Regardless of the industry, a well-developed website is an integral component of a business. The website is an important marketing and sales tool because it represents the face of a business; potential customers often use a business' website to ascertain its services and ability to fulfill their needs before they interact with the sales channel. As such, careful thought should be given to the design, messaging, structure, and functionality of your website.
As a CMO or someone in charge of communications, one of the first points of consideration when setting up a website for your business is which platform to use. Your choice of a platform for your website will determine its functionality, future flexibility, and its degree of customization to your business needs. If you are looking for a website platform specifically designed to meet the needs of enterprise businesses, then you need Drupal.
What is Drupal?
Drupal is a platform for enterprise level clients who require custom authoring workflows, advanced security, as well as advanced role and user management tasks. Used in over 150 countries, Drupal is the platform used for many private enterprise and government websites. Examples of notable organizations that use the Drupal platform for their websites include Pfizer, eBay, and Qualcomm to name but a few.
Benefits of Using Drupal
There are several benefits enterprise clients derive from using Drupal as the platform for their websites.
1.) Security
One of the greatest strengths of Drupal is its security. The Drupal core is maintained by experts as well as volunteers who constantly monitor for security vulnerabilities. In addition to Drupal core security, additional security modules can be utilized to meet the security needs of any business; some examples of custom security modules are Login Security, Password Policy, Content Access, and Flood Control. Furthermore, security updates are released as patches on a regular basis to ensure the security of the Drupal platform is kept up to date.
2.) Scalability/Flexibility
The Drupal platform is scalable to meet significant traffic demands. We've built Drupal websites that receive well over 20,000,000 visits per year.
3.) Multisite Functionality
A unique feature of Drupal is the ability to share one Drupal installation with multiple sites. For enterprises that manage more than one website site, this is a cost-effective feature and also simplifies maintenance of the various websites. Since the websites share a common Drupal core, updates or upgrades are done only once instead of for each individual site.
This is great when each department needs their own website or each school when it comes to school districts. Having one place to control all of the websites helps with training, consistency, and support.
4.) Cost
Even though there are no licensing fees associated with Drupal as it is open source and distributed under the GNU General Public License, Drupal sites can vary in cost based on your needs. We've built sites for a few thousand dollars up to hundreds of thousands of dollars. Even so, it is a cost-effective platform for enterprises when you consider it is open source and you are not paying an annual license. Additionally, you can take your site elsewhere or hire developers to work with your site where closed environment platforms require you to work with one company.
4) Integrations
One of the more important factors is Drupal's ability to integrate with disparate and third-party systems. Your organization may have different platforms for their website, CRM, support site, and intranet. Now, instead of having to deal with multiple platforms you can integrate multiple systems to have a more coherent and efficient experience. It comes down to a fundamental shift in how your organization needs your website to function and that requires re-thinking your requirements in a software solution.
Why You Need Neon Rain
Given its complex nature, it is important to engage the services of an expert when using Drupal as your content management framework. At Neon Rain, we are an award-winning website and web application developer with lots of experience with the Drupal platform. In business since 2002, we have worked with numerous clients to develop their websites using Drupal. We have experts available and ready to work with you to develop your business website based on your preferences. Contact us today for more information about our services.