The 2009 eHealth Symposium, our annual client conference, kicked off yesterday. A day-one staple of the conference is our direction as an organization – always an exciting discussion.

If I were to sum up our direction in a single sentence, it would be the following:

“It’s not about the CMS.”

But isn’t that what Geonetric does? Well, yes and no. Yes, we have a great Web content management system that we’ve deployed with a lot of organizations. But what comes “in the box”, from a software perspective, is only the start. And it’s becoming a smaller and smaller component of the overall solution.

The content that you put in your site, the way that you put the pieces together, and the way that you support them is what makes that site successful. Too often the entire focus of online efforts is in getting  the technology in place without doing all of the work required to make it successful.

Further, your website is only one piece of the overall online ecosystem that you should be using to connect with consumers and patients. Social media, patient portals, email and mobile weave together an ecosystem that must be put together strategically to be successful.

In other words, the technology goes along with business strategy, content strategy and search engine optimization and online marketing in order to really make the most of the opportunities that exist online. What you need is smart ideas and proven results.

So it’s not about the CMS, it’s what you’re able to accomplish online that’s really important. And what’s Geonetric’s role? We want to be the partner to make sure that our clients are successful there.