CrownPeak Technology Develops Affordable Outsourced Content Management Systems for Leaders in Education, Non-Profit Sectors.

Business Editors & High-Tech Writers

MARINA DEL REY, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 12, 2002

University of Southern California, Local Initiatives Support

Corporation Gain World-Class Enterprise-Level CMS,

Point Way Toward Content Management for .orgs, .edus

CrownPeak Technology, the premier content management ASP, today announced it has developed tailored content management systems (CMS) for major educational and non-profit entities, in a move that highlights the potential of outsourced content management to rapidly and cost-effectively assist organizations that heretofore struggled to afford world-class CMS systems.

Deploying its Advantage CMS(TM) content management tool, CrownPeak has developed a new, unified events calendaring system for the University of Southern California (USC) that makes the task of updating the ever-changing university events calendar dramatically simpler and more affordable than alternative approaches. At the same time, CrownPeak has overhauled an extensive resource library for LISC, the Local Initiatives Support Corporation, a national non-profit agency focused on neighborhood redevelopment. The current phase is the first in a four-phase site overhaul.

"Organizations like USC and LISC have huge, community-based, highly distributed sites, with a tremendous amount of content that changes frequently," said Jim Howard, CEO, CrownPeak. "LISC is an ideal candidate for outsourcing because the organization lacks extensive in-house IT resources and can't make the kind of IT investments that major corporations can. USC needed a heavy-duty system quickly, and didn't have the budget for an expensive, in-house project. In both cases, their pain level is high and their needs are enormous. They're at the beginning of the adoption curve for outsourcing, and content management is the logical first move -- a situation that applies to mid-size businesses as well as to .orgs and .edus."

For LISC, Keeping the Cost of Ownership Low

LISC, which provides grants, loans and equity investments to Community Development Corporations (CDCs) for neighborhood redevelopment, is embarking on a major overhaul of its Web site, which will result in vastly improved access to information for internal staff and workers in 40 field offices (known as program areas), and the general public.

The first phase of the project went live this month at www.liscnet.org/resources, and features an extensive resource library. Funded by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and the National Community Development Initiative, the library is designed to promote innovation and success in the comprehensive revitalization of neighborhoods. The library will enable community development professionals to share lessons learned in the field, and will provide a venue for gathering information and advice from experts nationwide.

"As a non-profit organization with a strong commitment to our mission, we were seeking an enterprise-level solution that was also in line with our budgetary goals," said Loren Blackford, Director of Knowledge Sharing, LISC. "CrownPeak provided the highest degree of quality and customization at the lowest cost of ownership. For us, outsourcing our CMS was the only reasonable decision, since it has meant minimal strain on our internal staff and is well within the constraints of our budget."

Subsequent phases of the LISC site redesign will employ Advantage CMS to implement a new intranet, and to create "mini-sites" for the 40 program areas across the country. CrownPeak has also implemented its powerful "model" capability so that LISC administrators can simply click on a "New Program Area" button and create an entire collection of pages and templates in one step. By dragging and dropping content from Word, DreamWeaver, or most other common editing tools, LISC can go live with an entirely new Web site for any new program area in a matter of minutes.

"Because LISC has a small IT team focused on core business issues, CrownPeak is providing the development, design, implementation, maintenance and training for the new system," Howard said. "We will continue to maintain and update the system for the organization as it grows, ensuring a predictable, ongoing, low total cost of ownership."

For USC, A Custom Solution -- In Less Than a Month

For the University of Southern California, CrownPeak employed Advantage CMS to develop a system that enables event planners, editors, and publishers to create, edit, and approve event records, and publish event news quickly using flexible templates. Built in less than a month, the new solution provides discrete information on events, and permits USC to promote featured events on the home page. Event creation and updating is available across all USC departments with varied permissions based upon user privileges.

The system even allows for input from external agencies, and features an interface that can be customized to optimize how different users interact with the system.

"CrownPeak's CMS provides us with a powerful, quickly deployable solution that is very cost effective," said Candy Borland, Director of Web Development for USC. "CrownPeak implements the system, provides the servers and handles simple updates at no additional cost -- and is training our staff. We have been able to build our new online events calendar system in record time. The system also lets us easily output custom formatted subsets of the event data the system gathers. We use this feature to do targeted promotions of specific events in various places on our Web site. By increasing visibility of events of interest to specific audiences we expect the system to help us grow attendance at all our events."

Approximately 100 USC departments and organizations will rely on the calendaring system. Each will have its own directory for events submitted to the calendar, but will share common templates to create those events. In addition to customizing the calendaring system, CrownPeak will develop a basic administrative site to be published into a non-public area for use by event planners and service units.

"The university's new calendaring solution is an ideal example of how CrownPeak can respond to customer needs with rapid deployment -- whether that customer is in the Fortune 1000, the Fortune 10,000 or in the education sector," Howard said. "The USC system reduced the workload of hundreds of university staffers, but was implemented in less than a month, with no stress on the existing infrastructure. For those with tight budgets and overburdened IT resources, outsourcing content management is an unmatched way to do more with less."

About CrownPeak Technology

Based in Marina del Rey, Calif., CrownPeak Technology is the first company to provide world-class content management as a service, so that secure, feature-rich, enterprise level technology can be made available economically. As an Application Service Provider (ASP), CrownPeak builds and hosts easy-to-use CMS administrative interfaces and pushes the final assembled pages to client Web servers. CrownPeak thereby provides integration into existing Web sites without the cost and hassle of installing, integrating, and maintaining complex CMS software.