ESAB Uses PaperThin's Content Management to Deliver Multi-Lingual Content to 30+ Sites.

BOSTON -- PaperThin, Inc. a leading content management system vendor, today announced that ESAB (www.esab.com), one of the world's largest welding and cutting manufacturers is using CommonSpot[TM] to support its global Web strategy and to maintain information and brand consistency across 30+ sites. The solution has also led to an increase in staff productivity and reduced operational costs associated with content updates.

As a multinational company, ESAB places heavy emphasis on maintaining a unified corporate identity and ensuring that product information is accurate and easy to access on the Web. Over time, the company's Web presence spawned a large number of sites, each with a distinct 'look and feel' and message. Each country and business unit had independently maintained its own site, content, and design, resulting in a lack of information and brand continuity across Web properties. Reliance on technical resources for content updates had also produced lengthy publishing cycles and stale, out-of-date content. Furthermore, several countries had outsourced content management, also leading to long delays for updates and increased Web maintenance costs.

To address these challenges, ESAB selected CommonSpot to streamline the publishing process and to empower staff in more than 30 countries to directly manage localized content while adhering to corporate standards for branding and design. ESAB now maintains a global site that links together all of its regional sites via a single, centralized content management system. To date, approximately 20 sites spanning more than 10 languages have been implemented in CommonSpot with additional sites expected to launch in early 2007.

According to Dick Powell, Vice President of Information Technology, ESAB North America, "Using CommonSpot, we have unified our sites under a one umbrella content management system that can be centrally administered and easily leveraged by countries and business units worldwide. By empowering staff to take ownership of content management at a local level, products can be promoted more accurately and effectively. We now have better control over the quality of content and its presentation on the Web."

One major advantage of CommonSpot is the product's distributed template management framework which provides for streamlined site development and maintenance. A centralized group of Web developers at ESAB now maintains tight control of site architecture, design, and navigation for all sites, while administrators for each country oversee the development and ongoing maintenance of additional navigation and content templates specific to local needs. Administrators can easily grant rights to create content templates and Web pages to those staff directly responsible for contributing content. This multi-tiered template system provides great flexibility and control over page and template management and helps to enforce consistent branding across sites.

CommonSpot's multi-language support enables ESAB to quickly and easily create and manage Web pages in all the languages it requires to meet the needs of its worldwide customer base, including; Chinese, Flemish, Finnish, German, and Italian. Staff can simply generate a page in one language and activate the workflow for creation of the same page in another language. This feature provides for rapid delivery of localized content.

Since implementing CommonSpot, ESAB has also realized significant productivity gains and cost savings associated with managing content. Countries that had previously outsourced content management no longer need to rely on third-party service providers to perform content updates. The overall project has an anticipated two year payback.

"Centralized control and localized administrative capabilities, beyond basic content contribution, were essential to achieving ESAB's Web site objectives," said Bob Cellucci, senior vice president of sales and marketing at PaperThin. "Using CommonSpot, the organization is now able to leverage and enable its globally distributed team at every level. This was an important undertaking for ESAB and we're proud to have been a part of their solution."

About PaperThin:

PaperThin, Inc. is a privately held Massachusetts-based company. Since 1993, PaperThin has helped organizations in the corporate, government, education, healthcare, association and non-profit sectors, among others, to significantly reduce the time and expense involved in creating, updating, and managing Web content. PaperThin's flagship product, CommonSpot[TM] Content Server, powers Internet, intranet and extranet sites worldwide for organizations of all sizes, including the AFL-CIO, Cornell University, Mayo Clinic, National Park Service, Stanford University, The Gillette Company, Turner Sports (PGA.com), Vanderbilt University, and United Way of America. PaperThin was recognized as one of New England's fastest growing technology companies in the 2004 & 2005 Deloitte Technology Fast 50, and was recently named to KMWorld's list of "100 Companies that Matter in Knowledge Management." And, CommonSpot was named a "Trend-Setting Product of 2005 & 2006" by KMWorld.

PaperThin's select group of partners includes industry leading Web design and development firms, system integrators, software manufacturers, and training firms, worldwide. For more information about PaperThin, Inc., please visit http://www.paperthin.com and for additional details about CommonSpot Content Server, visit http://www.paperthin.com/Products/Index.cfm.