1 Aug 2005

CMO Magazine - Disjointed. That's the word Ciena's Tom Berger uses to characterise the networking company's Web sites in France, Germany, Japan, Portugal and Spain, which it shut down in 2003. "Content was stale, and no one was talking to anyone else," explains Berger, Ciena's Web marketing director.
For multinational companies, maintaining brand consistency on the Internet is "a pervasive problem," says Kyle McNabb, a senior analyst at Forrester. Many shelved the concern during the economic downturn, he says. Now, in an improved business climate, the issue has popped up again on marketers' radar.
Translation? A renewed interest in Web content management software, which allows users to create page templates to ensure that localised sites hew to the look and feel of the brand. Page navigation, images and colors are fixed. But staff can tweak those templates in limited ways to make a site more relevant to a local audience.

Ciena went global again with its website as part of a corporate rebranding last fall. To help launch a new Japanese website in December, it employed RedDot's Content Management System. For Berger, the software solves some of the hurdles that led the company to turn off its foreign sites.
"RedDot allows us to control authorisations of every element on a given page. Major site changes are not made by authors or translators," he says. Using the same technology, Ciena plans to roll out microsites in other countries to promote particular services and products.

The software also eliminates the need for regional Web management teams with HTML expertise. Ciena now has one employee in the Japan office responsible for translating changes and updates to the website. And a smaller, more efficient local team means a smaller budget.
"The software has a tangible impact on being able to streamline processes and reduce costs," McNabb says. Pricing for RedDot's system begins at about $55,000.