About

Cinergy Corp. was created on October 24, 1994, from the combination of The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company and PSI Energy, Inc., the largest electric utility in Indiana.  Based in Cincinnati, Ohio, Cinergy Corp. (NYSE:CIN), is one of the leading diversified energy companies in the U.S.

Cinergy Corp. has a balanced, integrated portfolio consisting of two core businesses: regulated operations and energy merchant. Cinergy owns regulated delivery operations in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky that serve 1.5 million electric customers and about 500,000 gas customers. In addition, its Indiana regulated operations own 7,000 megawatts of generation.  Cinergy’s energy merchant business is a Midwest leader in low-cost generation owning 6,300 megawatts of capacity with a profitable balance of stable existing customer portfolios, new customer origination, marketing and trading, and industrial-site cogeneration.  The “into Cinergy” power-trading hub is the most liquid trading hub in the nation.

Cinergy's regulated operating companies are The Cincinnati Gas & Electric Company (Cinergy/CG&E)(Ohio), Union Light, Heat & Power (Cinergy/ULH&P) (Kentucky), Lawrenceburg Gas (Cinergy/LG) (Indiana), and PSI Energy, Inc. (Cinergy/PSI) (Indiana).

Challenge

Cinergy required a content management system (CMS) to manage content on five corporate Web sites:

• www.cinergy.com/
• www.cinergycge.com/
• www.cinergyulhp.com/
• www.cinergylg.com/
• www.cinergypsi.com/

Their content management initiative also included a re-design of all Cinergy Web sites to create a uniform corporate identity. The project objective was to remove the current bottleneck of the Web development group in updating content while empowering non-technical users to contribute content that conformed to corporate standards.

Some of the challenges Cinergy faced were:

• The need for a tool with an easy to use interface, simple enough for non-technical users to learn and use periodically
• The need for workflow processes that would force approvals on appropriate pages, while quickly publishing others
• The need for a cost-effective package that offered all of the appropriate tools to create and maintain a dynamic Web site
  

Solution

After researching many CMS providers in the market, Cinergy selected RedDot CMS Professional for a variety of significant reasons; RedDot’s easy to use interface, ease of management, workflow functionality and the cost-effectiveness of the solution that gave them exactly what they needed without interrupting their business processes already in place.

RedDot’s solution is managed by Cinergy’s New Media Group who is responsible for managing more than 3,000 Web pages for Cinergy.com and Cinergy’s four regulated utilities.  Upon implementation of RedDot, content contributors underwent minimal training to become familiar with the solution and its features, and were fully functional in minimal time. 

A dedicated server has been installed to house RedDot CMS Professional.  A team of two from the New Media Group with help from IT personnel and contractors from RedDot partner, HSRB2B, completed the implementation of RedDot CMS.

Results

Upon implementing the RedDot Content Management Server, results were immediate and positively impacted business company wide. Cinergy now benefits from ease of use for its members, they are able to maintain corporate standards and furthermore, customers are able to change their respective content according to their different schedules.

“Cinergy’s company-wide mission is to create superior value for all of its community which is why we had to ensure that we had the right CMS managing our multiple Web sites, the key informational vehicles to our community,” said Ginny Segbers, Supervisor, New Media, Cinergy.  “The RedDot system allowed us to roll out content management to end-users - true content owners, without having to train them on FrontPage or other Web tools.  We did not even have to install anything on their machines.”

Prior to utilizing the RedDot CMS, Cinergy had three New Media team members dedicated to managing the five Web sites. Upon implementation of RedDot, the Cinergy team was able to transfer management of the sites to one person.

RedDot empowered the Cinergy team to:

Engage content owners company-wide in maintaining the content that they write
Free up the New Media Group from performing the day-to-day content updates
Have updated content reviewed by editors prior to publishing
Utilize a cost-effective content management solution that is scalable to meet the needs of the expanding Web site

Other results include:

Cinergy’s 45 content contributors from various departments have become true owners of their materials.  Ten are heavy users, 20 of them act as editors as well
Content is now quickly updated by content owners rather than waiting for updates from the New Media Group
Members in the New Media Group now have more time to accomplish higher level tasks
RedDot CMS™ serves as a prioritizing and job-allocating tool, therefore creating seamless business procedures

Facts and Figures

URL’s:

• http://www.cinergy.com/
• http://www.cinergycge.com/
• http://www.cinergyulhp.com/
• http://www.cinergylg.com/
• http://www.cinergypsi.com/

Launch of the site: Cinergy.com launched on January 16, 2002. The other four sites launched on April 17, 2002

Total working time:  20 weeks

Largest challenge:  Maintaining corporate identity. Removing the current bottleneck of the Web development department while updating content

Volume of Site: Approximately 3,000 pages