In its large-scale initiative to refurbish its web presence, British Council (http://www.britishcouncil.org), the government-backed agency providing educational opportunities and cultural relations in Britain, has resorted to the proficient service of Open Text(TM) Corporation (http://www.opentext.com), the premier globally provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software. Due to Open Text's Web content management software, the agency has implemented the cost-reducing consolidation of its websites onto one content management system.
The three-year partnership with Open Text represents an extremely strategic act for the agency that has decreased to a large extent the tangible dispersion of its 240 disparate websites scattered across the globe with 200 HTML authors, 80 Internet service providers (ISPs) and 50 new media companies. With the help of its partner, 180 of the existing websites have been consolidated into a single system that is hosted in Manchester, UK with many more still in development. This process of restructuring has significantly improved the agency's web presence, communicating a more convincing look and feel of its online image.
Open Text's valuable assistance in British Council's complex web strategy implementation lies in the company's unmatched approach to data management, which separates the presentation layer from content. This solution has empowered the agency to develop 80 site templates under a single brand identity, and enables the multilingual work over a single object by content developers in consistence with the language or channel desired by the concrete site' readers. Through the pretty affordable and easy-to-handle interface of Open Text's Web content management software, the agency's staff worldwide can now produce website content and update it directly.
According to UK Managing Director for Open Text - Brenda Morris, British Council is a great example of how organizations are making the most of the functionality in Livelink Web Content Management Server. She also adds that now British Council can cost-effectively manage vast amounts of content, uploaded by multilingual authors around the globe, thanks to the company's object treatment of content and user-friendly interface. The expected by British Council economical effect of the newly-completed initiative equals to the saving of USD $2.3 million by 2005.
