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Clickability Clicks On All Cylinders

Are these guys the Salesforce.com of Web content management? To help you decide, I caught up with Clickability's CEO John Girard and Robert Carroll, its newly appointed head of marketing, to hear how it plans to reshape the Web content management landscape.

The San Francisco-based company, an on-demand content management provider, has a lot to brag about these days. In addition to bolstering the company's executive ranks, it also announced an $8 million second round of funding, led by Shasta Ventures. According to Girard, the cash will be used for operational expansion and improving the company's software infrastructure.

The real news, however, may be the timing of Clickability's WCM moves. Not only is Web content management white hot, companies are finally realizing what it takes to manage an enterprise-class Web site. Hint: It involves more than giving business users control of content.

"If you look at typical WCM offerings, they still revolve around the create, manage, and publish model," said Carroll. "In today's world, clients realize you still have to deliver user-generated content (UGC), analytics, and other technologies that span the software life cycle."

A big part of Clickability's lure is how well the company has incorporated a periphery of services such as social media, search engine optimization (SEO), and campaign management. The company has done so well packaging its suite into a convenient infrastructure-as-a-service wrapper that Girard claims demand for the company's services has outstripped capacity. In fact, within the last year and a half, Clickability's sales and revenue doubled in size while its pipeline more than quadrupled. Since launching its flagship WCM platform, the company has grown to more than 100 customers.

"Not only have we built in security, data storage, and disaster recovery, we can tailor things specifically by customer," said Girard.

According to Girard, the infrastructure-as-a-service approach has enabled the company to productize its deployments, citing Philly.com as a recent example.

"Using our discovery process and rapid vendor integration, we were able to bring the Philadelphia Inquirer online in three months," said Girard. Add to the fact that Philly.com's previous WCM engagement took a year, and you can see why Clickability probably has a customer for life. That's not an easy thing in today's market.

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