How Tomtom’s Navigation Pioneers are Driving Smarter Content

Headquarters: Amsterdam, the Netherlands
Frameworks: NextJS, TypeScript, Tailwind, Docker, Azure DevOps, Kubernetes

The first stop on every road trip used to be at the nearest petrol station to purchase a coffee and a large foldable paper map detailing every road, highway, and intersection. But the world has come a long way since the days of foldable paper maps and parking on the side of the road to check your directions - that’s primarily thanks to Tomtom, the world's leading independent geolocation technology company.

Navigating to success

• Autonomous content creation: Tomtom’s teams can now create content and spin up landing pages for review without needing to follow a rigid, cascading workflow. With the resulting 50% decrease in operation speeds, the team is free to move full steam ahead. Time is money, after all.
• Supercharged SEO: With the shift to Storyblok, Tomtom’s SEO specialists reported a two-fold increase in performance, ensuring the content is reaching the right audiences effectively and efficiently.
• Effortless onboarding: The intuitive nature of the Visual Editor meant that the technical team at Tomtom only had to provide minimum onboarding for their non-technical teams. It really was as simple as showing them the Visual Editor and handing them the reins (then going out for stroopwafels).
• Comfortable collaboration: Storyblok's Workflow & Discussion features have streamlined Tomtom's content development process significantly. In addition to cutting down on the red tape, the team's also seen a 30% decrease in costs. Cha-ching.

Planning routes for a generation

Tomtom has been the main driver behind the growth of navigation for the past 30 years, starting with a dream of making portable navigation a reality. The first satnav they released became one of the fastest-selling consumer technology devices in history, making the name Tomtom synonymous with navigation.

Fast forward to 2024, Tomtom is the bread and butter behind software like Apple Maps and Google Maps, not to mention the primary navigation provider for vehicle manufacturers & car services - think Volkswagen or Uber. If you’ve driven a car or used a navigation app on your phone in the past, you’ve indirectly enjoyed Tomtom’s services.

Why Tomtom put their legacy system in the rearview mirror

There was a time long, long ago when a legacy system (and hundreds of developers) was what a company needed to manage their content globally. However, there came a time when Tomtom decided that it was time to look forward rather than behind - and the key to unlocking the future was adopting a headless CMS. They were facing some challenges that really hindered their ability to not only create content but manage it well:

Arduous manual labor: Spinning up new content pages took an exorbitant amount of time and resources - two things that needed to be streamlined asap.

Steep learning curves: Using a highly technical system meant that they needed far too many cooks in the kitchen to get anything done - and anyone who's ever worked in a kitchen will tell you that that does a lot more harm than good.

No visuals or previews: Ever walk around in the dark with your eyes closed? That’s essentially what it was like for the content creators at Tomtom. You either had to be extremely technical or very experienced with that legacy system to have a mental image of what you’re building.

Strenuous onboarding: All the above added up to an onboarding process that was far too difficult to be efficient and often required technical intervention for the slightest changes and edits. Getting people to manage their own content was a constantly uphill battle.

Going in a different direction

The decision to rebuild their tech stack didn’t come easy. Important choices like that rarely do. While doing their due diligence on potential new systems, the Tomtom team found inspiration in an unassuming place: An ad on LinkedIn.

This ad told the story of a CMS that could cater directly to both developers and marketers. No compromise, just collaboration. One informative YouTube rabbit hole later, Storyblok emerged as the one and only solution for them.

Tomtom was enamored by Storyblok’s Visual Editor primarily, but also for its ease of use and component-based approach (a philosophy structure that matched exactly what they were looking for!)

Along with Storyblok, they built a robust tech stack consisting of NextJS, TypeScript, Tailwind, Docker, Azure DevOps, Kubernetes, ensuring that their stack is anchored for the future.

Driving into that sunny horizon

There’s a light at the end of every tunnel, or so the phrase goes - that’s just Tomtom’s satnav telling you that the future is bright and you’re headed in the right direction. With the move to Storyblok, everyone at Tomtom can now rest easy knowing that they have the right technologies to ensure fast and reliable service to their global customers and partners.