Public Relations Society of America

Services Delivered

• SiteExecutive 4.1
• Custom Application Development
• Training

Benefits:

• Eliminate Web publishing bottleneck
• Provide members and other site visitors with better access to information
• Increase the value of organizational data
• Reduce the cost and complexity of application development

Background:

Public Relations Society of America is a world’s leading membership organization for public relations professionals with over 21,000 members.
Client URL: http://www.prsa.org/

Challenge:

Responding to feedback from its members and staff, PRSA initiated a project to revamp the organization's Website. In addition to updating the site's design, the project would address three specific challenges:

• Improve the site visitor experience by making more of the organization's content available and readily accessible online.
• Enhance the site's content management functionality to reduce Web publishing bottlenecks and staff frustration
• Increase organizational involvement and "ownership" of the Website to encourage timely and widespread content creation

Solution:

In recognition of its vital importance to the organization’s success, the Web project received executive-level sponsorship from the organization’s president, William (Bill) Murray and Vice President of Marketing, Barbara McDonald. Leading an internal team with other PRSA stakeholders, the executives hired iFactory, a Boston-based interactive agency, to redesign the site.

As part of the redesign process, iFactory suggested PRSA consider replacing SiteExecutive and recommended its own proprietary CMS and open source solutions as alternatives. At the time, the PRSA Website was running on SiteExecutive 3.5.5. PRSA’s Web team was also going through a transition, with Alex Ortiz, PRSA’s Senior Director of IT taking over day-to-day responsibility for the site.

Not being familiar with SiteExecutive 4.1, but having concerns about its ability to meet the organization’s requirements, Ortiz opened a dialog with SiteExecutive team at Systems Alliance. Following a detailed review of PRSA’s content management challenges and struggles with SiteExecutive 3.5.5, the team provided Alex with a hands-on demonstration of SiteExecutive 4.1 and implementation roadmap.

Based on his new understanding of SiteExecutive and competing CMS products, Alex decided to move forward with SiteExecutive 4.1 for the following reasons:

• Ease of use
• Enhanced functionality – major concerns with SE 3.5.5 were addressed in SE 4.1
• Speed with which content can be created
• Preference for a ColdFusion-based application to leverage existing code
• Extensibility provided by the SiteExecutive API, Custom Module and Application Framework

To help ensure the success of the Web redevelopment project, PRSA hired Michael Benoit as Manager of Web Development. Michael had significant experience developing Web applications and working with ColdFusion. Shortly after joining PRSA, he attended the SiteExecutive API and Developer training course – a three day session where students get hands-on experience developing custom SiteExecutive modules and applications.

Michael and Alex would go on to create a number of custom SiteExecutive applications which allow PRSA to manage and present data from siloed applications through the CMS. Currently, PRSA publications for various professional interest sections are all being managed through SiteExecutive. Michael has also leveraged the SiteExecutive API to add new functionality to the SiteExecutive application. For example, to provide content authors with a way of locking down content based on a site visitor’s credentials, Benoit created a new set of content authoring controls within the SiteExecutive user interface.

Corresponding with its roll-out of SiteExecutive 4.1 and redesign, PRSA has transformed its organizational culture, expanding “ownership” of the Website. Now everyone in the organization plays a part in updating the site, though key personnel retain editorial control. To further enhance content quality PRSA has assigned a single staff member responsibility for reviewing all content changes and applying proper keyword tags. This "single set of eyes" helps enforce the organization’s content policies and ensures a uniform “voice” throughout its site.