Agility Launches Cloud-Based Web CMS Suite for Magazine Publishers

Having provided web content management solutions for major brands over ten years, Agility is now launching a new, cloud-based Magazine Publishing Suite that is optimized for online magazines and blogs. 

In February, Agility announced a template-based solution for online magazines that's strikingly familiar. It appears the suite was first announced at this time, but is now officially launching.

CEO Michael Assad said in a statement that the Suite “follows the success we’ve had with our CMS platform in the media and publishing space,” and that it “saves months of setup time and tens of thousands of dollars over traditional web publishing systems.” He added that the Magazine Publishing Suite is intended to help publishers who are “struggling to find their footing online” make the transition to digital versions of their properties.

Media-Heavy Sites

The Toronto-based company said its Suite was developed over five years, and has been built on its experience of working with large media companies and serving millions of page views.  

The system is oriented toward media-heavy sites that offer frequent updates of images and video, as well as text, and the company said it was the only online publishing suite specifically intended for media sites (we'd argue with that, pointing out Atex as another example). The company’s customers currently include Glow Magazine, Canadian Bride, Clean Eating, Oxygen, Oprah Winfrey Network and W Network.

The Suite is designed around nine areas that target website performance — layout and navigation, advertising and ad placement, search engine optimization, content merchandizing, social media integration, content syndication, mobile, community and performance.

Subscription Integration

The magazine-specific features include the ability to integrate the system with major magazine subscription systems, and a built-in module for showcasing magazine issues. The CMS is also oriented toward continuous content updates, has support for articles, blog posts, galleries and videos, and can import content from the publisher’s current Web CMS.

There are also such functions as Latest Articles, including an automatic update to the most recently published items, Popular Articles, Polls and Contributor Workflow to channel writers’ submission into the editing/publishing process.

Using the CMS, Agility said that a new site can be ready for business in as little as five weeks.

The delivery process, which is covered by a $1000 setup fee, involves consultation with Agility’s experts, design of a site skin, content deployment from a current site and training. The system is priced at $300/month, with additional charges for tech support by phone, support for external contributors and other add-ons.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

WoodWing Software Adds DAM Capabilities to Portfolio with Elvis DAM Purchase

Elvis DAM has a new owner. WoodWing Software, provider of multi-channel publishing solutions, has purchased Dutchsoftware, maker of Elvis DAM.

The digital asset management solution, developed in 2008, is powered by the Lucene search engine, best known for its use in Wikipedia, and is extensible through integrations with other apps and through plug-ins. The product, available for local installation or as a software-as-a-service, is intended to be open, scalable and easy to install and administer.

Working in Tandem

Hans Janssen, WoodWing Software CEO, said in a statement that publishers and corporations “are looking for solutions that support their increasing multi-channel publishing activities,” most notably rich media. He said that Elvis DAM “makes digital assets such as images and videos easily accessible and manageable,” and that its addition to the WoodWing portfolio strengthens his company’s market position.

The two companies’ main products have been working in tandem for some time. WoodWing’s flagship publishing system, Enterprise, is used as part of an integrated solution with Elvis DAM for a number of mutual customers worldwide. Moving forward, the companies said that Enterprise’s channel of over 90 partners will now also be offered Elvis DAM.

WoodWing President Erik Schut told news media that the two products are “very much complementary.” He noted that Enterprise provides a workflow for publishing to multiple channels in a collaborative environment, while Elvis “is all about securely storing a quickly growing amount of media assets,” classified with metadata for fast access and re-use.

Separate Product

Schut added that Elvis’ media assets can be accessed directly from Enterprise, and WoodWing intends to “bring the integration to an even higher level.”

Elvis will continue as a separate product, as will Enterprise’s ability to integrate with other, third-party DAM providers. Schut said the company was committed to open systems so that customers can pick the most suitable components.

Dutchsoftware staff will move to WoodWing’s headquarters, which is only a few kilometers away in Zaandam, The Netherlands. Founded in 2000, WoodWing’s products began with the line of Smart productivity and efficiency plug-ins. Its Enterprise Digital Publishing Solution, designed to publish content to multiple channels, includes the content management application Content Station.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Dreamforce Takeaway? Salesforce Gears-up to Takeover the Enterprise

And you say you want a revolution, we all want to change the world….

Once upon a time Salesforce.com was a startup that provided hosted Sales Automation solutions. Co- founded by former Oracle executive and Larry Ellison protégé, Marc Benioff, the company’s explicitly stated mission was “the End of Software.”

Today Benioff is credited by many, including Wikipedia, for “turning the software industry on its head” for using the Internet to “revamp the way software programs are designed and distributed.” Salesforce’s annual user conference, Dreamforce, which ends today, welcomed more than 90,000 registered participants (I suspect some of them virtual), displacing Oracle OpenWorld as the largest Enterprise software conference in the world.

Fait accompli Mr. Benioff?

Apparently not. A guy like Benioff, who walks over hot coals and jumps off tall bridges in the dark of the night, isn’t the type who rests on his laurels.

Last Tuesday, using a Show ‘N Tell keynote as his medium, Benioff declared revolution again.

If the Salesforce CEO has his way, a few years from now, information workers all over the planet will be working from his company’s “social stream”, Chatter, and their desktops might look like Enterprise versions of Facebook.

Altimeter Group founder and author of best-selling Groundswell, Charlene Li, summarized Benioff’s keynote in a tweet:

And if you look at everything that Salesforce has acquired of late and with how the purchases are integrated into Salesforce’s various clouds, it’s hard to argue Li.

Consider that since 2010 Salesforce has purchased:

• Sitemasher, now known as site.com
• Activa Live Chat, now known as Salesforce Live Agent
• Heroku, a Cloud Application Platform to deploy and scale powerful apps
• Etacts, a technology that connects with your Gmail account (using oAuth), and integrates with your inbox to build out your list of contacts. The service also allows you to connect your mobile phone and will track who you talk to frequently over the phone or SMS
• Dimdim which provides for real time, rich-media collaboration and meetings
• Manymoon (Fe) — now known as Do.com
• Radian6 which helps companies listen to what people are saying about them online and engage in those conversations across the social web
• Assistly, now known as Desk.com — Model Metrics which delivers applications and services as part of the Software-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service
• Rypple (now Work.com) an application for Social Employee Performance Management
• Stypi, a collaborative real-time text editor
• Buddy Media, the social enterprise software of choice for eight of the world’s top ten global advertisers
• ChoicePass, a customized corporate perks and employee rewards technology company
• Thinkfuse, an enterprise SaaS provider that integrates closely with email to streamline scheduled communications
• GoInstant, a co-browsing solution that allows two or more people to browse the web together in a real-time interactive session.

Much of the Dreamforce Conference was spent explaining how all of these acquisitions will be/have been integrated into Salesforce to transform the workplaces of today into the socially connected Enterprises of tomorrow.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint: Empowering Your User Base

In previous articles, we have covered the different solutions that can be built using SharePoint. But even the best of features are no good if they aren’t being fully utilized by the organization. 

As I spend time talking to various organizations I continually come back to a few clear points that seem to cause issues with adoption in the organization. Most of these issues are associated with how SharePoint has been implemented and really have very little to do with the actually toolset itself.

In this article we are going to cover one of the key issues that I have seen over and over again and then discuss some various techniques and methods that you can implement to avoid it within your organization. 

Empowering Your User Base

One of the best features of SharePoint is that with the right expectations, training and guidance your internal Information Workers can be empowered to build solutions without having to work with IT or have IT build it for them. There are endless possibilities for the potential solutions that can be implemented.

Using the tools available within SharePoint, within your organization you can build different types of composite solutions, including things like:

• Help Desk Ticket Tracking
• Training Registration
• Blogging
• Project Management

The best part of these solutions is that they access a collection of toolsets that are already familiar to your end users. A great example of this is when you are able to combine content from Visio, Excel and SharePoint and build it together in a single dashboard type solution. Since the users are already working with familiar toolsets they are able to quickly and easily build solutions.

Where Training Comes In

The key to really being able to take advantage of these things, however, is having a good game plan in place. Being able to look at where you are, where you want to go and then building a plan that helps you get there. One of the most important pieces to this plan is the training and guidance that you will provide to your users.

Will you offer a quick training course and send them on their way? Will you teach them how to translate business needs into technical solutions? Will you teach them all about the different options they have or just offer small classes focused on their specific needs?

The best part about all of this, is that any option is a good option. Your training plan should be as unique as your organization! You should be able to build a solution that is perfect for just what you need. The key to really doing that is to first get a high level understanding of all that you can do within SharePoint and then review where you are going as an organization and build a path that will get you there.

Getting up to speed on the product can be quite the task, but here is a resource to help you understand what can be done with SharePoint:

• Thoughts for a Newbie

Once you are up to speed on all the product has to offer, then it’s time for you to start mapping out your own internal training plan. Here are some quick ideas on different things you could try. Remember though, it should be customized based on your organization’s needs:

• Internal User Group: Have a regular meeting where you cover various training topics. The meeting would be open to all Site Admins and you could use it as a time to show off internal wins.
• Required Classroom Training: Require that site admins attend classroom training. This can be training you develop or training that you work with a partner to access.
• Open Office Hours: Develop a collection of open hours that you make experts available to answer questions from your users or site admins.
• Create Solution Design Workshops: Develop a set workshops that can be conducted with users to help them identify ways to accurately gather requirements and how to map them out to functionality within SharePoint.

Remember, no matter how you choose to approach it, the most important thing is that you account for training and plan for it! The only bad plan is no plan!
 

Editor's Note: Jennifer writes frequently about SharePoint. To read more:

— Customizing SharePoint: Start with the Solution or the Business Problem?

About the Author

Jennifer Mason is a SharePoint Server MVP that has spent the last several years providing consulting services around SharePoint Technologies. She is currently working with the team at SharePoint911. Her focus has been on strategy, planning, governance and best practices for implementing business solutions using SharePoint Technologies. She is the author of “Microsoft SharePoint 2010: Creating and Implementing Real World Projects,” a resource for no-code solutions for SharePoint.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

WebDAM Adds PowerPoint, Batch Downloading Features

Digital asset management (DAM) provider WebDAM Solutions is launching new features that are designed to increase efficiency and streamline productivity.

One set of features revolve around the use of PowerPoint file assets. Users can now centralize, control, catalog, share and play their PowerPoint presentations within WebDAM, from any connected device.

Preset Downloading

Other new PowerPoint management features include in-page viewing, full screen viewing inside WebDAM, thumbnail previews for navigation within a PowerPoint presentation, a high-quality HTML 5 viewer and iPad/iPhone compatibility.

Ron Selvey, WebDAM Director of Marketing, said in a statement that he found the new PowerPoint management functions to be “one of the most exciting” new features, because it’s essential for him “to be able to quickly find, repurpose, and share presentation assets.”

The enhancements also include the ability to individually download or batch download digital assets in the desired format, with WebDAM handling the conversion. Supported file formats include jpeg, png, tiff, eps, bmp, gif and pdf.

Users select the format, resolution, dimensions and color space prior to downloading, and download settings can be configured each time or fixed, in order to standardize around formats and other parameters. An administrator can label fixed download presets such as print, website or email.

Extending DAM

The PowerPoint addition is only the most recent in a series of functions that WebDAM has been adding to extend the definition of what a digital asset management system can provide.

In July, for instance, the company added collaboration features that could be useful when crunching under deadlines. Those features, based around email notifications and alerts, provide everyone in a designated team with the status of the assets in question. Updates are sent when those assets are modified in a specified way.

Those modifications include assets being commented on, uploaded or downloaded, deleted, moved or edited. Notifications and alerts can be tied to actions performed on specific assets, and users can see any edits or changes that have been made.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Inside AT&T's Democratic and Republican Convention Apps

The apps are similar, but only one party asked for a feature for "farm-to-fork foodies."

Chris Hill, the VP of the Advanced Mobility Solutions unit at AT&T, was a driving force behind smartphone apps made especially for the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. Guess which party’s app features a “farm-to-fork foodie” section?

FAST COMPANY: Are apps like this new for AT&T?

CHRIS HILL: We’ve been doing them for the better part of the last two and a half years. Advance Mobility Solutions is a dedicated business unit within AT&T that started three years ago. We took a lot of learnings in the entertainment, media, and hospitality verticals and applied them to a large event like these conventions.

What features do the convention apps have?

There’s live video streaming from the convention, there’s social media integration. We have messaging functionality in both applications, and breaking news feeds and alerts. Then you have attraction-finders, the ability to find local businesses and attractions. You have an interactive schedule, showing how events map to the convention floor.

You’ve essentially made a disposable app. Why dedicate resources for a one-off app?

It makes a big impact for the attendees. You can increase the value of the event considerably. We’re building these applications on configurable platforms, so we can reuse a lot of the intellectual property built up around these applications. This isn’t millions of dollars going into designing applications that are disposable--there’s lots of reusable components.

Are the RNC and DNC apps fundamentally the same?

Lots of the underlying components are similar, but each was custom designed to the specifications of the particular host committees.

What differences leap to mind?

For the DNC, they wanted to make sure we had a number of things in the Fun category. So we had a number of different applications for experiences set up, for shopaholics and farm-to-fork foodies, for example. The RNC app had a QR code scavenger hunt, directing attendees to see local businesses in the Tampa area.

Was the farm-to-fork foodie feature not quite a hit in the RNC’s app?

We didn’t have that in the Republican version.

With AT&T making apps for both the RNC and DNC, was there any concern over a conflict of interest?

We had different teams working on the finished interface and user experience.

Did you put Republicans on the Republican app, Democrats on the Democrat app?

No, we didn’t ask that, and that wasn’t asked of us.

This interview has been condensed and edited. For more from the Fast Talk interview series, click here. Know someone who'd be a good Fast Talk subject? Mention it to David Zax.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com

Webtrends Updates Analytics on Demand, Adds New Social Measurement Solutions

Webtrends has added new social measurement capabilities to its Analytics on Demand offering,as well as packaged some new social analytics solutions.

The Portland, Oregon-based company said that these new additions, which combine social strategy, implementation, analysis and optimization, will allow marketers to better achieve success with social marketing.

Social Updates to Analytics On Demand

Steve Earl, Webtrends director of product marketing for analytics, said in a statement that marketers are increasingly “focusing on social channels, particularly Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, to meaningfully and profitably engage with customers.” He added that the new solutions help in the “extremely challenging” task of measuring customer engagement and understanding social marketing success.

The updates for Analytics on Demand include enhancements to the existing Webtrends’ Facebook reporting, which now include the nature, influence and success of Facebook Page posts.

There is also now a capability to measure engagement of YouTube and Twitter channels. The new YouTube tools offer measurements of customer engagement, content viewership and campaign performance, for videos that are on that site or on a brand’s website.

Twitter metrics are intended to offer a better understanding of which content generates more engagement, and which tactics are successful enough to bear repeating. The Twitter analytics measure the reach of Tweets, reTweets and followers.

New Social Measurement Bundle

Analytics on Demand is the company’s unified platform for digital measurement of social, mobile and site traffic and trends. The new FaceBook, Twitter and YouTube measurements, which are bundled as Social Measurement solutions, are available to Analytics customers at an additional fee to the base subscription.

Webtrends said that its social measurement tools answer a need articulated in an August 2012 report by Forrester Research.

In that report, entitled The State of Customer Analytics 2012, the research firm noted that many organizations lack the expertise or experience to measure social media campaigns, although such analytics were a priority. Accordingly, the report said, companies will need to look for vendors that specialize in analytics and data mining to assess customer behavior.

Webtrends said that its measurement tools for digital marketing relevance and customer engagement management are used by more than 3500 global brands, including the New York Times, Microsoft, Hitachi, the Associated Press and BMW.

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy: An Overview

Many portals, intranets, public websites and other solutions fail to deliver objectives and ROI within 6 months to a year because no one governs the solution. This series will share my high level SharePoint Business Governance strategy to help your company turn those success rates around.

The series will include: Introduction and Governance Strategy Overview, Governance Documents, Human Forces (Organization) and Project Governance. I will follow up with an additional post on Automated Governance and "From Strategy to Business Value.”

Introduction

In the SharePoint business there is a lot of buzz around governance today. Most of it is technical and involves how to automate governance with scripts and 3rd party applications. You can often read about how to script setups, manage sites, databases and security, etc.

Suppliers often say that they have a governance strategy to help your organization with governance planning, but what they really mean is that they can help you manage the solution they provide. Most often you get left all alone with a new “space shuttle” and a service contract to help out when the fire starts.

In the past 16 years I have worked in global organizations and had many roles where I have set requirements for projects and ordered solutions. I have too many times seen IT projects fail the organization's requirements, goals and objectives because of bad IT management. I have asked myself why we don’t learn from our mistakes, instead we make the same mistakes again and again.

Many products fail because a solution goes live before it is completed: that results in bad user adoption and usage. The end users get frustrated and IT tries to rescue the project by pumping in enormous amounts of recourses. This often ends up in the purchase of a new system.

Whatever it is that makes the projects fail, there is very seldom a supplier who can help the customer rescue a project or an already running solution. My belief is that many projects could have been saved if a supplier had intervened to help the organizations with knowledge, skills and experience.

To many, the word governance is the same as manage, but that’s not how I see it.

The word governance derives from the Greek verb κυβερνάω [kubernáo] which means to steer. To put it in context with SharePoint — it is about how one steers to reach one’s goals and objectives year after year, time and again. Business value should be the focus and the technology should be there to support that.

Governance is continuous in an organization, new needs and objectives will come along the way. The governance begins when the first thought/idea of a new solution arrives and it ends when that solution no longer helps you to reach business goals, or delivers a return of investment.

To govern a SharePoint solution requires organization, not only “Automated governance” but also human forces working together to reach common goals and objectives to deliver business value.

You are doomed to fail if you don’t have both. This is not easy in any way, but a very complex task. That is the reason I take on this challenge to help organizations reach their goals and objectives. Not as a one time occurrence, but continuously.

SharePoint Business Governance Strategy

Governance models often have the same name, but the content and the strategy within are very much different.

Based on my 16 years of experience in IT governance and many months of research I have put together a SharePoint Governance strategy that works.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sales Enablement - Unleash the Potential of Your Sales Team

Sales enablement is a hot topic lately, with an increasing number of CRM and sales/marketing automation vendors providing sales enablement solutions. However, according to Dan Schleifer, EVP of sales enablement for enterprise sales collaboration software provider SAVO Group, the full potential of sales enablement lies in revealing what happens in the middle of the sales process.

Sales Enablement in the Middle

“CRM is the accounting system of record for sales at the tail end of the process,” Schleifer said during an exclusive interview with CMSWire. “Email and social tools are at the top. But in the middle of the process, assuming sales reps don’t do decent jobs entering sales contacts into the CRM system, and they invariably don’t; you don’t get visibility into what is happening in the field when the sales rep’s lips are flapping.”

Thus, Schleifer said there is no single tool that provides sales visibility all the way down the sales pipeline, from initial prospecting to closing (or not closing) a deal. He continued,

Marketing automation is important but doesn’t close the deal. CRM backs in from the closed deal further into the selling process. But nobody is collecting data such as what PowerPoint slide the sales rep used at what stage of the sales presentation. We don’t know what objections were handled or what team members were pulled in.”

For example, Schleifer said that a project manager may have been called in to all the successful sales presentations for a specific service or product, but this data is not captured in the traditional marketing automation/CRM information-gathering process. “It’s the essence of what makes B2B sales tick,” he said.

From the Field to the Home Office

Therefore, Schleifer said the full potential of sales enablement technology lies in its ability to uncover what is really happening in the field, identify success factors, and then communicate those factors throughout the enterprise. In addition, he said properly applied sales enablement tools can provide “short cycle feedback” allowing adjustments to sales strategies as they are being enacted.

“As a sales executive I don’t want to wait for the CRM system to tell me that a new product release is not resulting in closed sales,” he stated. “The clinical moment of truth in any sales process is when the rep is sitting with the customer. Sales enablement allows you to understand that moment of truth.”

By automatically collecting data in real time while a sales rep is making a presentation or pitch, via mobile device, sales enablement tools can eliminate organizational silos and fill the gaps in B2B sales data quickly enough for sales strategies to be altered as soon as problems can be identified. They also allow senior management to quickly understand what makes top performers stand out compared to their peers.

“Any VP of sales can tell you who their top performers are,” said Schleifer. “But they can’t tell you why. Sales enablement technology allows them to collect and process data on their top performers and determine patterns of success that then be pushed to all sales reps through the right coaching. It changes the sales process.”

Ultimately, Schleifer said a sales enablement tool should work the way an assistant aiding a surgeon works. “The assistant hands the surgeon every tool they need,” he said. “That person knows everything — the surgeon doesn’t have to write it down.”

In the next few years, Schleifer sees sales enablement technology developing to the point it can provide senior management with real-time actionable feedback from the field, rather than short-cycle feedback. “Executives will get a real-time field view and be able to take immediate action,” he predicted. "It’s really just Big Data and analytics wrapped around the right data. Within days or even hours of a new product release, you’ll know if it’s working.”

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com