Continuing our CMS blog post series, we would be remiss if we neglected to feature our own product, SiteManager. We first built our SiteManager platform almost 10 years ago, and we took a very different approach to CMS from the start. Where others focused on complex user interfaces (with a sometimes overwhelming number of features) sitting atop local database applications with licensing models based on server CPUs and number of author seats, we built SiteManager to be an easy-to-use, cloud-based, Software as a Service (SaaS) platform.
Over the past decade, we’ve continued to evolve SiteManager so that it can support a full Customer Experience Management (CXM) ecosystem. CXM products cover much more than content management and related tasks – they enable the management of all aspects of a customer experience, including everything from CMS, CRM, eCommerce, multi-channel content delivery, multi-platform support, social collaboration, and so on.
SiteManager features pre-built modules for core CMS capabilities – Lists, Content, and News – and premium modules for Events Management, Mail Campaign Management, and Recruit Management. Powerful Search and Analytics capabilities are also at the heart of the platform. We deliver each of these capabilities via a secure cloud infrastructure with robust workflow and taxonomy functionality at the core. And any of these products can drive related experiences to any digital channel.
We wrapped nearly every digital touch point a customer may encounter into a core foundation that becomes central to our clients’ entire digital presence. To this end, SiteManager enables our clients to deliver centralized content to websites, private portals, mobile devices, Facebook, Twitter, and even mobile apps. SiteManager can integrate with hundreds of 3rd party enterprise platforms and products, from large players such as SalesForce.com and CareerBuilder.com, to niche products in the Financial, Healthcare, and Education industries, such as Beryl and McKessen. SiteManager also integrates seamlessly with clients’ Active Directory, PayPal payment gateway, and other mainstream systems.
What’s more, because of the way we designed our RESTful web APIs, SiteManager is technology agnostic – we’ve used SiteManager to implement sites in ASP.NET / MVC, Java, and PHP. Best of all, because SiteManager is web-based, there’s nothing to install – making technology refreshes and platform enhancements almost completely transparent. This puts less of a burden on IT – and the simple/intuitive Word-like editor makes it possible for Marketing professionals and other audiences to use SiteManager without a significant learning curve.
PrimeCXM (our internal codename for the next major release of SiteManager) will address the next generation of content personalization and emotional experience design. Here’s a sneak preview of some of what we have underway:
- Ultimate Flexibility: With PrimeCXM, we’re focusing on innovative ways to solve new problems – allowing users to tailor content for each member of their target audience in the form of “recipes.” These recipes include crucial ingredients to satisfy complex globalization and content personalization needs, based on consumer use habits in various environments. This will allow marketers to manage much of the site customization without overburdening developers.
- Easy Development: Because PrimeCXM is a SaaS-based product, the footprint in the web project itself is significantly lighter than with most CMS products. SiteManager handles the entire admin side externally, so developers have to concern themselves only with the implementation of specific code. We roll out updates to the admin and web APIs automatically, usually without needing to modify existing site code.
- Premium Modules: Sometimes you need more than simple content or news editing. What about a gift store? Or product catalog? Or a staff lookup page? With PrimeCXM, our pre-built modules will jump-start almost any custom development effort. (And if the module doesn’t exist yet, it’s easy to add a custom component and still manage through the PrimeCXM interface.)