A technology solution that continues to transform hospitality, retail, and banking
For over 135 years, NCR has been the world’s leading enterprise technology provider for businesses of all sizes — from local food trucks to the world’s largest corporations. Today, the company operates as a software and services-led technology provider, continuing to support customers across hospitality, retailing, banking, and more.
Like many tech companies, NCR found its services in uniquely high demand during the COVID-19 pandemic. Large retailers and local restaurants became essential services overnight, and as a result, they relied on NCR’s contactless payment, self-checkout, and world class services to keep their businesses afloat and running.
Adjusting to exponential growth in the matter of months, NCR saw this as a crucial inflection point for the business — one that challenged the team to assess how they can best serve their growing customer base.
Upgrading to Webflow Enterprise: NCR’s push to modernize their website
Upgrading to Webflow Enterprise gave us the peace of mind and power to scale and deliver new web experiences rapidly.
As NCR began exploring how to better handle increased demand, leadership was invested in modernizing the website. Specifically, they wanted to increase their velocity of web development without breaking the bank. They believed a stronger, more flexible web foundation would unlock their team’s ability to build unique web experiences and to spin up more landing pages — something they deemed impossible with their existing digital experience platform (DXP). “We never would have invested time in doing this with our incumbent CMS because frankly, it was too expensive to even begin thinking about,” Dan Dawson, Senior Manager of Digital Properties at NCR, explained.
In 2020, the team had turned to Webflow’s self-serve offering to tackle one-off landing pages, which served as a temporary solution. But over time, NCR’s ability to meet growing business demand hinged on their ability to tackle large web projects on tight timelines — and that’s when the team knew their existing development processes were no longer sufficient.
After seeing the security features, advanced collaboration workflows, and hands-on account support that came with Webflow Enterprise, the team realized upgrading was an overall better fit for their needs than their incumbent solution. And not only was the team already comfortable working in the platform — upgrading to Enterprise also meant they could move quicker, save money, and bring their visual dreams to life on the web.
A more collaborative web development experience
Our design and development teams are much more integrated during the build process. Designers have more autonomy, and engineers can focus on the most impactful work — allowing us to deliver new web pages faster.
Historically, web development at NCR was a long, involved process. The team would file Jira tickets summarizing the project request that would then be passed on to the design team. The design team would then hand off their work to developers, who then tried to build and bring these designs to life, which often resulted in a tedious, back-and-forth process. Developers became pixel pushers, often stuck with some level of guesswork due to disjointed web processes.
Building web experiences in a visual development platform has broken down silos between the design and development teams, enabling better collaboration. Designers who traditionally work solely with tools like Figma can now also work in the Webflow Designer, identifying necessary adjustments or potential issues before finalizing the design — significantly reducing review cycles with developers.
And when the team is working with template or component-driven pages, multiple designers and editors can work in tandem thanks to page branching, which has become critical for the NCR team. Specifically, Dan explains, “Page branching allowed our team to cut down the time it takes to go from design to production by 3x, while maintaining code governance and quality. This feature brings version control to a visual development interface, which has significantly accelerated our speed to market."
Working with experts: An extension of the NCR team
Upgrading to Webflow Enterprise also provided NCR with the level of dedicated support and expertise they needed as they continued to evolve their digital presence. Dan and his team now have a direct line of communication to Webflow’s Account team – allowing them to ask questions, receive strategic recommendations, and share feedback on Webflow’s product roadmap.
Having a dedicated Customer Success Manager is a massive advantage as we expand and push the limits of Webflow. They open doors to the experts, designers, and leadership behind the platform for faster answers to complex questions.
In addition to the Account team, NCR gained access to Webflow’s Enterprise Partner network. After onboarding, projects that were put on the backburner moved to NCR’s development queue. This includes builds the team had wanted to tackle with their incumbent solution but required outside agency support that would’ve cost hundreds of thousands of dollars per year.
One of these projects was a microsite for NCR Greenhouse, a report that provides insights into future trends, opportunities for innovation, and unique perspectives to help advance businesses. NCR wanted this site to have a completely different look and feel — while working with a 6-week deadline, lean marketing team, and limited budget.
In addition to their dedicated Account team, NCR worked with a Webflow Enterprise Partner, Whiteboard, for this build and found they could collaborate and design substantially more engaging web experiences than would have otherwise been possible. Agencies in Webflow’s Enterprise Partner network have since become force multipliers when special projects are on the table, providing key technical expertise for builds and adhering to best practices — while 10x less expensive than agencies working on other platforms for similar deliverables.
Scaling with confidence for a bright future ahead
Looking ahead, NCR is in the process of becoming two separate companies. As a result, they are developing a new standalone website for the new banking and ATM network business, which Webflow will power. As NCR continues to grow, scale, and define new business needs, Webflow’s visual-first design and development capabilities will continue to empower them to bring new digital experiences to life rapidly and with their existing team and lean processes.
Visual development has taken out some of the complexities that were slowing us down but still allows us to leverage the engineering expertise we have in-house to create something that is greater than the sum of its parts.
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