The corporate news publication I am responsible is getting old and tired.
I want to replace it, however before I do this, I want to get a requirements set together. The internal owner of this service knows what they don't what but not what they do want.

So I'm looking for your advice:
What features proved useful at your organisation?
E.g. electronic approval step, publish at a pre-scheduled time?
Another consideration is the site is large and has many servers clustered plus caching servers, plus browser caching. The more hardware the harder it is to predict when the item will become publicly visible after publication. What strategies work best to minimise this lag?

Please don't recommend any products in your replies!
Also I am not soliciting sales contact, so please don't contact me off-forum to give me a sales pitch. If you do I'll report you to the Admins.