In my last post I started discussing who benefits from using a CMS for managing web content. In that post, I talked about the IT Department. In this second part I turn my eyes towards marketing.

Fundamentally, marketing exists for one purpose – to drive sales. Whether through brand definition, community outreach, product launches, advertising, and so on all marketing functions ultimately lead towards increasing leads and supporting sales efforts. In order to do that the marketing team is constantly evaluating new ways to drive towards that goal.

Of all the areas in an organization the marketing department in many ways is the most dynamic. Whether driven by seasonality, customer response, new offerings or whatever, the marketing professional is constantly looking at the same things in new ways.

In order then to be successful at marketing, a company needs to be able to quickly execute strategies before windows of opportunity close. To that end agility is the name of the game. When marketing is then handcuffed by inefficiency or lack of control they are not able to perform at 100%. This can be especially true with the website.

By giving marketing the power to manage the website’s content, navigation and design they are best able to adapt the web presence to meet the needs of the day. Web content management then is the tool that is best suited to do that. Not only because it lowers the technical threshold necessary to work with the site, but because it also protects the the site’s elements from inadvertent changes. As opposed to website editors that just allow you to edit the code, a CMS system isolates the elements from each other and allows the proper process to be followed while still offering a fast-paced environment to work within.

Furthermore by lessening the technical aspects of updating the website the marketing team can move about freely within the scope of their efforts without having to rely on the IT Department or an outsourced vendor. This independence then translates to a more effective web presence and a bottom-line decrease in costs associated with the site.

So if you are in the marketing team at any company and want to have the freedom that web CMS can provide, be sure to consider novo, it’s ideally suited for your needs.

-- Mike

Follow Michael Villa on Twitter: @mikevilla

Over the next few posts, I’m going to shed some light on how Dovetail and a website built on novo helps different groups within the organization. Today’s focus is on IT.

From an IT perspective websites often play a conflicting role. As the technical drivers of the organization, it is necessary they play an active role in the website at some level. But it is often not their desire to be “responsible” for the website.

From technology review to due-diligence their input is part of the critical path to adoption. However too often the website does not move away from IT once selection is done. From the standpoint of being responsible for a site being up and available IT is certainly key, however they are not always the ideal group to deal with the overall production and upkeep of the site once running.

Technically, IT personnel will often possess the skills necessary to work with HTML, scripting and database technologies, but where they excel in that arena, they are not ideally suited for combining that within the context of a company’s marketing strategy.

We have found that clients who are able to leverage IT from a system selection and upkeep perspective while allowing marketing to utilize their team to maintain the site a stronger, more dynamic web presence is often the result. In this scenario IT is able to provide appropriate control and oversight while transferring the responsibility of upkeep to Marketing.

Would you ask IT to type all of your reports simply because they installed Office in the organization? Of course not. But that is often what happens with the website. To that end, allowing IT to help provide (and support) the web toolset fits in with their charge, and the website objectives all at the same time.

And here at Dovetail, novo provides a solution that is works for both sides of the website brain (IT and Marketing) because we are IT and marketing professionals ourselves. We’ve built novo to solve this problem.

So if you are part of an IT team that has been asked to be responsible for the website, take a look at the content management capabilities of novo, sign up for a personal demo and see how you can provide the company with the power to change the way your company sees IT’s role in the website.

-- Mike

follow Michael Villa on Twitter: @mikevilla