Strategic framing for a critical technology decision
Before starting a new development phase, the educational institution needed clarity. Clarity about its real starting point, about the functional complexity of its educational model, about the technical implications of each alternative, and about the investment required to support its growth. To this end, a framing mission was carried out with the aim of transforming a diffuse need for replatforming into a structured, understandable, and actionable plan.
The client
One of the leading benchmarks in on‑campus and online Vocational Education and Training in Spain. With a trajectory marked by sustained growth, the opening of physical centers, and the development of its online model, the digital platform has become a critical business asset, supporting student acquisition, enrollment, and management in a highly competitive environment.
The objectives
The main objective of the project was to properly frame the replatforming before initiating any build phase. It was necessary to understand the real functional scope, identify technical risks and dependencies, evaluate architectural scenarios, and have a macro‑estimate of effort and investment that would enable well‑founded strategic decision‑making.
The project
Make smart business decisions with a strategic web audit
The framing project was conceived as a strategic consulting initiative aimed at reducing uncertainty ahead of a structuring decision for the business. It was not a matter of selecting a technology in isolation, but of gaining an in‑depth understanding of how the educational model impacted the digital platform and what real implications each potential replatforming scenario entailed.
The project began with an initial alignment phase (kickoff) in which the objectives, scope of analysis, and working methodology were precisely defined. This first step was key to establishing a shared framework between the school’s teams and the Infinitum Digital consultants, ensuring a common understanding of what the project was expected to deliver: clarity, structure, and decision‑making capability.
This was followed by a detailed analysis of the existing ecosystem, from both a functional and technical perspective. The current platform was based on a highly customized headless architecture, designed to address complex business rules specific to the education sector, such as the management of training programs, packages, discounts, and non‑standard enrollment processes. This level of customization explained the robustness of the system, but also highlighted the difficulty of evolving it without a prior, in‑depth reflection.
The core of the project was structured around a series of functional and technical workshops, conceived as collaborative working sessions. These sessions addressed the critical elements of the digital business of the VET institution: the platform’s key functionalities, the level of editorial autonomy required by marketing teams, the enrollment funnel and its specific rules, authentication mechanisms and integration with internal systems, as well as the overall architecture of the ecosystem. This work made explicit needs that until then had been implicit or fragmented.
As a result of the analysis and workshops, a functional macro backlog was developed, structured and prioritized. This backlog not only captured requirements, but also provided a clear view of the project’s real scope, enabling the institution to properly size the required effort and understand which elements were critical, which were dependent on strategic decisions, and which could be addressed progressively.
In parallel, work was carried out on the definition and evaluation of different architectural scenarios, analyzing possible combinations of e‑commerce and CMS solutions, as well as their technical, organizational, and economic implications. To enrich this phase, solution demonstrations were included from different vendors, allowing approaches to be compared and hypotheses to be validated from a practical perspective, beyond purely theoretical analysis.
The project concluded with a budgetary estimate for the build phase, associated with the different scenarios identified. This estimate was not intended to define a final budget, but rather to provide a solid and realistic basis for decision‑making, aligning scope, complexity, and investment before committing resources to an execution phase.
Overall, the framing project made it possible to transform an initial need for replatforming into a structured, understandable, and actionable plan, laying the foundations for a platform evolution aligned with the reality of the business and its growth objectives.
Results
- Clear and shared vision of the project’s scope and complexity
- Functional macro backlog aligned with the business
- Architectural scenarios compared with technical and economic impact
- Reduced uncertainty and risk prior to execution
- Solid foundations for scalable replatforming
