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As we discussed in our last blog post, there are many benefits of opting for a SaaS content management system over a locally hosted alternative. Although the organizational benefits are plenty, it's the environmental benefits of SaaS options that have some businesses taking interest. As "going green" becomes a higher priority for many organizations, SaaS content management systems are quickly becoming intriguing options to maintain a thriving business while looking out for Mother Earth.

SaaS solutions are exceptionally energy-efficient because they eliminate the need for an organization to have their own servers. SaaS providers have the ability use their own servers to host data for numerous companies around the world.  This pooling of resources is more energy-efficient since it allows for servers to be utilized around the clock by companies in differing time-zones, whereas they would otherwise be sitting idle in the server room of an organization overnight wasting energy.

Additionally, computers contain toxic materials that, when disposed of in a landfill, can be harmful to the environment and our health.  SaaS solutions reduce the number of servers in use, thus reducing the amount of toxic materials such as lead, mercury, beryllium, and retardants that we dump into the environment as waste.  Not only does such hazardous waste harm the environment, but it can come back to haunt us in the forms of brain damage, lung disease, and thyroid damage.

These days, it seems that every program, system, or piece of software has a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) counterpart trying to woo customers away from hosting the software locally -- and content management systems are no exception.  While there are certainly advantages to be gained by using the SaaS model, close attention should be paid when evaluating CMS programs and their SaaS capabilities.

Early SaaS products started with a limited scope; they were meant to perform one function, and to replace one bulky piece of software on your computer.   As more and more organizations have adopted technologies, programs, and systems that operate under the SaaS banner, the market for SaaS content management systems has grown as well.  However, with rapid technological advancement and the spread of this model to the CMS market in particular, customers now often expect much more from their SaaS CMS products -- they want infrastructure, built-in design capabilities, community tools, and even developer support.  So guess which CMS does just that?  Yep....eCrowds.

In addition to the wealth of community-oriented Web 2.0 tools like blogs , automatic Twitter tweets, forums, idea exchanges, and wikis, eCrowds also provides users with the power to manage their websites with solid content management capabilities, engaging aesthetics, and strong, accessible support for developers and other back-end team members.  Dynamic Menus and Filter Flexibility allow users to direct content through extensive use of sortable menus and multiple filters, and our Instant Content Creation, Stylization, and Publication tools give users access to an intuitive interface that makes for easy content creation and management.  eCrowds also comes complete with full-service web services API, which allows for seamless integration and communication with 3rd party applications.

Finally, as cost is always a concern for every organization, and even more so in light of current economic conditions, eCrowds is offered as a SaaS rather than as locally installed software, so the costs of installation, implementation, and infrastructure are negligible.  Keep in mind all of these factors as your organization searches for the CMS solution that best suits its needs.

As you might have heard circulating through the blogosphere, crowdsourcing provides numerous organizational advantages, and is a notion that is rapidly gaining popularity in the Web 2.0 realm. Whether your organization stands to gain by eliciting the knowledge of your community to help solve business challenges, or you simply use crowdsourcing as a means to gain your community's feedback on your product or service, there are many obvious benefits of using your crowd as a business resource.  But are there disadvantages of crowdsourcing?  Of course. As with any new business idea, there are some potential drawbacks to crowdsourcing. Here we'll discuss a couple of the challenges associated with Web 2.0 crowdsourcing and what you can do to overcome them.

When employing the use of a corporate web community, it is important to understand that there will be some initial community motivational challenges. The first step to overcoming this is to make sure you have all the tools needed to foster an active success community. By incorporating discussions, forums, wikis, blogs, and idea exchanges into one dynamic and robust platform, eCrowds allows you to pick and choose which elements are right for the kind of organizational community you wish to create. Additionally, your organization should make sure the success community is adopted internally and encourage staff members to make contributions and further engage your community members.

Once you have your users contributing, the next challenge your organization faces is your competitors. Having your crowd's efforts out in a public domain can be an easy way for your competitors to "borrow" ideas for improvements in the industry or gain insight into your product or service without having to do any real work themselves.  Fortunately, we've thought of that, and have developed eCrowds as a highly dynamic product that is capable of handling this challenge. Through the use of groups, roles, and security policies, you can decide who can view various pieces of content in your community.  If you want to ensure that your web community remains private, you can configure permissions so that users must be approved after signing up in order to participate, and only those that are approved can view the community space and contribute to content. Additionally, security policies are flexible, so if you are using eCrowds to power your marketing site and your success community, you can create multiple security policies to meet the needs of both sites.

For more information on crowdsourcing and corporate web communities, check out our "6 Key Benefits of Crowdsourcing" and "5 Must-haves for a Winning B2B Web Community" white papers.

In launching a new product, finding a message that speaks to the true capabilities of your offering is critical. Since releasing eCrowds several months ago, we've found that finding our niche isn't as easy as we expected. We initially launched eCrowds as a suite of tools that merged community building and content management tools. However, after utilizing our system for our own in-house site content management and community features, such as our company idea exchange, forum, intranet, and blog, we found features that would be of tremendous benefit if added to eCrowds.

In my opinion, the notion of "eating our own dog food" has rapidly and drastically improved the eCrowds product line. Through use of the system, we were able to identify tools such as Salesforce CRM integration for recording visitor activity, automatic pings (tweets) to Twitter for our blog posts and news items, and interaction with Google Analytics for metrics analysis that we believe have made eCrowds a one-stop-shop for small- and medium-sized business content management, community building, and SEO/SEM improvement.

As a daily user of the system, I can truly speak to the ease-of-use of eCrowds. Without needing a background in coding or web development, I'm able to manage and update our site and it's community features in minutes and often seconds, automatically create search-engine-friendly-URLs, and effectively analyze community and visitor activity, all from my web browser.