Immediacy, part of the Mediasurface group, Europe’s leading content management solution provider, today announced a new business contract for Immediacy WCMs 6.0 with Tunbridge Wells Borough Council, helping them create better transactional websites 

Immediacy, one of the leading UK content management solution providers (part of the Mediasurface group (UK, AIM: MSR) today announced that Tunbridge Wells Borough Council have purchased Immediacy WCMs 6.0 suite for the re-launch of their public facing websites and community micro sites. The project has been driven by the council’s ongoing commitment to deliver a greater transactional functionality on its website and achieve improved accessibility.

With 25,000 unique visitors to www.tunbridgewells.gov.uk monthly, this project will encourage even more citizens to transact online by delivering enriched, accessible content from a more easily managed, compliant platform. In addition to improving information delivery to the public, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council is seeking to raise its accessibility rating and Immediacy WCMs 6.0 will help it to meet its obligations to equality and anti-discrimination laws.

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council selected Immediacy following an extensive evaluation of content management solutions against key criteria including ease of management, the potential for collaborative working with other Kent Local Authorities and the technical agility of the solution for administering their intranet, Councillor extranet and new increased microsites. Immediacy WCMs 6.0 was able to demonstrate specific features suited to council use, such as the built-in Accessibility Checker, taxonomy, and ability to integrate with Microsoft SharePoint.

Andy Cole, Head of Customer Access and Business Transformation explains; ‘We are constantly pushing to deliver greater quality of service from our websites. Around 65% of our citizens have access to broadband in their own homes and more and more of them are choosing the web to access council services.  Immediacy is a powerful solution that will help us achieve greater accuracy of content and give us the technical flexibility to deliver interactive solutions. By delivering greater functionality online we can ensure consistently high quality and accessibility to council services. Immediacy is already used by a number of Local Government customers in Kent.  This will provide opportunities for collaborative working.  The sharing of knowledge, experience and skills will help us to deliver reliable and efficient service delivery. ’

By delivering the functionality to meet these goals, Immediacy will enable the devolution of day to day content maintenance to the fifty plus content authors throughout the council. Built-in workflow, web asset management and versioning tools - which issue automatic content revision alerts - will directly reduce site upkeep costs and at the same time ensure the accuracy and relevance of information served to the public.

Following the launch of the main website, Tunbridge Wells Borough Council will develop its microsites for various community groups. The council also plans to repurpose content to take full advantage of multi channel delivery and publish services to iDTV.

Andy Peart, Chief Marketing Officer at Mediasurface said, ‘We are excited to be working with another Kent Council. Tunbridge Wells Borough Council has some ambitious plans for the website from the introduction of interactive media to the launching of secure councillor extranets. These goals, combined with their drive for better day to day management, means that Tunbridge Wells will fully utilize the functionality of Immediacy to delivery a truly superb quality of service to their citizens.’

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council’s main website www.tunbridgewells.gov.uk will be the first site to re-launch in April 2008