Reed Exhibitions chooses EPiServer CMS to manage its 400-plus websites in 30 languages

Published 2nd September 2008

Reed Exhibitions, the world's leading organiser of trade and consumer events, today announced that it has chosen EPiServer’s award-winning Content Management System (CMS) to build and manage its entire portfolio of websites...

Reed Exhibitions decided to completely overhaul its web strategy – and implement a new CMS – as part of a bold plan to grow its online business and improve its online capabilities for visitors, exhibitors and sponsors of its events. Reed has organised over 500 events in 38 countries across 47 different industry sectors during 2008.

Dominic Shine, the Chief Information Officer responsible for technology across Reed Exhibitions, as well as the development of its online business activities, says:

"We have ambitious growth plans and our sites are massively important to us as they are the first place people visit to find out more information about upcoming events. We need to be able to quickly and easily develop new sites, and we need the content on these sites to be managed by event managers, not programmers.

EPiServer CMS is central to our online architecture and will be connected to our other platforms as we progress a significant overhaul of our enterprise applications over the coming years”.

Reed carried out extensive evaluations and trials of a number of products and EPiServer CMS stood out as it offers the following benefits:

- Intuitive and easy-to-use. EPiServer CMS was specifically designed to be very easy for non-technical people to update and change content

- Multi-lingual capabilities

- Ability to upscale as Reed’s business grows

- Easy integration with Reed’s existing (and future) enterprise software applications

- A good track record. Every day, two new websites go live using EPiServer CMS.

EPiServer CMS will be rolled out across all Reed’s global business units, comprising over 400 event websites and a growing number of industry portals. Importantly, the new system will be able to keep pace as new events are launched and websites developed, enabling Reed to create and integrate content in 30 different languages.

Reed Exhibitions will develop a set of templates for its business units to create their websites. Every individual event owner will then be responsible for customising, populating and managing the site for their own event.

Furthermore, EPiServer CMS will be integrated with other key online components and Enterprise platforms across Reed including Google’s search application and salesforce.com (a staple for Reed’s sales and marketing teams).

Reed Exhibitions joins thousands of organisations and companies around the world now saving time and money by using EPiServer CMS to manage their websites, including Mazda Motor Europe, SAS, and Scandic Hotels; as well as charities such as Save The Children.

Peter Larsson, CEO of EPiServer, says: “Yet another large high-profile company chooses EPiServer CMS to help them manage their online content and create engaging websites. It demonstrates that ours is a compelling solution to the increasingly complex challenge of co-ordinating huge amounts of content on a global scale.”