InformationWeek: The Business Value of Technology

nergy supplier Southern Co. has been relying on a homegrown content-management system. But there was one problem: A handful of IT personnel had to manually post content updates, which led to delays and an overtaxed IT staff.

Last week, the Atlanta company disclosed plans to use Interwoven's newly released TeamSite 5.0 software, the upgraded version of the vendor's XML-based-content-management tool. After deciding to upgrade its Web site to let customers pay bills online, check energy use, and report power outages, IT managers realized the homegrown system, which had two developers posting all site updates once a day, wouldn't be able to keep up with the content updates.

Now, 700 nontechnical employees at Southern will be able to create Web content and submit it to managers for revisions. Once they approve the copy, managers can route the content to a queue that's automatically updated every two hours. Southern can also update content immediately in emergencies, such as during major storms.

The software will free IT workers to focus on more technical issues, says Stan Hoptroff, Southern's manager of Internet technology strategy. With the homegrown software, there was often a bottleneck of content updates waiting to be posted, so long delays were common. Southern also ran into quality issues because the IT staff wasn't always able to review the content for inaccuracies; it just posted the information to the site. Says Hoptroff: "We specifically chose Interwoven because it lets us see the content before it goes public."

TeamSite 5.0's pricing varies according to which features are implemented.