Benefits of content management
The value of a company's web site is directly related to the
accuracy and speed with which its content can be made
available.
As corporate web sites have developed from passive shop windows,
containing static information, into interactive portals providing
access to personalised business processes for inPidual users within
the business community, the complexity of their structures and the
task of maintaining their content has increased dramatically.
Content Management Systems, such as Immediacy, facilitate this
activity and deliver business benefit in terms of efficiency,
control and increased content value.
1. Content creation and updating
A Content Management System ensures that a company's web site is
focused on the achievement of business objectives, rather than
being driven by technical issues, by putting control of content
into the hands of its business experts.
Using only standard office applications, business owners can
create and update content by simply dragging and dropping files to
submit content to the Content Management System, which
automatically applies corporate style and formatting to publish the
new content and maintain a consistent look and feel to the
site.
To overcome the problems created by inaccurate or contradictory
content, automated approval procedures ensure content is correct
before publication. These give structure to the approval process by
using user-definable workflow to notify assigned approvers of
changes to content. Publication is automatic once approval has been
signed-off.
By achieving content changes in much reduced times and by
ensuring content accuracy, a Content Management System reduces the
time to market, delivers improvements to the user experience and
saves costs through rationalised resource utilisation.
2. Consistent corporate branding
A coherent web site design philosophy, consistently implemented,
is essential to successful Web communication. All too often, the ad
hoc development and manual editing associated with the traditional
static web site resulted in confused site appearance and
navigation. This led to inconsistent branding and diluted corporate
identity, and required considerable effort to police and
control.
A Content Management System establishes the design philosophy
and ensures it is consistently applied throughout the site to
maintain corporate identity and branding. The use of templates
allows a 'design once' approach which, by separating content from
presentation, reduces the time and effort required to create and
police the brand. The benefit is extended to re-branding activities
that, being far easier and less costly to implement, allow the
adoption of a more dynamic and vibrant corporate identity.
3. Streamlined centralised management
A Content Management System that uses template based publishing
and a dynamic content repository centralises control to deliver
numerous benefits and efficiencies.
Development and deployment investments made for one site can be
leveraged for the deployment of further sites that require the same
corporate values. Code changes that alter functionality propagate
seamlessly across the site. The simple fact that site menus are
fully automated and therefore always reflect the latest site
content, means huge savings in effort and cost.
Such centralised management delivers on-going efficiencies and
cost savings by allowing further changes to be synchronised across
multiple sites as a single activity, avoiding the repeated costs of
managing each site separately. Taken together, the separation of
content from presentation and the provision of centralised
management also ensure that a company's assets are easily prepared
for dissemination across the increasing variety of platforms, web
browsers, PDAs,Web TV and the new generation mobile phones.
4. Protecting content value
If content is the 'currency of the digital age' then protecting
the value of that content becomes central to a company's ability to
succeed. It must be accurate, up to date and easy to find.
Inaccurate content is unacceptable, it exposes a company to
jeopardy by threatening its credibility and inviting legal risk.
Out of date content indicates commercial lethargy and will
discourage visitors. Poorly structured content that is hard to
navigate and search will do the same.
A Content Management System protects the value of content by
accelerating and automating publication processes, putting control
of content into the hands of the business experts and providing
centralised administration of its presentation.
5. Adding new features
To build lasting value from their corporate web sites, companies
need to be able to respond to the more sophisticated demands from
users with enhanced features to extend the capabilities offered. A
Content Management System makes this possible by providing a number
of capabilities that the traditionally managed web sites cannot
deliver.
Some of these enhancements, such as rapid authoring and
streamlined approval, have already been mentioned. Others
include:-
- categorisation to improve searching and to allow information to
be targeted at users according to their interests
- enabling organisations to personalise the user experience
- internationalisation to ensure the appropriate presentation of
information on sites spanning economical, political and cultural
borders
- integration with other enterprise systems
- syndication of content to sites with similar market
interests
- simplified application integration through the use of shared
code, delivered via templates, that also enables up-front
integration costs to be spread across many web site application
implementations.