From Static and Labor-Intensive to Streamlined and Innovative

smeal.psu.edu

Partnering with WebLion expands my team. It's not just us anymore; we can rely on everyone in WebLion, too. That's critical when you have a small Web shop.

Since adopting the Open-Source Plone CMS, my developers aren’t doing less work; they're freed up so that they can do the work they should be doing: Proactive projects that result in customized solutions. They've grown as employees and individuals, and our entire team has evolved to providing a much higher level of service.

— Michael Hofherr, Manager of Information Technology, Smeal College of Business

The goal to replace a cumbersome and labor-intensive Web publishing process—in 2005, that's what led Penn State's Smeal College of Business to adopt Plone and become the first WebLion Partner.

With static site management tools commonly used at the time, Smeal's Web team processed all content changes—an all-consuming job that left no opportunity for proactive development. Adopting collaborative editing software streamlined the process somewhat, but the site was still high-maintenance and lacking in advanced features.

Efficient. Innovative.

The Open Source Plone/WebLion community has empowered Smeal's Web team to delegate managing Web content—so that they can focus on developing a vibrant and innovative Web presence:

• Leveraging Plone's powerful features to customize how information is organized, searched, and displayed
• Developing custom Plone products for organizing and reporting data, conducting business-to-business marketing, providing interactive features, incorporating multimedia sitewide, and managing unique content needs
• Quickly and efficiently designing, rolling out, and managing multiple sites
• Redesigning existing sites with minimal down time
• Syndicating content (sharing, without duplicating, information across multiple sites)
• Continually improving usability and accessibility of Web content

Content is King.

Today, more than 100 content providers contribute to Smeal's Web presence, adding and updating information quickly, easily, and independently. With no Webmaster bottleneck, content owners and other internal stakeholders have a high level of satisfaction. And end users get the information they need when they need it.