Untangling the Web: CrownPeak's template allows companies wide lattitude in modifying their own sites.

WHEN it comes to the Internet, it takes a lot to impress someone from Yahoo Inc.

So when Jon Rognerud, former Web content manager at the Internet giant, began his new job at CurtCo Media Labs LLC--publisher of the Robb Report--he figured he'd have to do a complete overhaul of the company's Web operations.

It covered 12 luxury magazines including Worth, the Robb Report titles and San Diego Magazine, and in publishing these days, your Web site is your life, according to Rognerud. It has to be easy to redesign, throw up new magazines, take down old ones, and expand features without waiting for permission from the information technology department.

"It's a must, or we die," Rognerud said.

What Rognerud found "under the hood" of CurtCo's Web operation surprised him. "I realized at first that it was a very powerful system, but I didn't actually get to see it at a close-knit level until I dug in further," he said. "I was impressed."

CurtCo's site wasn't the work of its tech guru, or even a custom Web site developer. It used CrownPeak, an L.A.-based company that's developed a Web site template that allows non-technical business managers to work on a corporate Web site.

"Five years ago, a company Web site was a nice thing to have," said Jim Howard, founder and chief executive of CrownPeak Technology Inc. "Today, if you don't have a good Web site, you're not going to look like a real company."

CrownPeak's target customers are mid-size and larger companies--those with thousands of pages of information to put on the Web. "If you have a chain of pizza shops with 30 pages of a Web site, you're not going to care," Howard admitted. "But if you're a manufacturing company or a publisher, you care very deeply about your Web site."

Founded in 2001, CrownPeak has kept a low profile. "I've worked with many of their systems, and I had never heard of them before," Rognerud admitted. But CrownPeak has some big-name customers, like Hyundai Motor America, Crain Communications Inc., Honeywell Inc., Trek Bicycle Corp., HCA Inc., University of Southern California, and the Office of the U.S Trade Representative.

Demystification

CrownPeak's software is Web-based, which means that client company employees can log onto the corporate Web site from any location to make changes; offices in New York, Los Angeles or London can all make contributions. Instead of mystifying windows and fields of secret code, the internal workings of the site look just like the Web site does normally. An edit menu bar at the top lets the user make changes in a familiar way on a toolbar that looks just like a Web browser.

Unlike traditional software companies, which sell packaged software applications for an upfront payment that can run into the hundreds of thousands of dollars, CrownPeak works on a service-fee basis. Its business model is based on monthly fees--about $3,000 per month.

Businesses have few choices when it comes to their Web site. They can hire Web developers to custom-design a Web site and hope their IT department can manage it; or they can buy a software application, have their IT department install it and reconfigure it to the company's needs. Both options rely heavily on the knowledge of IT employees.

"When those people leave, you're toast," Howard said.

CrownPeak charges an initial fee that ranges from $10,000 to $30,000 to set up the site, depending on the size of the project and how many employees need to be trained on the software. Training takes a day. "You pay monthly, and if you don't like it, you turn it off," Howard said. Its customer-retention rate over five years is an enviable 93 percent.

A few hours of "help desk" is included, and the customer can call for advice, make changes and additions whenever he wants. Most of CrownPeak's customers buy additional services and run an average cost of $4,000 per month for their site.

For its unique approach to the software business, CrownPeak has won the "Product of the Year" award from InfoWorld in 2004, and "Analyst's Choice Award" from eWeek.

It was recently named to eContent's 100 most influential companies list, and has been a finalist for the "Best Content Management Solution" award from the Software & Industry Information Association for the past three years.

"Your marketing people, they're not going to be the most technical people in the company," said Michelle Cullinan, director of corporate Web services for New Century Financial Corp., a mortgage company that has been using CrownPeak for two years. "But they have a strong need to move with the business. They need something that they can do, that works fast and works right."

New Century Financial has about 50 employees that regularly change and add material to their corporate Web site--employees from the legal department to the marketing department to public relations--none of whom have a background in IT.

"It was meant to be a yearlong project, and it only took six months," Cullinan said of launching the Web site. "Now, we can all publish real-time." CrownPeak provides both internal Web sites, called Intranets, meant only for company employees and vendors, and external Web sites the public can access.

Humble beginnings 

It wasn't always smooth sailing. Howard started his first Web company in 1994, early in terms of the Web's development. "Our sales pitch at the time was, 'It's worth it to have a Web site. Promise,'" Howard recalled. The company started out like many Web developers, designing Web sites on a contract-by-contract basis. Howard and his partner sold the company to giant US Web in 1997, for an undisclosed sum.

They spent the next several years developing a system for company Web sites that could be replicated--so that they wouldn't have to reinvent the wheel for each new client.

They had just started getting off the ground in 2001, with five clients, when the Sept. 11 attacks occurred. The tech bubble burst, IT spending screeched to a halt and clients started going bankrupt. "We got killed in late 2001," Howard recalls, The company didn't land another customer for eight months.

To keep the business afloat, CrownPeak started accepting custom software jobs again.

"It takes a lot of discipline to start a software company," he said. "Every customer that calls and says, 'I don't really want your software, but I want something near it - can you change it to do this?' It's very tempting to say yes."

So he said yes for the first two years of the company. But once the company hit profitability at the 27-month mark, CrownPeak stopped the custom-software projects and focused on the Web content customers, the ones paying monthly fees.

It's recurring income, which allows the company to look ahead at revenue streams for the coming quarters. "As executives in the software business, we actually sleep really well at night," Howard said.

CrownPeak Technology Inc.

Year Founded: 2001

Core Business: Corporate Web site management

Employees in 2004: 12

Employees in 2005: 18

Goal: To exceed $20 million in revenues serving 500 customers in two years.

Driving Force: The growing importance of Web sites to business, and the need of companies to be able to manage them without technical expertise