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Are You Ready For A Content Management System?

Comments Off Written on February 20th, 2011 by
Categories: Front Page, Technology Blog
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The evolution of websites has included several clear phases in capabilities and company strategy. The phases have been driven by advances in technology and software advancements. It’s clear that there is another huge shift taking place now and this is a great time to take advantage of the shift in cost and capabilities.

Phase 1 – The Emergence of the Web
Company Owners - “What is the web? What is a website? We gotta have one too.”
Website Technology - Flat HTML websites
CMS Techonlogy - No real good options

Phase 2 – Faster Internet Access
Company Owners - “We can put our marketing materials online?”
Website Technology - Better graphical tools produced web based brochure sites
CMS Technology - Some great content management systems, very expensive

Phase 3 – Custom Websites
Company Owners - “We need a custom site.”
Website Technology - Databases and custom developers. Expensive to produce and support.
CMS Technology - CMS still very expensive, developers make most content changes.

Phase 4 – The Emergence of the Affordable CMS
Company Owners - “We can manage our own content and it won’t cost a fortune?”
Website Technology - Many CMS options with lots of available plug-in components.
CMS Technology - CMS are affordable and development times drastically decreased.

We are in Phase 4 now and many companies are realizing the benefits of having a site built around a content management system. It is now more affordable to build a site around a content management system than to build it from scratch. Here are some benefits of using a content management system:

  • Ability to easily manage your own content
  • Easy to add in new functionality to enhance your site
  • Built for tremendous search engine optimization (SEO)
  • Social networking built-in, integration with Facebook
  • Easy to create a community around your product
  • Cheaper to produce and maintain
  • Standard technology that can be updated to latest versions
  • Easy to add blogs, connections to Twitter, and YouTube video
  • Interactive website, no longer just a brochure that rarely changes
  • You don’t have to rely on a developer to change your site content

It is a new time for companies and their approach to the internet. It’s time to build a community around your product and capture the flow of information and traffic before your competitor does. It is a different model now and your customers are looking for more than a brochure site to give them basic information.

With changes in CMS technology, you can easily take your internet strategy to the next level with a platform that will support your current needs but be able to scale with you as you grow. It’s now very affordable to put a CMS in place customized for your needs.

Other benefits include being able to edit your content in a Word-like application where you don’t need to know HTML or any other web technology formats. It’s WYSIWYG so what you see is what you get on the site. You can also change to a new design and use your existing content. Upgrading to a new site look and feel is easy and painless!

The CMS systems are open source and they are available to use without license fees. Open source means that you don’t have expensive software purchases up front or have to worry about the costs of upgrading to the latest version or yearly software costs! They also mean your time to market is much quicker and less expensive than deploying a website has ever been in the past.

The new CMS options are tremendous and open up exciting capabilities for any size business. They can make smaller companies appear larger and compete with much larger competitors on a level playing field. The companies who realize this huge shift and take advantage of these capabilities first can capture markets before others in the industry move in this direction.

NewSouth Interactive can help you brainstorm opportunities in your industry and build an interactive website that takes your web strategy to a new level. Contact us and we can start planning your new site today.

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The Future of Outsourcing and Tips For New Outsourcing Industries

Comments Off Written on November 22nd, 2010 by
Categories: Front Page, Technology Blog

The world of information technology has been utilizing outsourced and offshore resources for years now and the market has become much more mature.

Now, other industries are dipping their toe into the waters of outsourcing work, and there are many things you can learn from experienced IT managers who have discovered the best ways to outsource work. The future will hold new industries and new countries becoming involved in outsourced work.

Here are a few industries that can and are benefiting from remote teams:

  • Translation
  • Accounting
  • Human Resources
  • Marketing
  • Auditing
  • Help Desk
  • Engineering
  • Backup and Security
  • Consulting
  • Drafting
  • Architecture
  • Legal
  • Back Office Tasks
  • Transcription
  • Medical (including medical tourism)

There are many industries that could benefit from outsourcing repetitive tasks.

IT managers involved in managing outsourced teams have discovered that you can have successful offshore projects, but there are aspects of working with outsourced teams that aren’t for the faint of heart.

Here are some things I’ve learned from working with remote teams of designers and developers. These principles are important whether you are working with technology vendors or with other industries.

1. Not all outsourced teams are equal.

Sure, it’s tempting to consider outsourced work a commodity, but it isn’t. Good developers and designers still work faster and better than average developers and designers. The same is true for other professionals. Errors cost money and lose clients.

2. Finding good teams is more difficult than it sounds.

Having great teams makes all the difference in the world. If you don’t know who the good teams are, find someone who does. It can be even more difficult when you deal with larger organizations because you may not know exactly who will be actually doing the work. And make sure the company is a great partner that you can trust.

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5 Terrific Data Visualization Applications

Comments Off Written on October 24th, 2010 by
Categories: Front Page, Technology Blog

As technology advances, the amount of data collected continues to increase exponentially. Much of this data could be very useful if harnessed and presented in a way that turns it into Information.

This is “Part 1″ in a series of articles about great data visualization tools and applications.

One use of data visualization tools is corporate and government dashboards. Being able to apply data visualization tools to corporate and competitive data is a growing need in the information age. The tools to visualize the data continue to improve and evolve and corporate use allows for better trend identification and decision making.

Here are 5 outstanding data visualization tools:

1. Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai Real Time Web Monitor

Akamai is a company that handles a large percentage of the web’s traffic. As a result, they have an enormous amount of data moving through their networks. They monitor global Internet conditions around the clock in real time. With this real-time data they can identify the global regions with the greatest attack traffic, cities with the slowest Web connections (latency), and geographic areas with the most Web traffic (traffic density).

This is an interesting application because it allows a user to know in real time what is happening all over the world, in a visual manner. It takes a great amount of data and presents it in a very easy-to-view way.

2. Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage RSS Reader

Voyage is a web-based RSS reader that visually displays RSS feeds on a timeline. It’s a great way to explore the different feeds you subscribe in a completely different format.

The application bubbles up content in a timeline based approach. You can surf through and move around the articles with the most important and most recent items getting priority positioning.

Voyage is a good model for future news and information interfaces because it allows for bringing the most relevant information to the forefront as it wades through mountains of information. Adding personalization to this and you’ve got a huge advance.

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