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print pageBlacktown City Council
Situated 35 minutes from Sydney''s CBD, Blacktown is home to over 280,000 people making it the 3rd largest local government area in Australia. The City offers a rare combination of livability and commercial success attracting nearly 60,000 new residents over the past ten years. This period has also witnessed marked changes in the demographic and socio-economic composition of city, a trend that looks set to continue.
URL - www.blacktown.nsw.gov.au
Business Challenges
Need to respond to dynamic operating environment. Scalable solution required to cope with future growth and change.
Solution
Shado CMS Professional Edition.
Business Benefits
Open scalable solution, enhanced ROI and minimized risk. Minimal training requirements for staff.
Challenge
Rapid growth also brings great challenges. Blacktown sought a CMS solution that would enable it to quickly and easily update information on their rapidly growing website whilst meeting Government compliance standards for accessibility and interoperability. The Council also required a flexible solution that would reflect their image as a fluid, dynamic organization skilled to meet the demands of increased size and diversity through sound strategic development.
Practical issues such as distributed publishing, workflow, content ownership and the auto expiry of content were also of vital operational importance.
Solution
Shado CMS Professional Edition.
After receiving an impressive product demonstration from Straker partner Gruden, Shado CMS Professional was chosen.
"Ease of use was a major evaluation criteria for us and during the demonstration the product rated highly in this area ... and still does" states Mark Cleland, Team Leader Operations. Cleland was also impressed by "Gruden's obvious knowledge and love of the system" as well as the open nature of the product and availability of development options.
Results
"Shado CMS and Gruden were by far the best solution for us."
Mark Cleland, Team Leader Operations
The new Blacktown City Council website was put live in December 2004 and provides a major portal for everyone in the Blacktown area. An ongoing advantage for Blacktown in implementing Shado CMS is its open architecture and the fact that it is built on ColdFusion technology, "this makes it very easy for us to integrate our business applications with our internet and intranet sites" states Cleland.
Minimal Training Requirements - In terms of training the Council had a core user-group of 25 people to bring up to speed. This group attended a 1 day training course on how to use Shado CMS. Additionally a group of 6 administrators attended an extra day of administration training.
"Basically, it's as easy to use as Microsoft Word and for that reason there is little issue with staff using it as part of their normal work processes"
Mark Cleland, Team Leader Operations
