A coherent web site design philosophy, consistently implemented, is essential to successful Web communication. All too often, the ad hoc development and manual editing associated with the traditional static web site resulted in confused site appearance and navigation. This led to inconsistent branding and diluted corporate identity, and required considerable effort to police and control.

A Content Management System establishes the design philosophy and ensures it is consistently applied throughout the site to maintain corporate identity and branding. The use of templates allows a 'design once' approach which, by separating content from presentation, reduces the time and effort required to create and police the brand. The benefit is extended to re-branding activities that, being far easier and less costly to implement, allow the adoption of a more dynamic and vibrant corporate identity.

A Content Management System that uses template based publishing and a dynamic content repository centralises control to deliver numerous benefits and efficiencies.

Development and deployment investments made for one site can be leveraged for the deployment of further sites that require the same corporate values. Code changes that alter functionality propagate seamlessly across the site. The simple fact that site menus are fully automated and therefore always reflect the latest site content, means huge savings in effort and cost.

Such centralised management delivers on-going efficiencies and cost savings by allowing further changes to be synchronised across multiple sites as a single activity, avoiding the repeated costs of managing each site separately. Taken together, the separation of content from presentation and the provision of centralised management also ensure that a company's assets are easily prepared for dissemination across the increasing variety of platforms, web browsers, PDAs,Web TV and the new generation mobile phones.

If content is the 'currency of the digital age' then protecting the value of that content becomes central to a company's ability to succeed. It must be accurate, up to date and easy to find. Inaccurate content is unacceptable, it exposes a company to jeopardy by threatening its credibility and inviting legal risk. Out of date content indicates commercial lethargy and will discourage visitors. Poorly structured content that is hard to navigate and search will do the same.

A Content Management System protects the value of content by accelerating and automating publication processes, putting control of content into the hands of the business experts and providing centralised administration of its presentation.

To build lasting value from their corporate web sites, companies need to be able to respond to the more sophisticated demands from users with enhanced features to extend the capabilities offered. A Content Management System makes this possible by providing a number of capabilities that the traditionally managed web sites cannot deliver.

Some of these enhancements, such as rapid authoring and streamlined approval, have already been mentioned. Others include:-

• categorisation to improve searching and to allow information to be targeted at users according to their interests
• enabling organisations to personalise the user experience
• internationalisation to ensure the appropriate presentation of information on sites spanning economical, political and cultural borders
• integration with other enterprise systems
• syndication of content to sites with similar market interests
• simplified application integration through the use of shared code, delivered via templates, that also enables up-front integration costs to be spread across many web site application implementations.