CrownPeak, the software as a service web content management vendor, announced a major new release of their product last week at the Gilbane Conference in Boston. The new interface greatly simplifies content creation and analytics, putting the entire operation within reach of non-technical marketing personnel.

As CrownPeak points out, getting content into the system and up on the website has become increasingly cumbersome as workflows add more processes to the system. The goal of this update, they say, was to simplify the workflow, and you can see from the screen shot below they seem to have achieved their goal.

The system dashboard offers a very clear view of the activity on the website, and even provides integration with Salesforce.com with good leads from the website. Each activity on the navigation bar on the left is easy to access and there is very little extraneous information and certainly no clutter.

CrownPeak CEO Jim Howard says the new design takes web content management out of the realm of the expert and puts it in reach of the non-technical end user.

"The new CrownPeak user interface fundamentally changes what is expected of an enterprise WCM system. While WCM was once the domain of a select few--essentially an expert-only system--organizations can now expand their content contributor pool dramatically and enhance their online customer engagement as a result," he said.

From the looks of the interface this appears to be the case. It makes a lot of sense to simplify the interface by making it task-driven while trying to integrate other enterprise apps like Salesforce.com to bring together that seeming missing link between Sales and Marketing that exists in every company. Anything that can help bridge that gap would be welcome. 

It's worth noting that a Gilbane presentation by Ektron CMO Tom Wentworth pointed out how mobile tends to be task driven and helps remove extraneous content from the interface. This was from a content standpoint, rather than a content creation one, but the same idea holds true. Removing clutter and making an interface task-driven helps users regardless of the purpose.

For more information:
- see the CrownPeak press release

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