IFRA

Responding from Atex is Peter Marsh, Executive Vice President.

WAN-IFRA: What are the main questions and concerns publishers are asking Atex about content management systems?

Peter Marsh: The main concern is whether the selected CMS vendor will be around to support the system in 5-10 years.

Atex has been around for 37 years, and we continue to support our current systems, protect our customers’ investments in these systems, and provide the ability to extend these systems to take advantage of new features and technologies. At Atex, we very much believe in “preserve and extend” as opposed to “rip and replace.”

Atex is also being enlisted by publishers around the world in their transition to web-first workflows and single newsroom models. Our systems enable this transformation, and more importantly with the optimisation resulting from a combined print and digital content management environment.

In addition, Atex is the only CMS vendor at IFRA to be placed on the Gartner Web CMS Magic Quadrant. And, Atex is the only vendor noted for our unique ability to integrate and optimize editorial and advertising business models. This is also a concern to publishers as they look to generate new digital advertising revenues through personalization, contextualisation, and targeted delivery. In Gartner’s words: “The expertise Atex has developed in the area of advertising will give it an advantage over some competitors in context-aware solutions for which relevance and targeted delivery are critical.”

WAN-IFRA: Are the concerns and requirements for CMS the same around the world?

Marsh: The challenges are very much the same, although the workflows and focus may vary. In the US, for example, classified advertising is in constant decline and publishers do not have much hope that it will recover to its old levels. In Singapore, on the other hand, we just went live on our Atex Advertising system, and SPH is booking 7,0000 classified ads a day, which translates into $4M in classified revenue per month. Ads are being booked on our system in English, Chinese and Malay, all on the same system and a single database with a single view of all customers.

WAN-IFRA: What are the top strengths of Atex?

Marsh: Main strengths include:

• Commitment to this industry and our customers
• Global footprint
• Browser-based advertising and content management solutions capable of running in a hosted, managed services, or in-house model
• One-stop shop
• Best in class architecture with our web services, open interfaces and standard database platforms
• Unique ability (as Gartner noted) to help move our customers from digital transformation to digital optimisation.