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Holding company website development

For group communications heads, company secretaries and board members at holding companies, family groups and investment vehicles whose website must explain the group structure, archive reports properly and keep every subsidiary on brand without the group editing each site itself.

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The problem

What goes wrong today

Where it usually starts

A holding company site has to answer one question well, which is what the group owns and how it fits together, and most do it badly.

  • The structure page is a static diagram drawn when there were six subsidiaries; there are now nine, two have been renamed and one was sold.
  • Each subsidiary runs its own site built by a different agency, so the logos, colours and descriptions of the group vary from one to the next, and the brand guidelines that should fix this sit in a shared drive nobody outside the communications team can reach.
  • When a subsidiary wants the latest group logo, it emails and waits.

Where it gets harder

Reports and announcements are worse.

  • Annual reports, half-year statements and governance documents are uploaded as they arrive, with inconsistent names and no record of when each was published, so a stakeholder looking for the report from four years ago scrolls a page of unlabelled links.
  • An announcement goes out by email to a list that is half out of date and is pasted onto the site a day later with no timestamp.
  • Careers are scattered across nine subsidiary sites, so the group cannot show a candidate everything the group is hiring for.
  • Leadership pages list group directors and a few subsidiary heads, and nobody is sure which list is authoritative.

Scope of the service

What the build covers

A custom holding company website build normally covers:

  • A group structure area where each subsidiary has a profile with sector Territory, leadership, ownership description in the wording the company secretary approves, and a link to its own site
  • A sector or portfolio taxonomy So subsidiaries can be browsed by what they do as well as by name
  • A reports archive with document type Period and publication date on every item, so a report is filed once and found by year
  • Announcements With a recorded publication date and time and an optional category for the kind of notice
  • Leadership and governance pages covering the group board Committees and subsidiary heads from one source
  • A consolidated careers feed That pulls vacancies from subsidiaries that publish them in an agreed format and lists them under the group banner
  • A restricted brand area where approved subsidiary editors download logos Templates and guidelines and the group sees who downloaded what

How discovery works

Discovery walks through how the group actually publishes: who approves a subsidiary profile, what counts as an announcement, which documents belong in the archive and who may add them, whether a stakeholder area needs registration, and how subsidiaries will supply content without the group editing it by hand. Each becomes a named stage in the scope document: subsidiaries supply, group approves, group publishes, reports archived.

Deliberately out of scope

  • The subsidiary websites themselves, direct sales or product pages, and any investor relations function that regulated disclosure rules require to run through a specific regulatory service. The site records publication dates
  • It does not file anything on the group's behalf

When the scope grows

Scoping scenario

A group with fourteen subsidiaries across four sectors, three of which publish their own vacancies in different formats, wants a stakeholder area with registration and approval, a brand library with download tracking, and announcements that appear simultaneously on the group site and selected subsidiary sites. That cross-site publishing and the varied careers feeds are what make it custom work.

Deliverables

What you receive

  • Discovery notes from a walk-through of how the group approves and publishes subsidiary content, reports and announcements
  • A written scope document naming each publishing stage, the subsidiary supply formats and what is out of scope
  • Design of the group structure page, a subsidiary profile, the reports archive and an announcement on phone and desktop
  • The build, deployed to your hosting or ours, with the brand library and its access rules in place
  • Migration of existing subsidiary profiles, reports, announcements and leadership content, with redirects from old addresses
  • Training for group communications, the company secretary and nominated subsidiary editors, with a short written guide
  • Handover material and full ownership of the source code and your content

Process

How a project runs

Each stage maps onto the project view in your client panel. Durations are set in your proposal, never on this page.

  1. Onboarding

    Access to the current site, the brand guidelines, the subsidiary list with each site address and the archive of reports and announcements to migrate.

    Project stage: Onboarding

  2. Planning

    Sessions with group communications, the company secretary and two subsidiary editors to agree profiles, archive categories, approval rules and the scope document.

    Project stage: Planning

  3. Design

    Clickable designs of the structure page, a subsidiary profile, the reports archive and the brand library, checked against the group guidelines.

    Project stage: Design

  4. Development

    Built in stages: structure and profiles first, then the archive and announcements, then careers feeds and the restricted brand area.

    Project stage: Development

  5. Client review

    Subsidiary editors supply a real profile update and a vacancy, the company secretary files a report, and the group checks what appears where.

    Project stage: Client review

  6. Revisions

    Approval steps, archive categories and feed mappings are adjusted from the review and re-checked against the scope document.

    Project stage: Revisions

  7. Ready for launch

    Archive migrated with dates verified, redirects in place, brand library access tested with subsidiary accounts, checklist signed off.

    Project stage: Ready for launch

  8. Delivered

    The group publishes through the new site; optional maintenance and hosting continue under their own agreement.

    Project stage: Delivered

Integrations

Commonly integrated

Systems this kind of business usually asks us to connect. Each integration is confirmed during discovery; none is assumed.

  • Subsidiary websites supplying vacancies and news in an agreed feed format
  • Document storage where the company secretary already keeps reports and board papers
  • Email distribution services for announcement notifications to registered stakeholders
  • Regulatory news services, as a link or record of what was filed elsewhere, never as a filing route
  • Identity providers for subsidiary editor sign-in
  • Analytics with consent handling so report downloads and announcement views can be reported
  • Digital asset management systems holding the master brand files

How we would approach it

Worked example

Concept demo

A fourteen-subsidiary group with cross-site announcements

The situation

A group with fourteen subsidiaries across four sectors kept its structure diagram as an image, its reports as an undated list and its brand files in a shared drive.

Why it is a custom build

The reason this needs a custom build is the supply and approval chain: the group wanted subsidiaries to supply content without the group retyping it, which means feeds and an approval queue rather than a page editor.

The scope we would propose

  • Subsidiary profiles maintained by a nominated editor at each subsidiary and approved by group communications before publication
  • A sector taxonomy so the portfolio can be browsed either way
  • A reports archive with type, period and publication date on every document and a year filter
  • Announcements with a recorded publication time that can also be pushed to chosen subsidiary sites through a feed
  • A careers feed that reads vacancies from the three subsidiaries that publish them and lists them under the group banner
  • A brand library where each download is recorded against the editor who took it

Concept demo: a scoping scenario written to show how we would approach the work. It is not a delivered client project.

Pricing

What affects the price

Every proposal is priced on scope. These are the factors that move it most for this kind of build.

  • Number of subsidiaries and sectors, and whether subsidiaries supply their own content
  • Volume of reports and announcements to migrate and how much dating must be reconstructed
  • Stakeholder area with registration and approval
  • Careers feeds from subsidiary sites and how many formats they publish in
  • Cross-site publishing of announcements to subsidiary sites
  • Brand library size, access rules and download tracking
  • Content in more than one language across territories
  • Hosting choice: your own hosting or ours

Start from a package

Group website package

A packaged group website with subsidiary profiles, a dated reports archive, announcements, leadership and governance pages, a consolidated careers list and a restricted brand library.

Custom build
View the package

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Do we need a custom build or will the group package do?

Discovery compares how your group approves and publishes content against what the group website package handles through configuration. A group with a modest number of subsidiaries, a single reports archive and no feeds from subsidiary sites is usually a package fit. Cross-site publishing, varied careers feeds or a registered stakeholder area with approvals point to custom work, and we say which before anything is quoted.

Can subsidiaries update their own profile?

Yes, within what the group allows. A nominated editor at each subsidiary edits the profile and submits it, and group communications approves before anything appears. The group sees who changed what and when.

Does the site file regulatory announcements for us?

No. The site records the publication date and time of each announcement and can link to or record what was filed through a regulatory service, but filing itself stays with that service and your advisers.

How is the brand kept consistent across subsidiary sites?

The restricted brand area holds the master logos, templates and guidelines with version history, and only approved subsidiary editors can download them. The group sees each download, so when a subsidiary site uses an old logo there is a record of what they were given and when.

Who owns the site afterwards?

You do. Source code and all content, including the archive and brand files, are handed over at delivery. Hosting and maintenance are optional, separately agreed and the site can move to another provider.

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