PaperThin

As the Government of Canada's national housing agency, Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC), plays a major role in Canada's housing industry. CMHC helps individuals and families through housing finance initiatives such as providing mortgage loan insurance programs, and CMHC also funds affordable housing projects. Research on housing market issues, and to improve design and building technologies is also a large part of their work. CMHC disseminates information and resources to individual consumers, builders, realtors, architects and other housing industry professionals, non-profit housing corps, mortgage lenders and brokers, investors, housing industry analysts, etc.

Historically, the Internet has been an important means for CMHC to communicate with its diverse audiences. But with thousands of pages of static HTML designed and published by many different departments, CMHC's five-year-old website had reached a point where it was no longer manageable. CMHC had outgrown its original site, and began an effort to re-architect, and implement a consistent look and feel. CMHC anticipated that they would eventually need a content management solution to aid in the maintenance and updating of the new site, but did not expect to implement that functionality in the initial launch.

However, according to Donna Oates, CMHC's Website Development Project Leader, soon after CMHC began working with a local consulting firm, the consultant suggested that CMHC consider incorporating content management into the new site design. Given CMHC's content management requirements and aggressive timeframe, the consultant recommended CommonSpot.

CMHC's extensive site, www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca, includes more than 8,000 pages with content presented in both French and English versions, and accessible by topic or audience. CMHC has implemented a number of CommonSpot's out-of-the box features, with plans for using more. CMHC has leveraged the ability to target specific audiences, create content freshness reminders and add personalization.

In order to push content management out to individual contributors within CMHC's 2,000+ organization, the Web team implemented CommonSpot's multilevel approval process to ensure that the right sign-offs occur in publishing new content. Contributors will be able to paste in text, but not modify the look and feel of the site or the presentation of content. "The routing of approvals to appropriate parties is a key attraction," said Oates. "We anticipate that decentralizing the updating process will speed up our "time to air" and allow us to do more with less. This in turn will allow us to focus on ways to improve and expand our site to deliver more information and services to our audiences, more cost-effectively," added Oates.

"We didn't expect to be able to implement a content management solution at this phase of our development, and we have been very pleased with CommonSpot. PaperThin has delivered outstanding service, fast response to our needs, and a willingness to address our unique circumstances."