Tate Implements Percussion's Rhythmyx 5 Enterprise Content Management Solution

LONDON - 5 April 2004 - Tate is implementing Percussion Software’s Rhythmyx 5, a leading enterprise content management solution (ECM), to produce the content for a new bi-monthly guide which will list forthcoming exhibitions and events at all Tate galleries. Tate will also be using Rhythmyx to enhance its existing global Web site and internal communication via its corporate intranet.

Tate is one of Europe’s leading art galleries, encompassing Tate Britain, Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives. It houses an impressive collection of over 50,000 works of art, ranging from 16 th century to present day modern and contemporary art. With over 2 million unique users, Tate Online is Europe’s most visited art gallery Web site.

Through the deployment of the new enterprise content management solution, Tate will be able to manage its online presence more effectively and thereby attract further Web site visitors, expand awareness of the Tate brand globally and support the mission of communicating its array of cultural information to the widest possible global audience, efficiently and effectively. Tate also plans to use Rhythmyx for its staff intranet in order to improve the communication between employees based at different geographical locations, including Tate Modern, Tate Liverpool and Tate St Ives.

“Our Web site is one of our main channels for broadcasting and communicating art to global audiences,” explained Simon Grant, head of information systems, Tate. “Not everyone is able to visit our galleries in person and therefore we are constantly looking at ways of improving our Web site content for existing and new visitors. We also wanted to improve our internal content management procedures, increase the speed and efficiency of content updates and reduce time and resources spent on content administration.”

Grant added, “As we’re responsible for 40 per cent of our own income generation, we see the Web site as a means of developing new revenue streams in the future, and we’re only just beginning to realise the ways in which Rhythmyx can help us achieve this. Incorporating Rhythmyx into our Web site will make it easier for us to extend our content delivery to other channels, such as SMS and PDAs, in the future. We were attracted by Rhythmyx’s ease of use and the fact that its implementation required minimal technical support. The consultants at Percussion were proactive in responding to our business requirements and we built a productive working relationship with them.”

Key Reasons for Selecting Rhythmyx 5:

Tate went through an intensive selection process, looking at several different content management vendors. Rhythmyx was chosen over other vendors because the solution most closely matched Tate’s criteria. The key reasons Tate selected Rhythmyx 5 included:

• Predictable Licensing Model for Multi-Channel Delivery– 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 allows Tate to extend content delivery to additional channels, such as SMS and PDAs, without incurring additional costs.
• Support for Multi-Lingual Websites- Through its Intelligent Relationships and dynamic workflow capabilities, Rhythmyx simplifies and streamlines the localisation process which will allow Tate to offer more Web site content in different languages in the future.
• Ease of Use– Previously, all content updates required coding from the Web production team. Through Rhythmyx, Tate editors will be able to easily create and re-use content, as well as having greater control and freedom over editorial content, setting editorial deadlines for the Tate Guide and managing copy production across the organisation through the system’s workflow capabilities.
• Efficient Content Reuse– Rhythmyx’s Active Assembly capability provides a browser-based interface that allows editors at Tate to create the Tate Guide from any type of content including documents, images, text and XML content items. The result is format-independent outputs such as QuarkXpress, XML and ASCII, allowing Tate to publish seamlessly to multiple channels, including online destinations and print.

Joseph Wykes, managing director, European operations, Percussion Software commented, “Museums are a national treasure and we are pleased to be a part of the solution which is supporting Tate’s commitment to keeping communities informed of its work and sharing its extensive art collection with global audiences. Its selection of Rhythmyx further demonstrates our solution’s strength in content management, content re-use and multi-channel publishing. Tate now has a reliable and flexible solution to support its goals of reaching new and existing audiences worldwide through an ever increasing number of channels.”