http://www.rsc.org.uk

About

The RSC is one of the world’s best-known theatre companies, performing every year to a million theatre goers across the world. The RSC aims to keep audiences in touch with William Shakespeare as a contemporary influence – underlining the importance of his work in the modern world through today’s artists, actors and writers. In the last ten years, the Company has mounted 171 new productions, given 19,000 performances, sold 11 million tickets and played in 150 towns and cities in the UK and around the globe. The RSC is one of the premier UK's national theater companies turning over £32 million per annum.

Challenge

The RSC’s ultimate mission is to bring the works of Shakespeare to life for audiences in the 21st Century. The Company was quick to recognise that an engaging, dynamic website would be the most effective way to communicate and interact with its growing worldwide audience. The website was already considered to be at the heart of the Company, however keeping it up-to-date with the latest information was proving to be an arduous and time intensive project. Traditionally, the RSC’s technical eight strong team was solely responsible for handling everything from advance bookings and online gift shopping to managing the 500-plus pages of content on the site (which include 3,500 images).

As part of a review of the website to improve its usability, functionality and overall user experience, RSC managers decided to explore content management solutions which would enable the Company’s already stretched technical teams to focus on other areas – such as extending its online box office and gift shops.

• Bringing Shakespeare to life to a global audience
• Over stretched in-house technical team
• Need to empower non-technical staff to maintain content on the site

Solution

The RSC turned to RedDot’s Content Management Server (CMS), part of the XCMS suite, to underpin its world-renowned website and help reverse this imbalance. RedDot CMS’s intuitive SmartEdit technology enables content management to be placed firmly in the hands of the many experts, writers and editors who are now in charge of developing new material for the site – with minimal training. As a result, the RSC can continue to be the first point of online contact for anything related to Shakespeare in performance for millions of aficionados around the world.

What’s more, RedDot’s flexible platform meant that the CMS could integrate easily with the RSC’s existing website structure. The robustness of the RedDot solution was demonstrated when the RSC exported RedDot’s intuitive navigation tools to link seamlessly with the Company’s Box Office , improving the online shopping functionality on the site. Having contributed over £27,000 during the last financial year, the online shop is a valuable source of additional revenue for the Company and this integration was a key concern for its team.

• Intuitive SmartEdit techno-logy – facilitates content management with minimal training
• Content management placed firmly in the hands of non-technical staff
• Information can be up-loaded to the site from any location
• Integration with e-commerce applications

Results

Following the rapid implementation of RedDot’s CMS technology, the technical team has dramatically reduced its support to the Web site as a result of devolving content maintenance responsibilities. Programming time needed from the IT department is down to around a day a week. The move has dramatically reduced the time taken to publish new material: content can be uploaded to the site in a fraction of the time.

As a result, day-to-day content management can be devolved to the Company’s non-technical staff and co-ordinated by the Web Editor, a predominantly editorial post. Enabling the real Shakespeare experts to easily impart their knowledge via the site – irrespective of their technical savvy.

• 50% increase in productivity
• Information can be uploaded to the site in half the time
• All staff can take responsi-bility for uploading content to the site
• IT support reduced to a day a week
• Offering online audiences access to the RSC’s expertise