Starting with Elcom

Frequently Asked Questions

Name: Elcom
Price range: $$

Elcom 101

Who does Elcom work with?

The Elcom team works with organisations across all industries helping them to achieve significant cost and time savings.

What can the Elcom Platform be used for?

The Elcom Digital Experience Platform is a scalable and secure CMS that can be used to deploy websites, intranets, digital workplaces, portals, learning management solutions, forms and workflows and mobile apps. It can be deployed out-of-the-box or customised according to your needs. It is often used as the foundation to connect and integrate with third party systems within the business, enabling clients to deliver exceptional online experiences, while achieving operational and administration efficiency.

What CMS does Elcom use?

The Elcom Digital Experience Platform is our flagship product. Elcom is a rich and flexible CMS. We spent countless hours perfecting the platform so your staff will actually like using it, and your audience are able to receive consistent and exceptional online experiences.

What are the benefits of the Elcom platform?

With a comprehensive list of base features, modules and connectors, it can help you connect and engage with your entire community including staff, customers, partners, suppliers, board members and other key stakeholders.

Achieve significant cost savings by using one platform to manage your website, micro-sites, intranet, portal, learning management, forms and workflows and mobile app.
It’s easy for administrators to manage and non-technical staff to use. See the Inner West Council example.
It's flexible for your own front end and back end developers to build on the platform. See the Vita Group example.
Over 100 base features, modules and connectors out of the box (OOTB) making it quick to deploy.
Unlimited user licensing.

Is the Elcom platform an OOTB platform?

Yes. Elcom comes with over 100 base features, modules and connectors OOTB. This means no time is wasted building a platform from scratch.

Does Elcom offer end to end support?

Yes. Elcom is proud to have a full-service team who can deliver your solution end-to-end. Our local team of project managers, designers and developers will work closely with you to build a solution for your needs. After deployment, an account manager and training manager are on hand to help you make the most out of your solution. For more information, check out the Elcom Project Lifecycle Process.

Does Elcom have an in-house team?

Yes. Elcom offers a highly responsive, high-quality, and an end-to-end service – from requirements gathering and scoping through to web design, build, test, development, implementation and support of the system. This generally involves scoping workshops, design iterations, build/implementation, quality assurance and deployment, training and support. For more information, check out the Elcom Project Team.

What are the benefits of working with the Elcom team?

Extensive experience with 20+ years in business delivering solutions to your industry and industries similar to yours.
Single solution partner for website, intranet, portal etc.
Dedicated support and helpdesk team. Elcom runs a 24/7 support desk for all critical issues and standard business hours support desk for all other levels.

What is the cost per user?

Elcom provides unlimited user licenses. Whether you need 100 licenses or 100,000 licenses, there is no additional cost making it incredibly cost efficient when your organisation needs to scale.

Is there a warranty period post implementation?

We have a warranty and transition phase between projects to daily operations to ensure you are comfortable working in your new site.

What support do you offer post-launch?

Unlimited local phone and email support
Dedicated account management
Elcom Reference Site
Elcom Developer Community
Training - In person or online
Online training materials

Hosting, Privacy and Security

What security measures are in place?

Our product team takes responsibility of and maintains tight controls over the platform versions. This means you will always have a reliable, flexible and stable platform. Elcom is a Microsoft Certified Product and independently tested by VeriTest. Elcom has been a Microsoft Partner for over 20 years. There is complete security within the Elcom Digital Experience Platform and all modules interact with each other and respect security permissions.

Does Elcom provide hosting services?

Yes. Elcom's hosting environment has been established for over 20 years. For more information, visit Elcom Hosting Services.

Where can I host Elcom?

Elcom can host your site, you can host internally or use a hosting provider of your choice.

Does Elcom provide a SaaS model?

Yes. Elcom offers flexible subscriptions where we host the solution and provide ongoing maintenance, security upgrades, upgrade services, ongoing support and more.

Design and Customisation

Can Elcom work with my in-house designer or agency?

Yes. We happily accommodate your needs and are flexible with how we work with clients. We can train and/or guide your own team or agency to deliver the solution if required.

Can I customise the interface and design?

Yes. No two designs are ever the same. The interface can be fully customised to your brand and design requirements. See our client showcase for design inspirations.

Can the Elcom platform be customised?

Yes. Elcom is a modular platform designed to provide you with the scalability and functionality as and when you need it. Elcom has the flexibility and interoperability to work seamlessly with your other business systems including SharePoint, CRM, ERP, Document Management, identity management, information systems and more. We have a range of pre-built modules and connectors you can add on. Our in-house specialist can also custom build functionality specific to your organisation’s needs.

Features and Integrations

Does Elcom offer a mobile app?

Yes. You can deliver the full functionality of your solution, alongside the added benefits of a dedicated app into the hands of your audience - consolidated into one easy-to-use, beautifully presented interface. For more information, visit Elcom Mobile Apps.

Does Elcom support secure online payments and/or payment gateway integration?

Yes. We integrate to the major banks.

Can we create an Elcom account for users who do not have a company email address?

Yes. Elcom works with many organisations with frontline employees who do not have company email addresses or active directory (AD) accounts. Elcom's unlimited user licensing means that users do not have to have an AD account or company email address and the users can securely authenticate themselves with their personal email address.

Does Elcom support knowledge management?

Yes. With Elcom, you can create, capture, organise, access and share information and knowledge within a central digital location. We have several tools to assist you including articles, knowledge bases, document management, team workspaces and social Q&A. For more information, see our Knowledge Management and Overcome Remote Working Challenges blog post.

Does Elcom support document management?

Yes. You can upload, store, manage and publish your documents with the Document Manager. Associate metadata and specify access based on security groups, as well as search and filter documents based on keywords and other criteria. For more information, see our blog posts on Why You Need a Document Management and Document Management Best Practices.

Does Elcom support forms and workflows?

Yes. With Elcom, you can simplify and speed up existing business processes, while reducing costs with an easy-to-use drag and drop forms creator and sophisticated workflow routing engine. For more information, see our Forms & Workflows product page and 8 Ways to Automate Forms and Workflows blog post.

Does Elcom support social tools?

Yes. Elcom is built to help your community connect and collaborate no matter where they're located. We have several tools to assist you including social Q&A, social streams, third party social feeds, team workspaces, quizzes, polls and corporate directories. For more information, see our blog posts on Social Tools to Boost Engagement and Enterprise Collaboration Tools and Strategies.

Does Elcom offer acknowledgement for Cookies consent?

With Acknowledgements, you can request consent from visitors to accept your terms and conditions or use of cookies to assist with GDPR compliance, as well as display a message to a specified audience requiring them to acknowledge they have read important articles. You can also access detailed reporting and tracking of acknowledgements such as users who have and haven't acknowledged articles. With Elcom, you can make it easy for visitors to consent to you using their data (to assist with GDPR compliance), as well as help you meet internal corporate compliance needs.

Does Elcom offer SSO?

Yes. We offer Single Sign-On (SSO) for all our solutions and can implement it for you depending on your needs. For example, you can automate the user creation for new staff and deletion process for outgoing staff in your Elcom intranet. This means when you add a new user in Active Directory and assign them to a group such as the HR department, an account for that user will automatically be created in your intranet and they will be placed in the related group, ensuring they see the right content and have the right permissions and access level. Each user record is automatically refreshed (synchronised from Active Directory) whenever the user logs in. You can also provide SSO from your Elcom intranet to other business systems so your staff do not have to remember multiple username and password combinations for connected applications.

Does Elcom offer SharePoint integration?

Yes. With Elcom, staff can easily and securely access SharePoint files. Map SharePoint content to Elcom folders for either automatic or manual synchronisation. Publish SharePoint documents to websites, intranets and portals with ease, allowing you to easily maintain and publish content from a single location. This means staff can easily view content from a single location so they always have access to the correct and up-to-date version.

Does Elcom offer Microsoft Word and PPT integration?

Yes. You can browse, open, edit and/or save your Elcom stored documents directly from the Microsoft Office desktop environment using Microsoft Word, Excel or PowerPoint. Each Office, Excel and PowerPoint files can be tagged with taxonomy, making it easy to search for within Elcom and enabling it to display on relevant pages such as displaying new onboarding guidelines in both the Policies area and the HR area.

General

What is a CMS platform?

At its core, a content management system (aka CMS or content management platform) enables organisations to create, publish, manage, distribute, search for and archive digital content. It controls the appearance, structure and navigation shown to end-users. A sophisticated CMS can often be used as a foundation to provide exceptional digital experiences to your entire community, allowing you to deploy websites, intranets, portals, mobile apps and learning management solutions, while integrating to other systems an organisation uses. For more information, see our blog post on How to Choose the Best CMS.

Why is a CMS needed?

An effective CMS can bring your organisation the following benefits:

A more streamlined web content authoring process Increased consistency across the system
Faster turnaround for updates, changes and new pages
Better site navigation Improved flexibility
Reduced errors and duplication of information
Decentralised authoring Increased security
A greater capacity for growth
Reduced system maintenance costs

For more information, see our blog post on 5 Reasons Why You Need a Web CMS.

What is Enterprise Content Management?

Enterprise content management is the practice of managing the content and processes of an enterprise. It includes use of a content management system, but usually extends to more than just the content assets to encompass workflow, collaboration on content, messaging, advanced searching and custom reporting of content related activities.

What is a Digital Experience Platform?

Gartner defines a digital experience platform (DXP) as “an integrated and cohesive piece of technology designed to enable the composition, management, delivery and optimisation of contextualised digital experiences across multi-experience customer journeys.” A digital experience platform starts with a sophisticated CMS that can be used to deploy different solutions across different devices, and offers to ability to integrate to multiple business systems. This provides a fully integrated and seamless digital experience for the audience. For more information, see our blog post on How to Deliver a Great Employee Experience.

What is a Learning Management System?

A Learning Management System (LMS) enables to offer training digitally. Organisations can create, deploy and manage in-depth training and eLearning programs to upskill and improve performance for both internal and external audiences. You can create courses with visual training pathways, automatically register users for courses and organise resources including training rooms and trainers, and more. For more information, see our Elcom Learning Management product page.

What is the different between an Intranet and a Portal?

What is a Digital Workplace?

A digital workplace consists of a holistic set of platforms, tools and environments for work delivered in a usable, coherent and productive way. This definition gives focus on the experience of the employee or the individual as well as the environment in which they work. A good digital workplace can be tailored to what your organisation needs it to be. For more information, see our blog post on Understanding the Digital Workplace and the guide on How to Build an Engaged Digital Workplace.