The 2013 merger of Random House and Penguin formed Penguin Random House (PRH)—a global publishing powerhouse with nearly 250 imprints. Unifying two distinct legacy organisations under one cohesive digital infrastructure presented significant communication and operational challenges.
Background
To address these, Penguin Random House UK engaged us to deliver a robust intranet platform that would streamline internal communications, improve discoverability of resources, and foster a more connected organisation across its UK operations.
We were involved from the outset, supporting PRH through every phase of the project—from initial scoping and stakeholder engagement through to UX strategy, information architecture, visual design, and ultimately full technical implementation and launch.
We began with a discovery phase involving stakeholder workshops and staff interviews to understand the differing needs across teams, departments, and physical office locations. These insights informed a modular and user-centric approach that allows the intranet to serve as both a central knowledge hub and a personalised daily tool for staff.
PRH expressed a preference for open-source solutions, and we architected the intranet on a highly customised instance of WordPress—extended to behave more like an enterprise-grade digital workplace platform.
Key technical achievements include:
- Advanced user management and permissions
- Integration with Active Directory enables secure, seamless single sign-on (SSO) across networked devices
- Permission-based content targeting allows for role-specific views and regional content segmentation
- Systems integration
- Pulls real-time ONIX feed data to display newly released titles
- Synchronises with HR systems to power a dynamic, searchable staff directory
- Flexible architecture allows future third-party API integrations
- Robust infrastructure and launch-readiness
- Deployed on PRH’s internal infrastructure in close collaboration with their IT team
- Load testing was conducted in advance to ensure performance and stability across the entire UK organisation
- Built-in flexibility for localisation across different sites, teams, and imprints
- Ease of content administration
- Custom admin interface designed to empower non-technical content editors
- Drag-and-drop widgets, reusable templates, and a rich media library enable fast content updates
Ongoing Collaboration
Post-launch, we’ve remained a long-term technical partner, providing continuous support, feature development, and performance optimisation as the platform evolves. This includes building new modules, refining user flows, and responding to the shifting needs of a fast-paced publishing environment.
The intranet has become an indispensable tool for PRH UK—centralising resources, streamlining communication, and fostering a stronger internal culture across a highly distributed workforce. Staff now benefit from a platform that is intuitive, intelligent, and fully integrated with their day-to-day systems.
This project demonstrates our ability to:
- Deliver enterprise-level solutions on open-source platforms
- Engineer complex system integrations and user access models
- Work collaboratively with internal IT and editorial teams
- Provide long-term support and iterative product development
- Translate organisational goals into effective, user-friendly digital experiences
