I believe in vastly improved structure, organisation, categorization and management of online content.

The dramatic expansion of information over the past decade necessitates its effective management, but it presents complex challenges for organisations:

1. the necessity to communicate to a diverse community;
2. correct metadata tagging, intuitive navigation and searchable content;
3. legislation, policy changes and best practices are increasingly demanding; and
4. embracing the opportunities presented by new technologies.

I believe websites should push for standards compliance, accessibility and adherence to well-defined taxonomies. Content Management Systems (CMSs) and the use of standards compliant technologies as well as W3C specifications like HTML, CSS and XML help to achieve this.

I am passionate about CMSs as they enable organisations to deliver their e-business strategy with ease. Not all CMSs are the same and different CMSs suit different needs. However, I am really fond of those that exhibit the following desireable WCM features:

1. Natural SEO for on-the-fly metadata creation;
2. Automatic sitemaps and breadcrumb generation;
3. Usable, flexible and extendable to meet ever changing needs;
4. Built-in standards and accessibility compliance for problem free pages;
5. Media asset management for using and archiving images, audio, video and flash;
   
6. A fast implementation and good price/performance ratio cotributing to a low total cost of ownership;
7. Non-technical and allowing in-context WYSIWYG editing for non-technical personnel to manage content;
8. Separate content from presentation and use HTML for templates, CSS for style and also support XML/XSL;
9. Native built-in or extra bolt-on Web 2.0 components like wikis, blogs, RSS, podcasts and personalisation; and
   
10. Familiar web and MS Office type interface with intuitive controls for reduced training and increased confidence.

For most organisations today the finding and sharing of information is a time-consuming task. The reality is an abundance of unstructured information as multiple versions of documents begin to circulate. Industry estimates are that up to 80% of an organisation's information is unstructured, contained in notepads, filing cabinets or on computers - emails, audio and video.

Put simply, an ECM is like having your work desktop online. WCM integrated into an ECM does away with a piecemeal approach by connecting all organisational content under a single platform and empowering all employees to collaborate. This results in vastly increased productivity and the doing gets done.

ECM then is: internet/intranet/extranet, marketing communications, business intelligence, business processes, legal/regulatory, HR and corporate planning all linked and supported by portals, document/asset management, collaboration and search together with security, access controls and personal workspaces.