Software development house, Khanyisa Real Systems (KRS), has been appointed as a Progress Partner+, for the Sitefinity CMS and Marketing Automation platform.
The partnership agreement will see KRS offer development and support services for this feature rich, highly secure, enterprise geared Content Management System, to corporates, large-scale business operations and digital marketing agencies, across sub-Saharan Africa.
Content management is no longer solely the domain for media publishing houses, but increasingly, businesses are realising the potential of controlling their own content and the conversations that are happening online. However, while the generation of content Is relatively easy to initiate, enterprises have the added requirement for stringent security to protect the platform and its content, as well as data tracking and interpretation to mine the information for better marketing and business intelligence. All this has to happen within the confines of a digital platform that is at once easy to navigate and manage, as it is to protect and serve.
Enter Sitefinity, a modern ASP .NET Web CMS that delivers intuitive web content management in a robust development environment. The platform offers a rich end user experience and allows organisations to build an engaging web presence through a usable interface, flexible framework and feature rich functionality – all built-in in one coherent offering that puts security and SEO at the heart of the proposition, from the beginning. No need for a constant supply of updating plugins.
Having worked on the platform for a leading South Africa finance institution, KRS recognised the potential the Sitefinity system has for all manner of enterprises in South Africa. It consequently approached the product owner with an offer, the result being today’s official partnership announcement.
“The robustness of the Sitefinity platform is a good fit for us” says Steve Randles, director at KRS. “We have this deep dot.net technical knowledge in terms of customisation, integration into servers and services, a track record for running big systems and expertly managing them, as well as our mature SDLC approach.
“Couple this with recognising where the world is going in terms of its digital transactional presence, we felt Sitefinity was the way forward for us as a company, and also where we believe South African corporates and eCommerce platforms should be going in terms of investing in their digital operations, profits and reputation.”
Randles has hit the nail on the head. One of Sitefinity’s key offerings, setting it apart from most other CMS platforms, is its ability to combine eCommerce solutions and content together in one platform. It has its own data tracking system too – builds its own intelligence and profiling and is not Google driven or reliant on any other search engine. It is wholly independent, sort of the Duck Duck Go of digital marketing and data. This makes it a highly attractive proposition for companies with large customer databases and online engagements – think anything with an online booking system, sports betting, banking, insurance and the like.
Content security, one of the most pressing requirements in today’s digital world, is managed by monitoring user activity with a system audit trail, ensuring accountability and transparency. Digital assets can be shared across all sites and granular permissions authorize who can access, edit and publish, allowing complete control of content management.
There are also other benefits, as enterprises are not locked into using the cloud. For extra security, Sitefinity gives the enterprise ownership and control over its own data, which can be stored via on-site servers, if desired.
Notwithstanding on-cloud or off, storage options, Sitefinity’s Digital Experience Cloud (DEC), is a marketer’s dream. The unified marketing command centre enables marketers to drive growth by understanding, and optimising every customer’s journey.
Utilising data aggregation, the DEC provides a 360-degree view of customers and measures how marketing efforts drive targeted conversions. It applies machine learning to provide recommendations on how to direct targeted audiences toward best possible outcomes.
The DEC recommends, which existing assets to use, predicts the enhancements that can be expected, and measures results. Connecting an insight to an automated process like personalisation, helps to make the most of each opportunity that Big Data may uncover.
From a functionality point of view, Sitefinity has a convenient and easy to use drag and drop interface, combined with a flexible architecture, which enables developers to quickly and seamlessly build and customize modules and new content items. In a digital world where everything moves fast, speed is of the essence when it comes to reacting to trends and optimising the platform, something the team at KRS respect and understand.
The platform employs an open architecture and fully exposed APIs to ensure it is endlessly extendible. Utilising custom controls, modules or through integration to third-party applications, the platform offers extensive customisation capabilities. Connectivity and integration with all manner of external systems and data sources, is also fully supported.
Built in personalisation tools allow for the delivery of personalised content based on parameters like location/IP address, searched terms, time of the day, profile fields, visit duration, landing page and visited pages, an essential for today’s engaging enterprise.
KRS business development manager, Gerald Steyn, believes that what will give Sitefinity and KRS the added edge, in today’s competitive digital communications sector, is also the quality of collaborations KRS is striking with some of South Africa’s most forward thinking digital marketing agencies. “KRS is not a design house or content generators, but we do have creative developers. Sitefinity gives our team the scope to build highly effective digital systems as the structural backbone or blank canvas on which the ‘painting’ can be built.
“We offer corporates a single solution for their marketing needs by either building the system from scratch (along with mobile apps if required) and working with their existing agency, or by bringing our collaborative content partners to the party. It’s an exciting space to be in right now and a journey we are looking forward to undertaking.”