While researching Engage, we came across software solutions that we did not comprehend.  The first sentence Engage described themselves as “a content management solutions provider helping marketers, publishers, printers, direct mailers, and agencies take control of their multichannel marketing efforts.”  We did not understand content management solutions or multichannel marketing.  We will attempt to explain these terms to better understand the software solutions.  We will describe some of the general terms (Content Management Solutions, Multichannel Marketing, Workflow Automation, and Digital Asset Management) we ran into and then describe the software solutions (ContentServer 7, ApprovalServer 1.2 and PromoManager) in more detail. 

Content Management Solutions

            Darwin Magazine describes CMS as “storing content in a database separately from the templates that control its appearance, so content can be updated or reused in various contexts without anyone touching the HTML.”  This helps by letting the software do the html.  This allows non-technical people from human resources or marketing departments change policies and promotions without interfering with the appearance of the web page. 

Multichannel Marketing

            Multichannel marketing is offering customers more than one way to buy something.  A channel means any type of media a business can interact with a customer.  This can include web sites, retail stores, and mailers.  The more channels a company has access to the more customers will see their products.  Being able to provide multichannel marketing is beneficial.  The more people that see your product the better the chance customers will buy your product.

Workflow Automation

Workflow is a term to describe the steps, organizations or people involved required to complete a task.  Workflow automation, for lack of a better word, automates these steps.  For example, if the task was to create a budget report.  You would create the first draft.  Then when finished, it would automatically be sent to an accountant who would validate the report.  When the accountant was done, he would mark it complete, and the final draft would automatically be emailed to an executive.  This would be as simple as using email but more elaborate workflow automation is available. 

Digital Asset Management

            Digital Asset Management keeps track of you digital media, which often includes rich media such as video, audio, and graphics.  Digital Asset Management indexes, categorizes, secures, searches, and assembles all types of digital media.  This helps with immense web pages.  The larger your web page the more you need Digital Asset Management.  A more simplistic view is Digital Asset Management keeps inventory of your media.

ContentServer 7

            ContentServer 7 is the core component to the content management system. This program provids content management, digital asset management and workflow automation.  It is designed for out of the box capabilities for digital asset management and workflow automation.  In another words, it is easy to install ready to use out of the box.  ContentServer 7 allow you to share information between departments by maintaining complex relationship between digital assets.  The workflow automation tools help to increase productivity, reduce errors, lower costs, and improve time to market.

AprovalServer 1.2

            ApprovalServer 1.2 is a promotion approval software.  It allows employees or vendors verify ads before they are published on the web.  This adds extra line of defense.  In addition, approval can be changed to different levels for different departments.

PromoManager

PromoManager delivers dynamic, targeted promotion for their customer’s websites.  This adds value because it uniquely addresses customer’s like and dislikes.  In addition, PromoManager manages promotions with out technical personnel.  This reduces cost of having a technical staff.

How the company uses software engineering with CMS

            The article and company’s web site did not specifically deal with software engineering.  Our interpretation is Engage used software engineering to integrate their software packages.  This resulted in more streamlined and efficient package.  This helps to reduce costs and offer more value to their customers.  Their business is entirely devoted to software.  Therefore, software engineering is very important part of Engage.  Another reason for integrating their software packages was to be more innovated.  They wanted to separate themselves from the competition.  According to the article, “Engage is one of the only companies offering marketing specific content management software that can deliver marketing messages across both print and online channels.”  This separates them from the pack.  It also broadens their customer base by providing more options.  This boils down to more money.

References

http://www.engage.com/

http://guide.darwinmag.com/technology/web/content/

http://searchcrm.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid11_gci761832,00.html

http://searchebusiness.techtarget.com/sDefinition/0,,sid19_gci213384,00.html

http://www.gca.org/papers/xmleurope2001/papers/html/s25-1.html