Turning Content Chaos into Web Strategy

Applying Web Content Management Best Practices in Your Enterprise

WHITE PAPER November 2006

Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006

Executive Summary ..............................................................................................................................3 Empower the business owner..............................................................................................................4 Think globally. Act locally. ..................................................................................................................4 Embrace diversity..................................................................................................................................5 Get personal...........................................................................................................................................5 See the bigger picture...........................................................................................................................5 Conclusion .............................................................................................................................................6 About FileNet Web Site Manager .........................................................................................................7 About FileNet Corporation....................................................................................................................7

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Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006

Executive Summary In business today, the Web plays an increasingly important and complex role. As Web users have become more sophisticated, their expectations for site content and caliber have dramatically increased. Add to this the addition of expanding Web functionality, including blogs, wikis, multimedia components and personalization, and companies are faced with a growing management challenge.

This new paradigm has made the need for next generation Web Content Management tools obvious, although navigating the range of options can be difficult without a clear understanding of the converging trends in Web content and business strategy. This paper outlines the primary guidelines and best practices companies should consider in addressing the changing needs of their Web visitors. These include:

Empowering the business owner. By arming business owners with the capabilities to manage their own content, the best Web Content Management tools can minimize the burden on IT, improve global brand consistency and reduce costs.

Enabling global consistency and local control. For international companies, localized sites can be critically important for business success. Effective Web Content Management solutions must enable easy localization while ensuring consistency and accuracy in content enterprise wide.

Integrating new content types. Blogs, wikis and other multimedia capabilities are becoming the norm on the Web. Todays most successful sites can leverage Web Content Management tools to seamlessly integrate and manage this functionality to ensure relevance for their audiences.

Personalizing the experience. Web users now expect to see content customized to their needs. By integrating Web Content Management tools with your companys broader Enterprise Content Management strategy, you can create stronger customer relationships and deepen loyalty.

Understanding the broader content context. Implementing an integrated Enterprise Content Management strategy that incorporates Web Content Management enables companies to improve productivity, enhance compliance and deliver a more compelling customer experience.

By using these key considerations as a guide during the evaluation process, you can select the optimal Web Content Management tools for your specific needs and help make your Web presence a more compelling and customer-oriented experience.

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Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006 With the Web playing such an important role in virtually every type of business today, the challenge of maintaining an impactful and effective site has become increasingly complex. Whether consumer or business oriented, visitors expectations for Web content and caliber have become more sophisticated. Social computing such as blogs and wikis, multimedia elements including video, audio and flash pieces, the demand for personalized information delivery, and even the growing globalization of business have made manual Web editing and management arcane and are even challenging the limits of some of the early Web Content Management (WCM) tools companies have employed.

The first generation efforts at managing Web content have included a wide array of home-grown and cobbled together systems. While these approaches have recognized the need for a better approach to managing Web content, they have not succeeded in overcoming information silos or the challenges posed by a growing cadre of content providers. Because theses systems frequently require direct IT involvement in updating Web content, the Webmaster often remains the bottleneck, and the process for updating content remains rife with redundancies and inefficiencies. According to Lou Latham, a Principal Research Analyst at Gartner, Companies continue to publish more on internal and external Web sites, and in most cases, the large volume of content and constant updating overwhelm manual processes. Without WCM, companies send content to a central Webmaster (which can become a severe bottleneck) or permit different constituencies to edit their Web content (which invites anarchy).1 Beyond this, the new pressures for records management and other compliance requirements have brought out an additional area of concern that early Web Content Management solutions were not designed to address.

This has resulted in a new focus on WCM and the need for next generation capabilities. But, many companies have found navigating the various WCM options challenging. To effectively evaluate the disparate offerings, it is important to understand how the trends in Web content and broader business strategy are converging. With this foundation, companies can identify the key functionality and capabilities that will best serve their Web content management needs over the long term. The following guidelines offer an important starting point for establishing your companys Web content strategy:

Empower the business owner. The proliferation of content and the need for personalized delivery have placed an unfair burden on IT for Web functionality. To date, this has been due to the complexity of solutions for managing Web content. Too much time has been spent managing and editing multiple sites manually. As a result, IT has been cited as the bottleneck in updating content, while marketing teams have had to apply a piece-meal approach to global Web management.

With the new integrated Web Content Management and Enterprise Content Management solutions, IT can achieve its goals for empowering the business user, consolidating vendors, and integrating enterprise systems simultaneously. The ease of use that comes with the new WYSIWYG tools for Web updating and content uploading makes it much easier to train and empower business users with minimal technical expertise. These individuals can easily master the capabilities they need to manage Web content for themselves with minimal IT involvement. At the same time, these new offerings provide better control over brand standards and ensure consistency across sites and around the world.

By simplifying administration, off-loading updating tasks and consolidating content management platforms, these comprehensive solutions can result in cost savings and more efficient use of IT resources. More than just translating content into HTML or serving as a publishing tool, the most effective Web Content Management solutions will automate the process for content review and approval, cataloging and indexing, selecting and assembling, and deployment. These capabilities transform Web management into a business function, enabling IT to refocus attention on more critical operational needs without having to worry about the appearance and ongoing upkeep of the companys web presence.

Think globally. Act locally. In addition to expanding the need for updated content, the Web has dramatically sped up the globalization of business in todays market. Companies in Singapore, the U.S. or South Africa are now immediately visible all the way around the globe. The speed of this exposure has made creating a Web presence in localized languages and supporting the online efforts of local subsidiaries and offices increasingly important. Maintaining consistency and accuracy in all of these efforts, however, has proven challenging.

To appropriately address these requirements, Web Content Management tools must first and foremost effectively support multiple languages. Beyond this, one of the most important concerns is maintaining consistency in presenting the brand. In the past, companies often had to rely

1 Latham, Lou, New Demands Have Revived Web Content Management, Gartner, January 13, 2006.

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Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006 on disparate agencies or Web design and development resources to update site content. This often led to inconsistencies and inaccuracies in content. By implementing a shared content repository for information and imagery, effective Web Content Management tools offer all of your Web contributors and content updaters immediate access to the most recent and consistent content wherever they may be around the world. This facilitates better adherence to brand guidelines by simplifying retrieval of content elements. It also eliminates redundancy in the development of content on a global scale. Rather than recreating the wheel, divisions or their Web agencies can repurpose any content used in other locations or sites for their specific needs. Whether they need text elements for product catalogs or customer success stories, or imagery that meets the organizations specific brand guidelines, all approved content resides in a single location to facilitate easy access and reuse. The centralized content repository can also minimize your companys dependence on external resources by making it easy to leverage investments in Web work completed by any individual or division in your company.

Beyond these conveniences, second generation Web Content Management tools can also simplify the review, approval and translation process for added efficiencies and elimination of errors. The integration of business process management automates routing and approval for more efficient oversight of translation. This enables Web-related employees to focus on actual content strategy and development rather than the administrative tediousness of tracking down the status of in-process updates.

Embrace diversity. In addition to globalization, new types of Web content have made management more complicated. Blogs have made the Web experience much more personal and interactive. With many companies utilizing this tool as way to get closer to their customers and allow employees to express themselves in a more compelling manner, it is critical that Web Content Management tools effectively manage this new source. This management process becomes more complex in the case of wikis. A wiki is a type of content that can be edited by anyone with content editing tools. While this may not be an appropriate customer-facing option for most organizations, more progressive companies have started using this tool in a more controlled intranet setting to facilitate team collaboration.

While these less controlled content sources create the greatest challenge for people charged with managing a companys Web presence, the proliferation of multimedia content, including audio, video and flash elements, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) can further tax a system. It is critical that Web Content Management tools can handle this full range of content types and allow for the introduction of new types of content that are sure to become available in the near future. To accomplish this, it is important that your Web content management solution leverage open-standards, such as Java to facilitate future-proofing.

Recently, the emphasis on content has also centered on the needs for Digital Asset Management. Growing graphic sophistication and rich media have made storage, access and application of these elements a major concern. When considering Web Content Management tools, it is important to ensure that they make it easy for business users to access and edit approved digital images across the globe to enable faster and easier publishing.

Get personal. The increased interactivity that blogs and wikis have enabled has transformed the expectations of todays Web user. Web content is playing a much more integral role in our interactions with customers, who now demand content that feels more relevant and personalized to their specific needs. To accomplish this, companies must approach Web Content Management as part of their larger Enterprise Content Management strategy. This entails integrating existing knowledge about specific customers and developing intelligence based on previous interactions and their existing relationship with the company.

By integrating Web interfaces with existing ERP, CRM and other enterprise systems, you can enable more targeted delivery of online content to each visitor. This is a particularly useful approach for sites with self-service functions where customers must log in. Companies now have the opportunity to more carefully target marketing efforts within self-service activities. This functionality begs for an open standards-based tool that can seamlessly integrate with portals, search engines, syndication and aggregation products, and enterprise systems.

See the bigger picture. From a broader business perspective, seeing your Web content management needs as fundamentally and inherently content management needs will put you further down the strategic path of implementing a broader Enterprise Content Management strategy. Whether content is created for the Web or other business purposes, by managing it using a comprehensive, integrated solution that facilitates creation, editing, approval workflows, publishing and compliance assurance, your entire business can benefit.

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Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006 As a result, when looking for a WCM solution for your business, there are clear advantages of products that are already integrated into a larger Enterprise Content Management suite. It makes no sense to implement a Web solution that introduces new content silos when improving integration and breaking down silos is a broader business objective and increasingly a competitive and regulatory requirement. By looking at WCM as a subset of your larger Enterprise Content Management strategy, you can position your company for added agility and avoid the future pitfalls of having to stitch together a variety of solutions to enable enterprise-wide content integration and access.

Conclusion The Web is a powerful and evolving business tool. With the right solutions and processes in place, companies can capitalize on this important interactive opportunity, while streamlining its operational impact. In evaluating your options, it is important to carefully consider their individual functionality as well as their fit within the companys broader Enterprise Content Management strategy. Focus your evaluation on tools that offer:

an open standards-based approach, such as 100% Java easy integration with existing enterprise systems a comprehensive approach to content management that can grow with your business in-context authoring for business user empowerment digital asset management automated workflow and approval easy to implement multi-site management multi-language capabilities and automated translation dynamic delivery and personalization

With this extensive feature set, your Web Content Management solution will ensure that your Web presence will become an integral part of your companys approach to content and a much more compelling experience for your customers.

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Applying Web Content Management Best Practices Into Your Strategy November 2006

About FileNet Web Site Manager FileNet Web Site Manager (WSM) is a dynamic Web content management solution that manages the user experience and delivers content for large numbers of global Web sites, all from a single platform. FileNet WSM enables business users to manage Web sites on a global scale with reduced dependence on IT for updates. Web authors can take advantage of an intuitive, easy to use Web content management interface or simply manage their content directly in FileNet P8, portal environments, Microsoft Office or SharePoint environments.

This enterprise-class solution uniquely combines easy-to-use Web content management capabilities with integrated process functionality to manage the creation, approval and publication of Web content and complex documents to multiple Web sites, in multiple formats and multiple languages all from a single platform.

Web Site Manager allows Web content to be personalized and targeted to a specific audience, ensuring that content is timely and relevant. And the product allows organizations to keep Web content up to date and on target across various business channels while still maintaining strict control over the presentation quality of all content. Companies can also set up user profiles to better target content and improve interaction or restrict access to certain users on any site.

With FileNet Web Site Manager, site creation and management are easy, thanks to pre-built navigation elements that eliminate the need for coding of features such as sitemaps, bread crumbs and navigation. Pre-built components allow users to incorporate dynamic Web features such as search, lists, forms, and other predefined content types easily. And the template wizard makes deployment of pre-built design styles hassle free.

FileNet Web Site Manager also provides support for Web content that needs to be delivered to multiple channels in multiple formats, eCommerce online storefront transactions, and the rapid creation and launching of micro-sites in support of specific Web or mixed media campaigns. Companies can also use the solutions Advanced Content Management capabilities to create forms for emails, streamline the creation of new content and capture customer feedback. And with a document importer, WebDAV-enabled tools for editing and a WYSIWYG designer tool, FileNet Web Site Manager delivers the functionality companies need to create compelling, consistent and customer-driven sites.

About FileNet Corporation FileNet Corporation, an IBM company, helps organizations make better decisions by managing the content and processes that drive their business. FileNets Enterprise Content Management (ECM) solutions allow customers to build and sustain competitive advantage by managing content throughout their organizations, automating and streamlining their business processes, and providing a spectrum of connectivity needed to simplify their critical and everyday decision-making.

FileNet ECM products are designed to deliver a broad set of capabilities that integrate with existing information systems to provide cost-effective solutions that solve real-world business problems.

Since the Companys founding in 1982, more than 4,300 organizations, including more than three quarters of the FORTUNE 100, have taken advantage of FileNet solutions for help in managing their mission-critical content and processes.

Headquartered in Costa Mesa, Calif., the Company markets its innovative ECM solutions in more than 90 countries through its own global sales, professional services and support organizations, as well as via its ValueNet Partner network of resellers, system integrators and application developers.

To learn more about FileNets ECM solutions, please visit us at www.filenet.com. In the United States, call 1-800-FileNet.

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