Icon Group: Building a scalable global website platform

Icon Group is one of the world’s largest private cancer care providers, delivering cancer care across seven countries through a growing network of centres, services and brands. As its international presence continues to expand, they enlisted Zeroseven to create a single website platform capable of supporting that growth. Built on Umbraco Cloud, the multi-site platform provides a shared foundation for Icon Group's international web presence, giving the organisation a more consistent, scalable and governed way to manage websites across regions, brands and future growth.

The strength of the platform and the thinking behind it were recognised at the 2026 Umbraco Awards, where the project received the Site of the Year award for Best Cloud Solution. The award recognises an approach to governance, scalability and growth that continues to support Icon Group's international operations.

The challenge of international growth

Icon Group operates across seven countries and continues to grow through acquisitions, partnerships and joint ventures. Each new market, brand and business relationship brings its own audience, regulatory requirements and operational needs, along with the expectation of a digital experience that reflects both local requirements and the broader organisation.

That creates competing demands at every level. Regional teams need control over their content, services and local requirements, while brand, marketing, technology and governance teams need oversight across the wider organisation. Icon Group was managing this across a large portfolio of separate websites, making shared standards difficult to enforce and improvements costly to repeat.

Every acquisition, partnership or new market risked adding another website to manage, another platform to maintain and another set of governance challenges to solve. Rather than allowing that complexity to continue growing, Icon Group recognised the need for a different approach. The organisation saw an opportunity to create a shared digital foundation that could support regional requirements while maintaining the consistency, oversight and control expected of a leading international healthcare provider.

A vision for a shared platform

Icon Group came to Zeroseven with a clear vision: a single platform that could support its international portfolio of websites while strengthening governance across the organisation. Regional teams still needed the ability to manage local content, services and market-specific requirements, but within a framework that maintained global brand standards, consistency and oversight. Rather than creating and managing websites independently, Icon Group wanted a model where common functionality, governance and publishing standards could be managed centrally and applied consistently across the portfolio.

As a healthcare provider operating across multiple jurisdictions, security, compliance and data handling requirements were also non-negotiable. The platform also needed to support different regulatory environments, respect data sovereignty requirements and provide the level of governance expected when managing digital experiences connected to patient care.

Zeroseven was engaged to help translate that vision into a practical platform architecture that could support both regional flexibility and global governance as Icon Group continues to grow.

Creating a global website platform

Zeroseven translated Icon Group’s vision into a multi-site platform built on Umbraco Cloud, bringing its international websites into a single, governed environment. The platform gives Icon Group one foundation from which to launch, manage and improve websites across different regions and brands, without having to rebuild the same capabilities each time.

A shared foundation for every website

Each website is created from a shared set of page types, templates, components and underlying functionality. A new regional or brand site can be provisioned from that foundation, with the essential structure already in place and configured for its market.

This makes introducing a new website a repeatable process rather than another standalone development project. Icon Group avoids duplicating code, rebuilding common features or creating another environment that must be maintained independently. It also means that improvements can be developed once and made available across the portfolio, rather than commissioned and implemented separately for every website.

The single-instance architecture gives Icon Group firmer control over the technology supporting its international web presence. Security updates, technical fixes and new capabilities can be managed centrally, while shared standards are carried into every website created from the platform.

Governance built into the publishing experience

We designed the content model around reusable page types and content blocks, giving editors the tools to build pages for local services, locations and audiences without changing the underlying structure of the platform.

Regional teams can manage the information they are responsible for, including local content, terminology and service details. Their choices remain within the brand, design and publishing rules established at a group level. They have enough control to do their jobs without being able to introduce changes that weaken consistency across the portfolio.

Shared content and functionality can also be managed centrally and used across multiple websites. This reduces repeated work and gives Icon Group a practical way to keep important information and common experiences aligned across regions.

Secure cloud operations

Umbraco Cloud offered a consistent way to manage releases, security and ongoing development across its international web presence. A shared platform is effective when it can be governed and improved without introducing risk or disrupting regional operations.

The solution provides a controlled approach to platform evolution, allowing new functionality, improvements and fixes to be tested, approved and rolled out through a structured release process. Rather than managing change independently across multiple websites, improvements can be introduced once and made available across the broader platform.

These capabilities give Icon Group a platform that is not only easier to scale, but easier to operate. Security, governance and ongoing improvement can be managed through a shared foundation designed to support the organisation's continued international growth.

International recognition for long-term thinking

Today, Icon Group manages its international web presence through a single platform. Regional teams can serve their local markets, while Icon Group maintains consistent standards for brand, security and governance across the organisation. New websites can be launched from the same foundation, avoiding the cost and effort of building and maintaining each one separately.

The strength of that approach earned the platform Umbraco’s 2026 Best Cloud Solution - Site of the Year award, providing independent recognition of the vision behind the platform and the way it was delivered.