Trust, Speed, And Scale: How IRONMAN Built A Repeatable Multi-Brand DXP For Race-Day Reliability

Operating dozens of brand websites on disconnected systems introduced operational inefficiency and diluted the athlete experience.

Key challenges included:

• Delayed Brand Launches

Brand rollouts required rebuilding components that should have been reusable. Without a repeatable launch framework, engineering teams duplicated effort with each new site, delaying go-to-market readiness.

• Editorial Mistrust And Workflow Breakdown

Editorial teams lacked trust in the publishing platform. Fragile integrations could overwrite live edits, disrupting campaigns and forcing manual workarounds. This slowed production and created friction between technical and editorial stakeholders.

• Unreliable Integrations And Data Inconsistency

Disparate systems caused fragmented data, sync failures, and duplication. These issues eroded reporting accuracy and hindered decision-making based on real-time event and campaign data.

• Race-Day Reliability Risks

Peak traffic and live media place unique demands on systems. The objective wasn’t merely uptime; it was brand protection: ensuring accurate event experiences, consistent UX, and reliable content and forms during high-attendance events.

• Scaling Editorial Operations

IRONMAN’s marketing organization was expanding rapidly, from ~5–10 editors to 20–25 globally. The platform needed to convert specialist engineering tasks into governed, low-code workflows so teams could publish at scale with confidence.

• A Foundation For Future Growth

IRONMAN needed a reusable foundation that could support personalization, pro-tier experiences, Coach Finder, and AI-assisted capabilities, turning athlete journeys into marketing segments for lifecycle-driven engagement.

The goal was clear: build a composable, data-enabled DXP that powered both brand scalability and continuous athlete engagement.

Axelerant partnered with IRONMAN to re-architect the platform with a focus on measurable business outcomes. Rather than approaching the engagement as a series of technical upgrades, the project was guided by one central principle:

Governance First. Reuse Always. Experience Always.

Instead of shipping standalone sites, we built a governed product platform:

• Reusable Acquia Site Studio components for consistent behavior

• Event skeletons for speed and quality.

• Operational foundations for race-day reliability

The result was a platform that puts athlete experience first, delivers new event sites faster, and protects brand reliability through governance and reuse, not brittle custom work.

Governance-First Architecture

Axelerant introduced a structured, decision-driven audit framework to classify existing assets as candidates for reuse, refactor, or rebuild. This preserved value from prior work while ensuring future builds remained high-quality and maintainable.

A centralized component library using Acquia Site Studio enabled consistent brand theming and race-specific customization, drastically reducing engineering effort and accelerating launches across brands.

Experience-Led Discovery And UX Strategy

To ensure the platform served real users, we began discovery with the athlete journey, not just page lists.

We took a map-first approach to clarify:

• What content lives at brand/global level

• What content lives at event level

• How navigation and page models should scale without collapsing

The experience was designed around real personas and “from sign-up to results” journeys for athletes, riders, and fans, ensuring the platform improved everyday moments users rely on.

Operational Resilience For Race-Day Protection

To protect reliability during peak event windows, Axelerant implemented performance and resilience patterns aligned with Acquia’s architecture:

• Acquia Cloud Platform hosting for scalability

• Varnish caching for fast edge delivery

• Memcache to reduce application load

• Deployment validation practices to support reliable releases under tight event timelines

This operational hardening was essential to protect athlete trust and brand reputation.

Event-Driven Integrations (Replacing Fragile Automation)

Fragile integrations were replaced with webhook pipelines that trigger only on content marked for publishing. These pipelines create drafts and revisions rather than overwriting live edits, preserving editorial intent and eliminating one of the most disruptive aspects of the old workflow.

Validation rules, secure key authentication, and detailed error logging ensured each integration behaved predictably and transparently, restoring editorial confidence.

Structured Content Models And Editorial Enablement

Axelerant standardized content entities such as athlete profiles, media, and event metadata with governed validation rules.

Legacy content, including Hall of Fame and Legends pages, was migrated into Drupal’s media library, creating a centralized, future-proof content foundation.

Draft/revision workflows and Site Studio theming controls empowered editors to own their content fully, applying brand contrast, layouts, and messaging without waiting on developer support.

CI/CD Automation With Shared Visibility

To maintain delivery cadence under real event deadlines, Axelerant implemented a repeatable CI/CD process aligned with Acquia deployment workflows.

The pipeline was integrated with Slack to automatically post real-time updates on the build, test, and deployment stages, enabling teams to track progress, respond quickly to failures, and maintain confidence in release readiness.

Key Integrations

Axelerant implemented and standardized integrations required to support IRONMAN’s publishing, localization, marketing, and data workflows:

• Microsoft Dynamics 365: Integrated via custom fields on Event and Article nodes to store D365 IDs and modified dates for reference and tracking. (Fields are not automatically populated by API integration in this codebase.)

• TransPerfect: Localization and translation services integrated into Acquia CMS content workflows.

• HubSpot Forms: Lead capture integrated with Acquia CMS forms, newsletter modals, race connect forms, and landing pages.

• SendGrid: Transactional and notification email delivery integrated with Drupal/Acquia CMS. 

• Google Tag (Analytics): Integrated via module for analytics and tracking.

• Cookie Consent Tool: Integrated for compliance and consistent UX.

Playbook For Repeatable Scale

To prevent a return to one-off solutions, Axelerant compiled all components, workflows, integration templates, and governance models into a practical playbook. This ensured future brand launches could be executed faster and more predictably across global markets.

The engagement yielded tangible, quantifiable improvements aligned with IRONMAN’s strategic objectives.

70% Reduction In System Load

Migrating to webhook-driven integrations reduced the processing burden on API and database systems by more than 70%. This optimization not only improved system performance but also freed up backend capacity for future scalability.

Faster Brand Launches

The Rock ’n’ Roll Running Series was launched in record time using governed, reusable components. Months of engineering time were saved, and the launch set a new standard for what’s possible within IRONMAN’s digital operations.

Complex Site Merge Delivered With Zero Downtime

The successful IRONMAN + ProSeries site merge demonstrated the maturity and resilience of the new platform infrastructure. A multi-brand, multi-system deployment was executed without any global service disruption.

UI consistency was preserved through careful component validation and rebuild sequencing. The team met a non-negotiable no-downtime requirement while handling large-scale changes in Site Studio, search indexing, and global navigation.

Editorial Control And Confidence Restored

With the introduction of draft/revision workflows, editorial teams could now create and publish content without fear of their work being overwritten. This reduced the time to publish by approximately 50–60%, turning editorial stress into storytelling time.

Improved Analytics And Campaign Planning

By centralizing content and enforcing validation rules, IRONMAN established a single source of truth for campaign content and metadata. This allowed for more accurate reporting, better planning, and fewer production errors during peak seasons.

Cost Optimization Through Reuse

Selective refactors and a disciplined approach to component governance reduced both technical debt and development cost. Fewer bespoke builds meant lower long-term maintenance overhead, all while maintaining brand fidelity.

Hard Proof: Measurable results

Epic Series (post vs pre)

• Pageviews: +44.1% (327,177 vs 227,091)
• Total users: +52.7% (94,835 vs 62,126)
• Sessions: +72.0% (208,018 vs 120,919)
• Mobile pageviews: +88.9% (strong mobile adoption.
  
  

Rock ‘n’ Roll (post vs pre)

• Pageviews: +8.3% (917,817 vs 847,284)
• Sessions: +29.4% (424,182 vs 327,742)
  
  

Avg session duration: 2m17s (improved engagement)