Well managed communications with the Press and other Public Relations activities are an essential aspect of the business world today.

The 'Press' today however is not confined to traditional printed media - with a wide spread of on-line and multimedia activity having to be catered for - the consequence of which is that most media professionals prefer to use on-line methods to receive updates from organisations and to interact with them.

Provision of a centralised on-line system - available anywhere, anytime - allows Press Management to be carried out efficiently and in a way that media professionals prefer to work.

Some specific features relevant to Press Management are:

• The ability to create and manage a database of media contacts, which not only contains contact information, but also profiles their individual activities and interests
• New media contacts should be able to add themselves to the database with a simple on-line form with each 'application' being vetted by a designated individual in the business's communications team
• Existing contacts should, with a login capability, be able to update their contact information on-line so that it is easily maintained
• The business's communications team should be able to 'log' all relevant contacts with their media contacts so that there is a clear audit trail of meetings, information exchanges etc.
• Routine Press Releases should be easily created using standard layout templates and easily made available on-line as individual web pages
• Either the entire Press Release, or an extract that refers to the on-line version, should be sent as an email to defined distribution lists that are extractable from the contact database
• General Newsletters should be able to be sent to distribution lists, again extractable from the contact database, to fulfill other ad hoc communication needs
• On a selective basis, some media contacts may be provided with a login capability to access Press Releases that are embargoed until a specific date

As the business needs evolve the Press Management contact database and associated contact logs, update methods, etc., may become a subset of an overall Contact Management (CRM) facility. In addition, since Press/Media Management is inevitably part of a wider set of Marketing & Strategy activities, the central system can evolve to support other related activities such as: Strategy Development, Competition Analysis, Event Management, etc., as well as being integrated with other functional areas such as Products & Services and Sales & Support.