CrownPeak's Jim Howard writes about Trek Bicycle choosing the hosted solution path.
Marketing professionals who are charged with managing content for a company website often get bogged down with the cumbersome technology that goes along with it. And what happens to marketing goals? Unfortunately, they usually fall to the wayside. Website management technology, by nature, has been complex, difficult to manage and expensive, thereby requiring a lot of time and resources -- which could otherwise be spent on driving a business itself.
Trek Bicycle: Stuck In Gear
Consider Trek Bicycle. The world leader in high-end bicycle products and accessories, Trek maintains half a dozen corporate and brand-specific websites, along with an intranet, to communicate with customers, partners and its more than 1,500 employees worldwide. To top it off, Trek is tasked with translating most of its content into several languages, while ensuring that those messages -- along with up-to-date specifications and images of hundreds of products -- are consistent throughout its complex network of aebsites.
From a business standpoint, Trek was growing rapidly and having trouble keeping up with the management and updating of its core websites. With Trek employees and customers depending on those sites for relevant information, the company had to remedy the situation quickly.
When Trek involved several outside agencies to help solve their website issues, an already intricate process intensified. The company realized that bringing everything in-house required large amounts of time and money. Additionally, with recent research indicating that more than 30 percent of internal web-based systems failed, there was no guarantee it would work.
Unfortunately, this is a common scenario for many marketers. As websites grow in complexity, companies are relying on them more than ever to successfully attract and communicate with worldwide audiences. Websites are no longer a place for information to rest, but a critical business tool for a company's success.
Trek Bicycle Chooses the Hosted Path
After much consideration, Trek Bicycle chose a hosted solution to standardize the management of its various websites. Through the hosted model, Trek was able to acquire a user-friendly system for each of the site managers at a fraction of the cost and complexity of implementing an installed software package. Trek also gained a guarantee that redundancy, disaster recovery and support services would be available.
A hosted solution typically costs between one-half and one-fourth of what an installed software application does and Trek was able to manage the project budget more efficiently since costs are spread out across the lifetime of the technology's usage. With installed products, the opposite tends to occur, as there are often "hidden" fees for system, security and IT management, as well as trouble-shooting costs and upgrades. One of the greatest advantages of a hosted solution is that the project is "live" much faster and it's built to rapidly connect to existing technology.
Trek Bicycle: The Finish Line
Trek's marketing arm now has the ability to seamlessly update information across all of its various sites with the comfort of knowing that every aspect of implementing, managing and supporting the applications are solved with a hosted solution.
An added benefit is the ability to grow Trek's site management on a global scale. Brand managers from the company's European and Asian offices are using this solution to manage both content that is local to them and shared content provided by Trek to fill out their local site offerings. For example, Trek's Bontrager division uses product data that is automatically imported and updated, using a feed from its product management system.
Also, several of Trek's hosted content management installations are integrated with their translation provider, Lionbridge. Trek marketers can create new content and send it to Lionbridge for translation, all with a few clicks. When Lionbridge has completed the translation process, the content management system automatically imports the translated content, and notifies Trek staff that the content is translated, and ready for approval and publishing.
Hosted services offer the best of both worlds as they offload the burden of management and maintenance, while allowing companies to retain control of design and content creation.
If you're considering a hosted solution, look for a provider who:
- Makes website management simple. Choose a system that is easy for new people to learn, uses a single interface to solve many problems, and has great documentation.
- Offers a good training program. This ensures that end-users adopt the product.
- Guarantees reliability and customer satisfaction. Three words: Service Level Agreement (SLA).
- Meets all of your website management needs. Content management, search, web hosting, etc.
- Offers a true software service. Beware of companies offering custom developed tools. Ask for the documentation and training manuals. Don't let a web agency sell you unsupported custom applications, or the cost and reliability advantages go right out the window.
- Provides customer references. If you're wondering how economical the solution is, how quickly the company responds to problems, or if the level of security is satisfactory -- ask their current customers.
- Offers Flexibility. When you have a full menu of features to pick and choose from and the ability to change your options from month to month -- you will always be able to meet your evolving needs.
For marketers, the opportunity to move the focus back where it belongs should be a slam-dunk. Marketing, after all, is about managing content, not technology.
Jim Howard is CEO, CrownPeak, in Los Angeles, California.