Manufacturing companies need two completely different types of websites, and most CMS conversations treat them like they're the same problem. One is internal: employees, HR, company news, policies, the kind of information that keeps a distributed workforce aligned. The other is external: product specifications, dealer resources, pricing, the technical documentation that helps a builder in Georgia spec the right engineered lumber or a purchasing manager decide between two suppliers.
Conflating the two is where manufacturing digital projects go wrong. Building an intranet when you need a dealer portal, or trying to make a product resource site do the work of an intranet, creates a system that does neither job well. This post is about understanding which is which, why both matter, and what each one actually requires from a CMS.
What an intranet is for in a manufacturing context
A manufacturing intranet is an internal communications platform for your workforce. In a manufacturing environment that typically means shift workers across multiple facilities, corporate office employees, HR and safety teams, and department managers who need to communicate across sites without relying on email chains and printed notices.
The content on a manufacturing intranet looks like this: safety protocols updated after a facilities review, HR announcements about benefits enrollment, onboarding materials for new production staff, company news that needs to reach the floor as well as the boardroom, and department-specific resources that shouldn't be visible across the whole organization. An intranet permissions model is critical here. A safety update for one facility shouldn't require IT to manually filter who receives it.
BASF runs multiple internal communications intranets on Concrete CMS across different business units, keeping over 100,000 employees in different countries aligned on company news, policies, and department-specific information. Marvell Semiconductors runs an HR intranet for employee benefits, onboarding, and staff development. These are intranet use cases: internal audience, sensitive content, role-based access, publishing workflow. See how the Concrete CMS intranet solution handles these requirements out of the box.
What a dealer portal or product resource site is for
A dealer portal is a different animal entirely. The audience isn't your employees. It's your distribution network, your dealers, your specifiers, and in some cases the end customers who need technical information to make a purchasing decision.
Weyerhaeuser, one of North America's largest forest products manufacturers, serves a nationwide network of lumber dealers and building material distributors with more than 30,000 SKUs across engineered lumber, panels, and structural products. A builder in Georgia speccing TJI joists for a residential project, or a dealer comparing load specifications for structural beams, needs accurate, searchable, current product information, not an employee benefits page. That's a product resource site: external-facing, product-organized, searchable by specification, with a dealer finder and request-a-quote workflow built in.
The content on a dealer portal looks completely different from an intranet: product specifications and load tables, installation guides and technical drawings, pricing sheets gated behind dealer login, training materials for dealer sales staff, and inventory or availability information that may feed from a separate system.
Both are complex content management problems. Neither one is a standard marketing website. And they require different architectural decisions from a CMS.
Where they overlap, and where that causes problems
A dealer portal and an intranet share some surface-level features: both need user authentication, both need role-based content visibility, both need workflow for content approval. That's why manufacturing companies sometimes try to use one platform for both, or choose a platform built for one and then struggle to make it do the other.
The problems that result are predictable. A dealer portal built on intranet software tends to have poor external search, weak product catalog structure, and a UX designed for employees rather than the dealer who's comparing you against a competitor. An intranet built on a product catalog platform tends to have poor permissions granularity for internal roles, weak content governance, and no clear way to handle the publishing workflow HR needs when updating a sensitive policy.
Understanding which problem you're actually solving before you choose a platform saves a significant amount of rebuilding later. The question isn't "which CMS should we use." It's "what type of site are we building, for which audience, and what does that audience need to be able to do?"
What to look for in a CMS for each
For a manufacturing intranet, the non-negotiables are permissions and workflow. Role-based visibility that goes beyond simple login/not-login. Production staff at one facility should see different content from corporate employees, and neither should see HR documents intended for managers only. A content approval workflow so policy changes go through the right review before reaching employees. SSO integration so workers aren't managing another set of credentials. And an editing experience simple enough that department heads can post their own updates without submitting a ticket to IT.
For a dealer portal or product resource site, the priorities shift. Content structure matters more. Products need to be organized by category, specification, application, and compatibility in ways that make them findable by people who know exactly what they're looking for. Gated sections for dealer-only pricing or technical documentation need to be secure without being cumbersome. Integration with external systems including inventory feeds, quote request workflows, ERP data, is often a requirement. And the public-facing portions need to perform well in search, because a specifier who can't find your load tables will find a competitor's.
Concrete CMS handles both. Permissions, workflow, and content targeting ship in core for the intranet use case. No plugins required to control who sees what across a complex organization. For dealer portals and product resource sites, the open source architecture means the CMS can be integrated with external product databases, inventory systems, and ERP feeds without the constraints of a proprietary platform. You're not locked into a vendor's data model when your product catalog is genuinely complex.
Do you need both?
Larger manufacturing organizations often do. A company with a substantial dealer network and a distributed workforce needs to solve both problems. A product resource site that helps dealers spec and sell your products, and an intranet that keeps your own people aligned and informed. These don't have to be built on different platforms, but they should be treated as architecturally distinct projects with distinct audiences and distinct content requirements.
The mistake is letting them collapse into each other. An intranet that dealers can also access tends to expose internal content to the wrong audience. A dealer portal that employees are also expected to use for internal communications tends to serve neither well.
Build the internal and external platforms with their own clear scope, link them where there's genuine shared functionality (SSO for example) and maintain them with separate content governance processes. The content audit process for a dealer portal, where outdated product specs can actively cost you sales, is different from the process for an intranet where stale content erodes employee trust over time.
Getting started
Whether you're building an internal communications intranet for a distributed manufacturing workforce, a dealer portal for a complex product catalog, or both, the right platform makes the difference between a site your audience actually uses and one that gets bypassed within six months.
Concrete CMS has been used to build both types of sites for organizations including BASF, Marvell Semiconductors, and the U.S. Army MWR. It's open source, actively maintained, and doesn't charge per-user fees that scale against you as your dealer network or employee count grows. See how Concrete approaches manufacturing website and intranet projects specifically.
Key features for a manufacturing intranet
These are the features that matter most for a manufacturing workforce, based on what actually gets used vs. what sounds good in a demo.
Single Sign-On (SSO). Employees, especially shift workers, will not manage a separate login for the intranet. SSO integration with your existing identity provider is the difference between an intranet people open and one they ignore. Concrete CMS supports Microsoft Entra ID (Azure AD) SSO for organizations running Microsoft 365, which covers the majority of manufacturing enterprises. Authentication is handled through Azure, credentials aren't duplicated, and access is revoked automatically when someone leaves.
Role-based permissions. A safety protocol update for one facility shouldn't require IT to manually filter the distribution. Concrete's permissions model lets you assign content visibility by role, group, or user attribute. Production staff at Site A see different content from corporate employees, and neither sees HR documents intended for managers only. This ships in core, no add-on required.
Content workflow and approval. Policy changes need to go through the right review before reaching employees. Concrete's built-in workflow routes content to the appropriate approvers before publishing, with an audit trail of who approved what and when. For compliance-driven manufacturing environments this isn't optional.
Multi-site management. Manufacturing organizations with multiple facilities often need separate intranet instances per site or business unit while maintaining centralized governance. Concrete's multisite architecture handles this without requiring separate installs.
Mobile-responsive editing and viewing. Floor workers aren't at a desk. The intranet needs to be usable on a phone without a separate app build.
Document management. Safety data sheets, compliance documents, HR policies, and training materials need to be stored, versioned, and findable. Concrete's file manager handles document libraries with search, categorization, and permission-controlled access.
Key features for a manufacturing dealer portal or product resource site
Gated dealer login with role-based access. Dealers need access to pricing sheets, technical documentation, and inventory feeds that the general public shouldn't see. The same SSO approach works here: Microsoft Entra ID SSO or a custom authentication flow, with role-based permissions controlling which dealer tier sees which content.
Structured product catalog. Products need to be organized by category, specification, application, and compatibility in ways that make them findable by someone who knows exactly what they need. This is an information architecture problem as much as a CMS problem. The structure has to be right before the content goes in.
Search that works on technical content. A builder looking for load specifications on a specific joist product needs search results organized by relevance to their query, not by publish date. Concrete's search can be extended and configured for technical content with appropriate weighting and filtering.
External system integration. Dealer portals often need to pull from an ERP or inventory system to show current pricing and availability. Concrete's open source architecture means these integrations can be built without the constraints of a proprietary platform's API limitations.
Dealer finder and territory management. If you distribute through a dealer network, the ability to locate dealers by region, specialty, or product line is often a core feature of the public-facing site.
Training and certification content. Manufacturer dealer portals frequently include training materials and product certification programs for dealer sales staff. This is gated content that needs the same permissions model as the pricing documentation.
Permissions, workflow, and content targeting built in for intranets. Open source architecture for complex dealer portal integrations. No per-user fees.