Because my DSL was down  I called Deutsche Telekom’s customer support.

While on hold (for 10 minutes) I was suggested to alternatively visit their website for help.

Now, generally I would have done so, simply because I don’t really appreciate hanging around on hold with some call center where the answers you get are quite doubtable by themselves – but how, without a connection to the internet because they screwed up?

To those who are just about to start defending their initiative: no, this was not a general hotline phone number but one dedicated to problems with DSL connections.

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My editor (not the one that disappeared ) called this a true eye opener and upon  the idea founded the company Online Reputation Management, which I am a part of.

It is truly amazing how many people are unaware of how fast bad news can spread about a company online. And how fast it can endanger the whole brand and image.

So here we go on to the chapter “Corporate Online  Reputation Management”:

Remember the good old days when – if negative news were published by a credible newspaper – you would contact your legal counsel and tell them to take the appropriate measures, which would consist of a restraining order or something of that nature?

These times have been replaced by a potential grave danger to your organizations reputation. A danger you can’t counter with the conventional methodologies utilized back then because its nature is not conventional either.

The threat I am talking about is called social media and can ruin your reputation in a matter of days.

It was in early 2008 and a tool called Twitter at the brink of its breakthrough when I first mentioned what is today known as corporate reputation management.

Back then I closed the link by suggesting that upon negative news popping up about an organization on the web, one assigned person will take action by immediately contacting the person complaining, regardless if their complaint was legitimate or not.

To illustrate this process with an example let’s just say that one of your clients is dissatisfied with the service provided by your organization and boasts out a complaint about that on the web.

Now, this can be through their blog in the best case because you have time to react and they can remove or alter that entry when your reputation management staff picked up on and resolved the issue together with the client.

Worse would be if they published their opinion on highly frequented places like micro-blogging platforms where the viral effect is way more likely to take effect simply because they can’t be stopped and even if the clients problem is solved, the good news are unlikely to pick up with the same magnitude.

In all cases the ideal outcome for everyone involved would be that the person who complained in the first place replaces what they have written with the story of how great your customer service is because they got back to them immediately.

Chances that this happens are fairly high because the people are – up until now – not used to this kind of behavior and reaction by support staff.

While back then it took a few hours the tools available today make information surrounding your organization available to you the instant they are published.

Through so-called real time search engines, to which you can submit searches and are informed the instant someone, somewhere says something about you, and this whole topic becomes even more interesting for you as an organization.

This immediate access allows you or your representatives to take immediate action against negative issues being published about you on the web.

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Furthermore, there are issues like the fluctuation in personnel. Employing someone today may very well result in a headhunter standing in your door and draging this valuable resource out of your company within months, leaving the company with a painful loss. If this organization had a proper knowledge management system installed and encouraged their employees to document what they do etc., the loss would not have been as tremendous.

These are just some of the examples that go along with Enterprise 2.0, not to mention issues like CRM, corporate, internal and external blogging, etc.

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Portal technology, according to specs like JSR 168 and 286, is difficult and needs a lot of overhead to develop web applications. The arguments to chose the technology often include the words integration, SOA, personalization, federation and scalability. But are these reasons strong enough to overcome the development hurdles? Or should we just accept that serious portal frameworks from IBM / BEA / Oracle are just meant for the big Enterprises who have a strategy that will allow them to invest millions each year in portal development?

ANSWER

Yet the MOST important question when it comes to CMSs is: “What IF the system we utilize is stomped in?” This is the most tricky question out there because migration and data mining efforts to move 1000s of pages of content can quickly go into the 100ks and lead to a system the company will stick to for several years, improvising the living hell out of the thing, making it vulnerable and totally exposed. Same applies for intranet and knowledge management solutions.

But to go back to your question… Yes, it most definitly is. Not only is the rights management of the publishers worth it. But also considder the fact that creating a new page means a bigger hassle in standard programming. Furthermore, you face issues like SEO, accessibility, etc. etc. that you have to review on every single page while a CMS takes care of that for you through the framework.If you need more help please feel free to call me. I have pointed out my international phone numbers in the bottom. 

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