The Berndt Group: National Experts in CMS
October 28, 2009
BALTIMORE, MD—Shortly after the "Dot-Com bubble" collapsed in 2001, John Berndt got a phone call from national Content Management System (CMS) expert Lisa Welchman (www.welchmanpierpoint.com), one of the most significant thought leaders in the country on CMS and governance for large web sites. Although Berndt, reeling a bit from violent changes in market conditions, was initially unable to see the forest for the CMS trees, it didn't take very long for conversations with the persistent Welchman to change his perspective on CMS and Web design entirely.
The Berndt Group quickly moved from developing our own CMS (code name "Web Leverage") to initial explorations of the world of mid-market and enterprise CMS, aggressively learning about existing systems and exploring the market and best practices for this crucial layer of software that powers the Web.
Fast-forward to today, eight years later, and The Berndt Group are ourselves thought-leaders and national experts in this field. Although the firm has worked on some large Enterprise-class CMS projects (Vignette, Stellent, Interwoven), The Berndt Group's major focus has been on understanding the more affordable—and often better designed—mid-market solutions. The Berndt Group has spent thousands of hours understanding these tools, and getting beyond the sales hype to understand the real-world implementation hurdles and strengths and weaknesses of a wide variety of products.
Along the way, The Berndt Group has contributed to the CMS Watch Reports, providing information to the analysts who review CMS for the industry leading, vendor-neutral consultancy on CMS, as well as running a large number of our own very successful vendor-neutral CMS selection processes for large organizations. Along the way, The Berndt Group's understanding of CMS practices and the product space intensified.
The Berndt Group's expertise with CMS goes far beyond selecting products for our clients, however. We've become highly involved in all the CMS usability, sustainability, and operations issues that need to be addressed for large sites to be successful. The Berndt Group strongly sees the value in best practices for Web CMS implementations—how to build web sites right from the beginning, so that implementations don't need to be retooled later on. Our clients really value this, since most of them are aware that shallow CMS implementations often crash and burn, resulting in unhappy stakeholders, crippled Web strategy and frustrated staff.
Despite plenty of ASP.NET, Java, and other types of developers out there, there are only a handful of firms that have really thought through how to get the full value out of these CMS products for an organization. It's a set of complex problems that transcend programming to include a holistic mix of operations issues, content object modeling, taxonomy, training, localization, content re-usage and federation, back-end usability, and training. Finding the right solution involves harmonizing many different elements.
Today The Berndt Group is an expert developer in many CMS platforms, including Ektron, Sitecore, RedDot, Crown Peak, Plone, Expression Engine, and a number of others. Some of our more significant CMS-driven web sites include SafeNet, Provident Bank, The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the Association of Zoos and Aquariums, the National Aquarium, RWD, and U.S. Immigration.
Over hundreds of projects, The Berndt Group has perfected the art of good CMS usage, resulting in happy clients, streamlined operations, and better use of the Web. In combination with great strategy and superb user experience, its what is needed to make a truly great web site!
About The Berndt Group
The Berndt Group has been a leading Web design, development and brand communications firm since 1991. The firm provides an integrated set of creative services, including strategic consulting, brand and application development, software implementation, web site design, and internet marketing. Based in Baltimore, MD, the firm services a diverse international and regional base of over fifty active clients, including: The National Aquarium, Johns Hopkins Institutions, SafeNet, Inc., Raytheon, U.S. Immigration, The Federal Aviation Administration, The U.S. Forest Service, The Abell Foundation, and many others. For more information, visit www.berndtgroup.net.
Media Contact
Inquiries? Please contact:
Michelle Géczy
Vice President
phone: 410.889.5854 x 12
email: michelle.geczy@berndtgroup.net
