First National has adopted Interwoven ECM solutions for Web Content Management (WCM) and Content Distribution to empower business users across its member banks to directly and more easily contribute content to the Web, while also ensuring that the content is brand compliant.

First National of Nebraska operates a network of more than 90 banking locations across the Midwestern United States, in which all locations share a common brand identity. Until recently, these banks also shared a common challenge: providing their business users with the power to provide customers with the most up-to-date content, in spite of the need to channel Web content change requests through a central IT organization. Not only did this process introduce delays in the rollout of new promotions and other content, but the fact that IT services were billed back to member banks often discouraged these banks from posting new content as often as needed. Further, on the content distribution side, First National sought an ECM solution that would empower its business users to directly make timely content changes in a controlled, auditable fashion, so that each local bank could adapt its Web site to its own business needs while assuring complete brand consistency and regulatory compliance throughout the organization. Before adopting Interwoven Content Distribution, the bank relied on time-consuming and error-prone manual publishing processes, which exposed the bank to more risk for Web content updates not being deployed to the right Web servers at the right time.

Following a rigorously competitive selection process, First National chose Interwoven because of its industry-leading ease of use and ability to scale to meet the bank's ECM needs over time. Key factors contributing to First National's selection of Interwoven were the Interwoven WCM solution's broad feature set, robust workflow and best-of-breed flexibility, which will enable each bank to manage its own Web content within the context of a unified WCM environment. With the Interwoven WCM solution, business users in the First National family can create, edit and manage their own Web content without IT assistance, in the regular workflow, with little or no training required. As a result, rather than being updated only once or twice per week, Web content will remain fresh and current at all times, enhancing each local bank's relationship with its customers. Further, the use of forms and templates will ensure a consistent look and feel for full brand compliance across all member banks.

"To compete effectively, our banks need the flexibility to directly manage their own Web content to map to the needs and requirements of their local markets," said Renee McGuire, vice president of Enterprise Delivery for First National Bank. "Interwoven makes it possible for us to empower business users across our banks to easily contribute content, while still enabling us to maintain centralized control over brand integrity and help ensure that content adheres to the appropriate compliance regulations."

On the back end, Interwoven Content Distribution will provide First National with a standardized production release process, enabling reliable, uniform, and auditable content deployment across all member bank Web sites. Additionally, First National can now easily roll back to previous versions of any of its member Web sites to verify the content that appeared on any given day at any time. In addition to satisfying the requirements of auditors and regulators, this rollback capability will play a key role in quality assurance.

"For complex geographically-dispersed organizations, it can be difficult to achieve the flexibility and responsiveness needed by regional offices, while still maintaining centralized control for operational efficiency and brand integrity," said Kevin Hayden, vice president, corporate marketing, Interwoven. "Interwoven's ECM solutions deliver a seamless platform for speeding business ideas to the Web in a fully controlled and auditable manner."