Back in 2014 The Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists (RCOG) needed help supporting and improving PHP and Drupal-based systems after their existing provider could no longer properly maintain them. They were referred to Artumi Systems through a trusted contact, and the work focused on stabilising important platforms with no handover from the previous supplier.
At the centre of the engagement were systems that supported professional development, training materials, and e-commerce functions. These platforms were important to members and needed to remain reliable, secure, and fast.
RCOG was left in a difficult position when the previous technical lead was no longer available. The systems they relied on were slow, hard to maintain, and built in a way that made upgrades difficult.
The College is a member organisation, and therefore exists for the benefit of its members who are Doctors who are required to undergo regular training. The systems were used by members to record Continuing Professional Development (CPD) evidence, accessing training materials, and purchasing training content. That meant performance and reliability mattered a great deal.
The work covered what the client described as two main products, with the CPD system treated as especially critical. The CPD platform allowed doctors to record training hours, upload evidence, and keep the right spread across subject areas for revalidation.
The other area involved training materials and e-commerce, where members could access and purchase learning content. Together, these systems formed part of the College’s broader member offering and had to work smoothly as a whole.
The existing Drupal setup had become extremely slow because of the way the site logic interacted with the database. The code triggered large numbers of database queries during normal page loads, which made the platform inefficient and difficult to scale. The version of Drupal was also near end of life status.
Upgrading the existing setup was not a practical option, so the solution was to rebuild the platforms using custom code while keeping the same underlying data. And reorganising it where needed.
The work involved importing and normalising data, rebuilding the site pages, and creating a more efficient and maintainable structure. In the CPD case, the later stage of the work also included giving doctors the ability to download their own evidence as a zip file, with HTML and PDF indexes for local reference.
The core principle was straightforward: preserve the important data and business logic, but rebuild the delivery layer so it was faster, more robust, and easier to support.
Our client knew what they needed, and that made the direction of travel clear. The work was complicated, but the goal was well defined.
‘Make the systems robust, secure, and fast.’
From our client’s side, a major issue had been the loss of technical knowledge when a previous supplier changed. This project showed the value of continuity, clear ownership, and a team that could stay with the system over time.
The rebuilt CPD platform was significantly faster than the previous version, to the point that the client initially thought something might be wrong because it completed tasks so quickly.
Because the new implementation kept the front end of the site the same, there was no need for communicating to stakeholders about the changes that were being made. This in itself would have caused a lot of discussion and work. By rescuing the legacy system rather than starting afresh there were efficiency savings.
The new implementation successfully supported the organisation for many years, with the CPD work continuing from around 2012 through to 2022. Most importantly, the work done in this project extended the life of a critical application by roughly 10 years (a major outcome for a mission-critical member service).
For us, the most notable part of the story is our long relationship with RCOG. They valued the work enough to keep the partnership going for about a decade, which we like to believe reflects both the trust and consistency we offer the people we work with.
And we like to think this long-term relationship shows that smaller teams can be an advantage when the right expertise is there. Especially when the work needs direct attention, clarity, and accountability.
If your systems are slowing down growth, creating manual work, or becoming difficult to support, we can help you identify what needs fixing and what comes next.
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