Our company has quite a few websites for different product lines. We have a relatively small IT department making it difficult for us to keep up with the influx of support requests. Once we implemented Oracle WebCenter Sites, we were able to turn over the content management to our Marketing department. Since there were daily content change requests, this has alleviated a lot of pressure on our IT department.
Pros
It makes content changes simple.
Publishing changes is a breeze.
Cons
Oracle should provide better documentation and tutorials.
There are cheaper alternatives.
Likelihood to Recommend
Overall, Oracle WebCenter Sites has helped our company with efficiency and relieved some of the burden on our IT department. It allows people from other departments (namely Marketing) who may not be especially tech-savvy to manage and deploy content changes, categorize products on our eCommerce site, etc.
Implementation was a bit of a struggle, so be prepared. Also, as with most Oracle products, their support contracts end up being very costly over the long run.
VU
Verified User
Director in Information Technology (1001-5000 employees)
We use the tool to help with web content particularly in the area of investor relations. We use a 3rd party IR firm and share content in the design of various web sites. This saves us considerable time and effort between company personnel and IR firm personnel. We may also use it in the future for its mobile capabilities; that is yet to be determined. The system works very reliably and support functions are most helpful.
Pros
Timely management of web content including examining future designs and enhancements.
Targeting of customer groups.
Analytical capabilities to help define usage and gather info for future refinements.
Cons
More customer examples to help new users understand the capabilities better.
Likelihood to Recommend
Customer engagement and content sharing, analytical evaluation and use of analytics to help drive better optimization and delivery of content targeted better to specific user segments.
Oracle WebCenter Sites, is a WEM platform for companies to build their internet/intranet sites. It has a WSISYG form, which makes it easy for the content contributor to create/edit content. It also comes with user management and can be integrated with LDAP if required. Also it has an inbuilt workflow, which allows the company to define their content flow the way they want it.
Pros
WSISYG editor for content authors
Workflow
User ACL
Publishing method
Caching
Vanity URL
Cons
Cloud
Publishing
Workflow
ACL
Likelihood to Recommend
It is very well suited for any web related use, be it intranet or internet. The WSISYG content author form makes it easy to train content authors to use the system. The workflow is well integrated with publishing, making it easy to manage the content flow. The user ACL makes it easy to assign roles to a user and provide appropriate rights to a user in the workflow to act on the asset. It can be easily integrated with social media like Facebook and Twitter via a community plugin. The template coding is in Java, so the existing developers can be trained to use Oracle WebCenter Sites (WCS).
Oracle WebCenter Sites is a robust and flexible content management system. Typicallly used for external facing web sites, WCS provides powerful tools for business users to manage web content separately from managing the actual presentation of that content. For businesses wanting to provide a more personalized web experience for their end users, WCS also provides excellent tools for managing segmentation and personalization. And most importantly for many business users, a solid implementation gives business users a large degree of autonomy from IT when publishing new or updated content to meet immediate needs of the end user.
Pros
Contributor UI: A robust, intuitive and customizable user interface for business content contributors, with in-context editing and preview capabilities. This allows a contributor to preview the content without leaving WCS and also allows the contributor to edit content directly in the context of the web page.
Application Integration: The Web Experience Management (WEM) framework allows easy integration with external applications needed in the content lifecycle. Applications such as cloud-based media or document libraries can be conveniently accessed within the context of WCS during content creation, vastly simplifying the contributor's workflow.
Digital Experience Marketing: On top of the CMS, organizations can optimize the experience for end users by providing personalization and segmentation rules to content, making content much more relevant and engaging to customers.
Cons
Release Management: It is difficult to group content together and manage as a unit. This is most noticeable with content like promotions, where there might be a number of different types of content that need to be published at the same time when the promotion takes effect.
Development Patterns: On the technical side, a lot of the code is contained in JSP files, using a combination of JSP tags and scriptlets. This can be tedious to manage from development perspective, though with some thought, an MVC-type pattern can be achieved. However, with every new release, the WCS product team continues to deliver a better environment for developers.
Likelihood to Recommend
Oracle WebCenter Sites is very well suited to presenting marketing content in all shapes and forms, including mobile, an in a corporate web site. Oracle WebCenter Sites can also manage small product catalogs easily. Important things to consider when selecting a CMS:
How important is the ease with which my business users update content?
How often are updates made?
How distributed are my business contributors?
How important is preview in my organization's workflow and publishing process?
It is better suited to larger projects where stability and scalability are key problems, but for simple projects it requires too much effort by the developer.
Oracle WebCenter Sites is being used as a content management system to manage the editorial content of the public section of the web portal of a big energy company. Allows you to leave full autonomy to the marketing group in content management, deciding when and how to make them public. It supports the entire process of drafting, by the editor, approver and the publishing process, where each user has their own role within a defined workflow.
Pros
Easy-to-use content authoring and design tools for business users.
Segmentation based on implicit (behavioral) or explicit (known user or characteristics) criteria or a combination of the two.
Flexible rules engine for creation of customer segments and recommendations, enabling delivery of targeted content and campaigns.
Cons
The old version is lacking in Mobile Site Management functionality, but the 11.1.1.8 release of WebCenter Sites offers a new, fully integrated mobility solution that allows digital marketers to manage mobile version of sites
Automated management of product upgrades, to incorporate bug fixes and new enhancements
Lack of support for the management of e-commerce out of the box
Likelihood to Recommend
Oracle WebCenter Sites is a content management system well-structured and robust, suitable for large projects. This product is suitable mainly for static content, not for transactional processes (eg form with step). It is less appropriate for small portals with low number of visitors, which you do not want to invest a lot in terms of maintenance.