NSPCC's New Web Strategy Underpinned by Percussion Software's Rhythmyx Enterprise Content Management System

LONDON - 15 March 2004 - The NSPCC is implementing Percussion Software's Rhythmyx 5, an Enterprise Content Management solution, to redesign the structure of its intranet, improve the management of its content and facilitate better information sharing and knowledge management across the organisation. The initial project is focused on the intranet and subsequently will be rolled out to its Internet and extranet sites.

Established in 1884, the NSPCC is the UK's leading charity specialising in child protection and the prevention of cruelty to children. Its wide range of work includes 180 community-based projects throughout the UK and Northern Ireland, a 24 hour child protection helpline, public education campaigns, parliamentary campaigns, child protection training and advice, research, information resources and fundraising through individual and corporate sponsors.

With so many projects taking place throughout the charity, ensuring that information is up-to-date, approved and accurate is critical and using Percussion's Rhythmyx enterprise content management solution will radically improve efficiencies. The charity will soon be able to market initiatives more effectively and ensure that information is shared with the public as soon as it becomes available.

Gary Smith, project manager at NSPCC explained, "The NSPCC intranet is currently a mixture of static web pages and dynamic applications, with over 90 authors contributing content. The intranet already shares content with some of the society's Internet and extranet sites, but significant developer time is needed to achieve this. Even simple publishing to some of our Internet sites required the involvement of developers. We wanted to implement a centrally managed corporate style, pull content from across the organisation into a managed environment, place content management back in the hands of the web authors and enable them to carry out content updates and changes easily and re-use existing content without technical assistance."

Following an in-depth evaluation of 15-20 content management vendors, the NSPCC selected Percussion's Rhythmyx 5 enterprise solution because it was best matched to its business and technical requirements in terms of functionality, capability and cost effectiveness.

Rhythmyx was chosen by the NSPCC as it satisfied all its major business drivers including:

Ease of Use For Business Users- Rhythmyx enables content authors at the NSPCC to take ownership of content editing and publishing, and takes IT developers out of the content production cycle, saving time and money. The system's dynamic workflow capabilities optimise the content approval processes, enabling faster and more efficient content production and delivery.

Simplified Content Re-use- Rhythmyx's Active Assembly for Web Pages allows business users to group and rearrange content into new Web pages, adjust page layout for specific audiences, and re-use content without technical assistance. If a document is modified in any way, Rhythmyx automatically forms relationships to manage content dependencies and connections through its Intelligent Relationships capability.

Easy, Cost-Effective Consolidation- Rhythmyx's De-Coupled Delivery architecture, an industry-first capability, separates content production from delivery and is designed for cost-effective scaling in multi-channel delivery environments. It will enable the NSPCC to re-use content and publish to any number of delivery platforms as they are adopted, without incurring additional licensing costs.

Back Office Integration- Rhythmyx's open system architecture, based on XML, XSL, Java and other industry standards, integrates easily with the NSPCC's back office systems, creating a heterogeneous environment for managing and delivering information.

"We now have a robust, reliable and flexible enterprise content management solution, which will improve content and knowledge management throughout the organisation. Not only will we speed up our publishing process through placing content authoring in the hands of business users, but also the system's De-Coupled Delivery architecture will enable us to deliver multiple types of content to specific audiences quickly and cost-effectively. Initially, we will migrate our intranet into Rhythmyx, and, in the future we will be able to promote the NSPCC through new innovative delivery channels such as SMS or PDAs, at no extra cost," concluded Smith.

Joseph Wykes, managing director, European operations, Percussion Software commented, "The NSPCC's selection of Rhythmyx further demonstrates that our solution has the capability to address today's pressing enterprise content management challenges, including content re-use and the multi-channel delivery of documents, website, images and digital assets. Our De-Coupled Delivery architecture provides compelling benefits for customers. Unlike other solution providers, Percussion does not penalise customers for the success of their content management initiatives through introducing additional licensing costs. With Rhythmyx, the NSPCC can be assured it has the chosen the right platform to evolve and deliver multi-channel content cost-effectively in the future," concluded Wykes.