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Lessons learned
Workforce IT leaders learned several lessons during the effort, and they offer these tips on how to make a CMS work best for the online scenario:

• Pick the right partner. "We always knew we had a sizeable amount of content on our site and in the CMS," said Dortch. "However, we learned that given the right interface and tools, that content doesn't have to be daunting to interact with. The process of migrating to Advantage has made us really grow to enjoy and benefit from the degree of control the system gives us. CrownPeak worked diligently with us to ensure that any problems that arose were properly handled, and they made the configuration changes to tailor the system to our exact needs."
• Tomorrow's changes are as important as today's requirements. "I can't stress enough how important it is for a CMS to move as quickly as your business," noted Howard. "Web sites change. Processes change. Any CMS has to be able to change rapidly to enable a new look and feel, a new site section, adjustment to workflow, or permissions. And it has to be able to do so without a staff of experts on standby to make that change. A reasonable cost for modifying the system is absolutely critical."
• Integrate to win. "Running a successful online publishing business means having to offer a wide range of functionality--typically provided by third-party applications--to satisfy clients, employees, and partners," said Howard. "The CMS usually becomes the integration point for all of these third-party applications. Because of our commitment to Web services and other connection methods, it was straightforward for us to extend the CMS to give the Workforce team the ability to handle these various applications via a single interface."
• Importing content. The size of the content repository was an interesting challenge, noted Howard. "Moving that much content over, even when it was already in a database, required significant effort. We've built some strong import tools, but nothing replaces a visual review of each page as part of the QA process."
• Usability is as important as functionality. It was critical to keep forms and control panels as simple and understandable as possible for non-technical users. "By reviewing the interfaces of their proprietary CMS, and through discussions with Workforce's content creation team, we identified several areas where we knew an improved interface could yield operational improvements," said Hudson. "Our CMS provided the flexibility for designing interfaces and processes that are clean and efficient, while providing enough structure to maintain a cohesive experience throughout the system."
• Outsourcing can lessen the load. CrownPeak's ASP model provided major performance boost to the site: By decoupling the CMS from Workforce's live serving environment, the server was no longer burdened with the overhead of serving Web pages and running a CMS, which greatly improved server performance.
• Focus on your core business. Outsourcing the CMS meant that Workforce no longer had the responsibility for managing and ensuring the availability and reliability of the solution. It was free to concentrate on its core business--providing world-class content to HR professionals.

How a CMS can enhance online operations
First published January 8, 2002
By Geoff Choo

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