Web savings from open source and external hosting

Getting more people to use your website should be - and probably is - at the very heart of your strategy for reducing cost. Customers accessing online services and staff accessing online information will enable your authority to deliver better services at lower cost. But how can you justify spending more money on improving the website when it's already costing a lot in CMS licensing costs, hosting and support?

We are confident we can help your authority to achieve major savings in the following areas:

• Shifting to an open source content management system. Open source CMS solutions (as used by the White House, as well as several UK local authorities) are a proven way to build complex and powerful websites with a minimum of coding and with minimum demand for support. There's a huge library of proven open source modules available for re-use, and huge advantages in having no licensing costs and avoiding proprietary lock-in
• Taking a hard look at how much web hosting is costing your authority. Too many councils are paying over the odds for website hosting and registration, either because they're trying to do too much in-house or because their ISP is adding a massive premium over normal commercial rates
• Possibly, reviewing your use of under-used Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and considering achieving the required outcomes through add-on modules to the CMS, thereby reducing cost further and getting a more effective solution

Working as we do in close association with Socitm Insight, we have a very clear understanding of what it takes to produce an excellent local authority website. We also have extensive practical experience of project managing and even carrying out complete website transformation programmes for local authorities. This is a crucial area for improvement and we are extremely well-placed to assist. Reply to this email or call me on 0845 241 2774 if you would like to discuss exactly how.