release. (It’s one of the many examples of Drupal’s fantastic open source heritage, as there are plenty of tools written by the community to identify such code and, importantly, advise how to update it for the move to Drupal 9.)
Now, though, as Drupal 9 has launched, we would advise a single step upgrade instead. The processes involved will be the same, but you have only one upgrade date to put in your calendar.
How to prepare for the Drupal 7 to 9 upgrade
The first stage in the upgrade from Drupal 7 to 9 is to take stock of what you have now and identify all the aspects that could be improved. Ideally, look at this from the perspectives of both your external users and your internal team(s). What’s on your wish list – and on theirs?
There’s no harm in some blue sky thinking here – you may be surprised by what is achievable if you are used to the limitations of Drupal 7.
We recommend creating software development personas to help with this, as well as carrying out surveys. We can do this for you, if you prefer, and with our knowledge of Drupal 9, we can ask questions you may not think of.
You’ll also need Drupal site audits of your systems to determine which elements need upgrading and how this can be done most efficiently. These audits may also throw up aspects you haven’t considered, such as interfaces with other internal systems to share content and make processes more efficient.
There have been plenty of great examples of Digital Transformation projects in recent years. Take investment bank JPMorgan for example, they implemented a software program that does in seconds what traditionally took 360,000 hours of lawyers’ time annually. Or how about logistics firm DHL which implemented the use of ‘smart’ glasses to help warehouse staff improve their accuracy and efficiency.
But what exactly is digital transformation? And do you and your company really need to focus on it? Put simply, it’s the use of digital technology to transform the systems, processes and activities of a business or organisation. While what is actually involved in the ‘transformation’ varies in size and complexity from project to project, the overriding aim is the use of technology to improve the performance of the organisation.
But why 'transform' if you already have a successful business with working systems?
Ignoring digital transformation means you not only miss out on the benefits on offer but also run the risk of ultimately having outdated and incompatible systems. This could have a negative effect on your business, both in terms of internal operations and overall business performance, as your company falls behind its competitors.
But what exactly are these benefits? And, more importantly, how do they relate to your business? Let’s take a look…
Enhancing the customer experience
“Customer experience is the one thing that separates you from the competition”
Digital transformation is about making the experience of engaging with your organisation as seamless and efficient as possible (and, hey, why not enjoyable too?).
Enhancing this experience is one of the core pillars of digital transformation. Digital tools enable businesses to provide personalised experiences, relevant information and real-time feedback. Not in a creepy, stalkerish way, but in a way that says “We understand what you are looking for and we want to help you”. As Accenture found, 75% of customers admit that they are more likely to buy from a company that recognises them by name, knows what they’ve bought before and recommends a product or service to them.
Think about your own online activity - the companies you interact with, the things you buy – the power to choose what you want, and when, is all yours. And if you don’t enjoy the experience of interacting with a company, are you likely to buy from it again?
It’s the same with your business or organisation, whatever sector or type of business you’re in. Your customers need to enjoy the experience of engaging with your company or they’ll look elsewhere.
Employee engagement
Customers are not the only people that matter though. Making your employees part of the digital transformation process is essential, and along with that (when done well, at least) comes higher staff satisfaction and the creation of a more forward-thinking culture.
For people, digitisation and automation sound like a threat. Inevitably human roles will change in the digital world, but for the better; it’s about innovation rather than replacement. Machines and processes will no longer simply be operated by people but designed and enhanced by them. Make your staff see themselves as part of, and benefitting from, the change and they will feel more fulfilled.
With digital transformation’s ever-changing nature comes constant learning and growth. Take the opportunity of the new to engage and train together. Think of your staff as your customers; you’re investing in their journey too and it should ultimately benefit both them and the company.
Streamlining for simpler workflows
In the digital space, data is a huge asset – in fact, it’s the asset. In all areas of your business, it can help you understand what’s going on and therefore help you make better, more informed, decisions. But all of this is only possible with the right tools in place to gather, sort and make sense of the data.
Digital transformation helps a business develop from individual silos of information that can’t communicate to a new, centralised operation.
Take sales lead generation as an example. Tracking software can understand structured data (names, addresses) and unstructured data (social media feedback, emails) together. By creating central profiles, sales teams can see a list of potential customers while marketing can draw insights on their audience to help make better decisions on who they’re targeting, and how.
Cost savings
We appreciate that cost is a massive consideration for digital transformation projects. It’s what holds many companies back when thinking about making these huge changes. The challenge is to see digitisation as a smart investment that ultimately will lead to significant cost savings through improved efficiencies and streamlining of operations.
Cost savings need to be understood as long-term gains. It’s about skilling your business and people for AI, augmented reality, cloud computing and machine learning – to name a few. See it as an investment in staying relevant and ahead of the game, generating competitive advantage and grabbing the customers’ business before your competitors do.
Digital transformation solutions for continuous improvement
Digital transformation projects, radical processes and new technology are by their nature disruptive, and to some extent, they should be. Being at the forefront of innovation and its possibilities requires us to question old and new and to constantly adapt. Proper handling of these changes is essential.
As a Digital Transformation Consultancy, Full Fat Things is here to help you manage that transition. We work with ambitious businesses on the things that matter. We’re not here to change your business, but to make it work better for you so that you can learn from every interaction.
