The United Kingdom’s Healthcare Facilities Consortium has re-developed their website using the Electos Content Management System (CMS) developed by Data Access Worldwide, with the site hosted by Asckey Data Services Ltd in Cambridgeshire, UK.

The Healthcare Facilities Consortium (HFC) is a specialist, not-for-profit company that provides software, information and management support services to professionals working in facilities, estates and related functions in the UK health sector and – increasingly – other business sectors as well.

The HFC notes that for information rich websites like theirs, which is subject to frequent changes of content, a CMS based website offers many advantages over their traditional website with each page having to be hand-crafted in a page-design tool. Content managed systems are multi-user, and can be managed from wherever you have Internet browser access. This is important for the HFC, as staff are not localised to a particular office.

Another "big benefit" that influenced the HFC’s selection of Electos is it’s browser-based interface - anyone who has relevant content to contribute is able to add it to the website “any time, any place.” Because Electos uses standard page templates throughout the website, the HFC has no problem with keeping the site nicely formatted and consistent in its looks - an important factor in providing site visitors a good experience.

Paul Lloyd, HFC’s operations manager says, “Our site has a lot of detailed information on it, and re-building it from scratch could have been a daunting task. However, Electos’ easy cut-and-paste from standard document sources has really made it quite straightforward. And not having to worry about specific formatting details has been key to getting a lot of web pages built in a very short time. Electos also builds the site navigation menu, so that is another aspect I haven’t had to worry about, allowing me to concentrate on how I want it organised, not on how to actually do it.”

One important part of the HFC service is the “Document Swap Shop.” This is a hugely valuable repository of common documents providing a forum for exchanging sample documents of interest to healthcare professionals, including policies, procedures, specifications, job descriptions, etc. Electos provides “members only” login facilities allowing for password protected access to these via a straightforward members and groups security setting.

Mr. Lloyd says, ‘We have a big library of documents that needed to be put in place, and then made available only to members. Electos makes uploading really easy – no messing about with FTP transfers, or the resulting potential security compromises. Then it is just a question of applying the Electos  “authorisation” to each file (or web page) – or folder full of files/pages. Again, it was a case of ‘how do I want this to work’ more than ‘how do I do this’ as Electos makes implementation the easy bit."

Within the UK’s National Health Service Electos is ideal for dynamic, informational web sites, such as departmental information sites. For those who might not have the experience or IT infrastructure to manage a web server full time, Asckey Data Services Ltd can offer fully managed hosting including for the UK NHS, via their approved, secure Connecting For Health (N3) facilities.

For more information, contact Asckey Data Services Ltd at +44 (0)8701 634466, or email sales@asckey.com.

Learn more about the Electos Web Content Management System.

Visit Asckey Data Services.

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