Case Studies

AGL Resources owns six gas utilities and is responsible for maintaining the website content across all six company websites, in addition to maintaining its corporate site and other brand websites. This represented a significant challenge for the AGL Resources Corporate Communications department as it was difficult to keep the sites updated, consistent, and compliant without working around the clock. AGL Resources needed a simple and efficient means for updating and managing all of its utility websites.

AGL Resources hired Northridge to deploy its Northridge Content Management System (CMS) which is based on the Microsoft. NET framework. The CMS solution is a custom Microsoft.NET application that leverages SQL Server 2005 as its back-end data store. This solution solved several key pain points for the Corporate Communications personnel at AGL Resources. The following features of the CMS provided significant business benefit to AGL Resources.

• The Northridge CMS provides a simple “surf to edit” interface that does not require the content author to know any HTML or programming. This allows non-technical personnel to easily make updates to and extend the site.
• Workflow and publishing rules determine which users can author content and which users must then approve that content in order for it to be published to the live website.
• The Northridge CMS allows for a single piece of content to automatically be published to all six utility websites with a couple of clicks of the mouse. This drastically decreases the amount of time to manage similar content across the six websites.

The solution deployed by Northridge for AGL Resources has allowed the Corporate Communications personnel within the company to more easily and efficiently manage website content and thus free up time for other key initiatives. Northridge continues to make customizations to the solution for AGL Resources to further tailor the CMS to the growing business needs of the company.