Migrated to Sitecore XM Cloud, unlocking personalization, improved search, and faster site performance.
For more than a century, BOK Financial (BOKF) has helped consumers and businesses across the Midwest and Southwest thrive. Built on long‑standing relationships and a deep commitment to the communities it serves, BOKF continuously looks for ways to balance modern digital convenience with the human connection customers expect from their financial institution.
43%
Increase in conversion rates
60%
Reduction in deployment time
100%
Decrease in infrastructure costs
3.40k
Pages updated across nine sites
84
New reusable site components designed and developed
188%
Increase in mobile site speed, 153% increase on desktop
Overview
But behind the scenes, BOKF’s legacy digital platform was no longer supporting that mission. High maintenance costs, mounting technical debt, and limited flexibility were constraining marketing efforts. To keep pace with rising customer expectations and a rapidly evolving digital landscape, BOKF partnered with Horizontal Digital to modernize its platform — moving to a cloud‑based, composable architecture that unlocked performance, scalability, and long‑term growth.
The situation
BOKF was operating on a nine‑year‑old platform that had become increasingly expensive and difficult to maintain. Nearly 60% of annual effort was dedicated to maintenance, limiting the team’s ability to focus on strategic marketing initiatives or new digital capabilities.
Key challenges included:
Without change, BOKF faced escalating long‑term costs and competitive risk. 60% of their work was dedicated to maintenance as technical debt continued to grow, and if the organization stayed on the same platform, maintaining the legacy platform would cost more than if they had modernized in the first place. Not to mention, competitors were adopting composable architectures, personalization capabilities, and getting to market faster.
The solution
BOK Financial tasked Horizontal with assessing their Total Cost of Ownership based on their platform choice: XM Cloud. We were able to outline the specific goals and realistic investments it would take for BOKF to create the digital ecosystem they needed. Once the business case was approved, Horizontal Digital and BOKF’s teams re‑platformed nine websites from a heavily customized Sitecore XP 9.3 multisite instance to a headless front end powered by Sitecore XM Cloud.
Given the complexity of the existing environment, the team took a phased, low‑risk approach:
In close collaboration, we ensured BOKF’s development teams were brought in early so they could learn as we built the platform together.
“Horizontal Digital brought a flexible, collaborative approach that enabled us to establish a joint scrum process and ramp up platform management quickly. Their partnership was instrumental in building a solid business case with the right baseline to move the project forward.”
Christy Ary, SVP, Director of Digital Experience & Innovation
The results
The move to Sitecore XM Cloud delivered immediate, measurable impact — both technically and strategically. With legacy constraints removed, BOKF’s teams can now focus on high‑value initiatives like data integrations, personalization, lead generation, and ongoing experience optimization.
Beyond performance gains, the composable nature of Sitecore allows BOKF to integrate new marketing technologies more easily, ensuring the organization can fully leverage its investments without wasted spend or unnecessary complexity.
Ready to modernize and improve your digital experiences? We have completed over 300+ successful implementations and projects — and we can help you, too.
