pTools Goes All in on Saas Model, Goes Live at Web Summit 2012 #websummit

Longtime enterprise web content management provider pTools went live with its Saas model this week at the Dublin Web Summit, and it's the culmination of years of methodical work.

WCM is a crowded segment, but we always welcome simple tools that provide tons of functionality in an easy to understand way. pTools specializes in the finance, government, security and utility sectors, so simplicity is one thing those folks need in spades.

Cloud Lifting IT to New Heights

Gartner researchers have estimated WCM Saas revenue will reach US $22.1 billion by 2015, and pTools is now in position to take advantage of that. It helps that the company was listed in Gartner's long-list of vendors in the Magic Quadrant for Web Content Management 2012 report for the first time.

Furthermore, as the Dublin Web Summit is one of Europe's top IT conferences, the timing of pTools' launch should help the company as well. pTools is based in Dublin, so the team is no doubt riding high now. 

"It’s the realization of what CMS has always promised," Tom Skinner, pTools founder said in a blog post.

"CMS has offered customers the Martini idea; that is the idea of being able to manipulate and consume content anytime any place anywhere. Cloud and SaaS does just that in way that is simple and obvious but also revolutionary."

pTools lives in the cloud now.

pTools Saas Features

All of pTools functionality is now cloud based, and that means quick easy sign up, disaster recovery, Microsoft SharePoint access, enterprise class security and yearly or monthly subscription fees.

In the last two years, pTools has increasingly embraced social media capabilities, and is now looking for a more global footprint. Additionally, all the WCM functions one would expect from an enterprise ready vendor — from workflow, document management and forms to content management and learning content management — are there.

Pricing is dependent on customer needs, but fully customized, scalable services are available, as is the magic of the Saas model. 

 

 

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Weekend Reading: In Social Business - Context is Everything

The Jain legend of the blind men and the elephant came up at this week's Dachis Social Business Summit during David Gray's presentation. 

The story goes a little like this: six blind men are led up to an elephant, each left in front of a different part. One man feels the tail and says, "It's a rope." Another feels the ear and says, "It's a fan."  You get the idea. The story is usually told to show the value of collective intelligence, but I think it works for many of this week's articles as well. 

If you segment and analyze your data without keeping in mind the bigger context, you lose value. If you search for information in your DAM system and it's missing context, your results will be irrelevant. If technology continues to explode at a pace faster than people can adapt to, we run the risk of losing perspective on its place in our lives. 

Curious? Read on.

Creating the Best Customer Experience

Secondary Dimensions: Getting the Most Out of Google Analytics

Michael Wiegand (@mwiegand): 

Google Analytics (GA) is a wondrous thing. Simple to install. Easy to use. 

But for all its ubiquity, very few users do more with Google Analytics than just scratching the surface of the reports. And that’s a shame. There’s so much to be gleaned from a few clicks.

According to W3Techs Surveys, GA now possesses a staggering 82 percent market share in the web analytics industry. So what can all of those users do to transform ordinary GA reports into extraordinary?

Are Your Digital Actions Action-packed or Action-less?

Brent Dykes: The renowned business author Peter Drucker has been attributed with the familiar quote, “what gets measured, gets managed.” This statement highlights why most companies invest in analytics. But the critical question remains, why do companies invest in data but fail to act on this valuable resource?

After working in digital analytics for more than eight years with multiple large corporations, I’ve discovered that the belief that captured data will be subsequently optimized or improved doesn’t always hold true. In fact, data frequently doesn’t translate into actions.  

Wildervoices: John Kennedy on the Changing Role and Challenges of Today's CMO 

Scott K. Wilder (@skwilder): CMOs today face a shifting landscape in terms of their roles within companies and the challenges inherent in creating better customer experiences in a multi-channeled, socially connected, data-driven world. To get a better sense of where this trend is going, I spoke with John Kennedy of IBM.

How To: Getting Started In User Experience (UX)

Stephen Fishman (@trivoca): I have seen the question on Quora. I have seen the question on LinkedIn. I have seen the question on so many different online properties that I have lost count. The summarized question is: "How do I get started in learning about UX (User Experience)?". I have yet to see an answer that makes me believe that someone could take it and really move forward into learning the field and ultimately get a job. The biggest problem is that I don't find the question to be phrased in a way that a highly experienced UX professional can meaningfully answer without completely reframing the question. 

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

The Email Warning, End of the Org Chart, Advent of Complexity #sbs2012

Email took a bruising at Dachis’s recent Social Business Summit. Held up as an allegory for the failure of businesses to embrace change, kicked to the side as a hoarder of information and scoffed at as a time suck. But email wasn’t really the point. What all speakers were talking about was the opportunity and challenge that exist today for businesses to reinvent the way they communicate.  

This isn't about buying some new software and placing it on top of your existing system. This isn't about starting a corporate Twitter account that's used as another broadcast channel. This is about total reinvention of how business is done, both internally and externally.

IBM’s Reinvention

Chris Crummey speaks of social business in the tones of an evangelist. As a 22 year employee of IBM, he's born witness to the transformation the company has gone through and was at the Social Business Summit to tell the tale.

First off, Crummey hates email. Hates it. Spends as little time on it as possible and if someone has the gall to send him an email, he responds on a public wall. It's nothing personal, he just doesn't think that the information that's shared in email should be kept between the two people involved. Questions will be asked again, the information will be needed by others and besides, who enjoys slogging through a full inbox to find the one bit of information they are looking for?

He's not alone at IBM in his promotion of other forms of communication. Employees of the company send 50 million instant messages a day, sharing information farther and faster than email. Critically, support for this style of working is coming from above. IBM's CEO, Ginni Rometty started her first day on the job by releasing a company-wide videoblog. She's continued this practice, releasing videoblogs on the first day of each quarter since and inspired a rash of copycat videoblogs from executives throughout the company.

But again, this is not about videoblogs, or email or instant messaging. This is about creating a corporate culture within the company which supports new methods of communication, which breaks down previous hierarchical structures to allow anyone the opportunity to participate, i.e. to create the empowered employee. The integration of these communication initiatives into the existing platform created a high adoption rate and has changed the way IBM does business. IBM saw the writing on the wall, and made the changes necessary to stay relevant.

Org Charts, Co-evolution and the Email Warning

If traditional organizational charts had ears, they must have been ringing as well. The IBM example above shows that social business is not about cosmetic changes. There must be a fundamental change throughout an enterprise, including a reinvention of the organizational structure, to fully realize any benefits.

This is not an appealing prospect to many. Change is scary. As Dachis SVP of Strategy Dave Gray put it, fear is what is holding us back. But as nature has shown, organisms must evolve within their surroundings or risk extinction, and that includes companies. 

And that brings us back to email. Daniel Debow, founder of Rypple, brought up a point that resonated. Can you name any of the companies who resisted the switch to email when first introduced? No? That's because they don't exist any more.

 

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Source : cmswire[dot]com