Within CNIC there has been a long history of projects that have attempted to address web based content management across the enterprise. While those initiatives often included N9 marketing representatives, the overall objectives never aligned with N9 requirements. As a result, those projects have had mixed success for marketing teams.

For smaller installations with limited resources those initiatives provided web content management capability for the first time.  For larger Marketing teams the impact was less dramatic and the core marketing challenges remain elusive, e.g. content personalization, audience segmentation, marketing automation, e-mail broadcasting, surveys, social networking, mobile applications, digital signage and e-commerce.

In June 2013 a Regional working group with N9 marketing representatives was formed.  The goals of the working group were threefold:

  • Understand the key challenges that N9 marketing teams face on a day-to-day basis
  • Identify gaps in capabilities that exist within Marketing teams
  • Define a common set of requirements (common core) for N9 Marketing teams

To fill specific capability gaps Marketing teams around the enterprise have consistently turned to commercial products. In some instances commercial software is installed on IT infrastructure managed by the Marketing team. Often these environments cannot meet the rigorous DoD/DON certification requirements and further deplete strained budgets as marketing funding is directed toward IT support.

While some Marketing teams have had a degree of success by cobbling together various solutions it has become increasingly difficult to manage brand messaging across numerous independent systems.  Updates to the web must be ported to the email broadcast system, mobile and social channels.  In the current environment, it is easy for content synchronization gaps to occur while the brand message is being manually transferred from one channel to the next. 

N9 customers using multiple devices to engage with marketing resources expect up to date content on any channel they chose to access. As new digital channels become available the one system per channel approach will become unsustainable.

A series of IT initiatives are in development to address the core requirements identified by the N9 working group and deliver enterprise services that support N9 Marketing teams. This guide provides an overview of the functionality provided by those services - collectively branded as N9 webCentral.

Audience

This guide was written for content Contributors — anyone who creates, reviews, and approves content for web, e-mail broadcast, mobile or social networking. Typically, content providers are program specialists or marketing staff. The content Contributors’ expertise is rooted in the content, not in the software used to manage it. Technical proficiency is not required.