Future Group
— FLDL

The Organisation

Future Learning and Development Ltd (FLDL) was the learning arm of the Future Group — one of India's largest retail and enterprise conglomerates. Relaunched in 2010, FLDL operated three distinct lines of business serving different segments: organisational training for corporates, higher education through an IGNOU partnership, and skill development with graduate recruitment.

The existing website — fhdl.in — was statically designed with limited CMS capability and had been maintained on an ad hoc basis. Future Learning needed a web presence that could represent the parent brand and all three LOBs coherently, support multiple audience types, and function as a platform for recruitment, programme discovery, and institutional collaboration.

Web Architecture

The project was structured as a multi-domain web presence — not a single site, but a coordinated architecture across four related properties. The FLDL parent site served as the landing point and brand anchor, with Future Innoversity and Future Sharp on independent domains, and Future Lead initially layered within FLDL with independent domain planned.

Site Structure — FLDL Parent

The FLDL parent site served the full range of audiences — potential corporate clients, students, faculty, partners, and internal staff. The sitemap covered eight primary sections, each addressing a different audience need.

Project Scope & Objectives

The brief — prepared by Future Learning's marketing team — was comprehensive. The new web presence was required to serve multiple audiences simultaneously: potential corporate clients seeking training solutions, students exploring higher education programmes, faculty and trainers, partner institutions, potential employees, and internal staff via an employee intranet.

Key objectives from the brief

• Results in a comprehensive, interactive, effective and aesthetically pleasing internet presence for Future Learning and its 3 LOBs
• Reflects the qualities and strengths of Future Learning via a positive, professional presentation
• Supports collaboration within and outside Future Learning — building the FLDL community
• Addresses information needs of external audiences: alumni, public, potential faculty, students, and partner organisations
• Supports recruitment of faculty, clients, students, and potential employees
• Integrates CMS, SMS, and automated processes for content management
• Enhances search engine optimisation across all four properties
• Targets a measurable 20% month-on-month increase in site visits following launch
• Unique design — "even looking at winning website design awards as a benchmark"

The three phases

• Phase 1 — Design and build the Future Learning and LOB websites. Populate with initial content. Establish maintenance processes. Target: February 2011 launch.
• Phase 2 — Determine need for automated processes and web applications. Integrate CMS and SMS. Prioritise and implement additional functionality.
• Phase 3 — Recommend and implement ongoing web services provision and operational structure.

The Scale of the Brief

This was not a single website — it was a coordinated digital ecosystem for a major Indian corporate, covering four brand presences, an employee intranet, and a planned programme of ongoing web services. The audiences ranged from C-suite corporate training buyers to IGNOU students to fresh graduates to Future Group band 2 internal candidates.

The diversity of the audience — B2B and B2C across all three LOBs — required information architecture that could serve radically different needs from the same family of sites without confusion or compromise on either end.