The CMS Myth

Why Switch to a Commercial CMS Product?

2008-09-26T18:04:00Z

Over the years I have run across an amazing variety of custom and consultingware CMS platforms installed with clients. One question I get asked almost everytime is should they switch to a commerical CMS product. Now I know there is an appeal of having something tailor made to your organization, but does that really outweigh the potential issues you might have in the future? My standard response goes something like this:

Having a custom CMS presents a twofold problem for its owner and end users. It is easy to become embroiled in activities that go beyond just managing the content of the site. In many cases, you end up having to fulfill the role of product manager for a custom product with an install base of one. You also risk being left with limited-to-no support options if the relationship with the system creator sours (or in the case of an internal developer, leaves). To that end, having a commercially-supported CMS allows the content creators and authors to focus on the site and not the overhead of supporting and maintaining a one-off system. They also benefit by belonging to a larger community of users who receive formal product support with regular product updates.

This is not to say there are some scenarios that would warrent custom work, but if you do decide to continue with or create something custom please think about what you are really taking on, its risks (and benefits) and what it truly costs.

The CMS Myth is alive and well in Oregon

2008-09-04T04:51:00Z

Like it's northwest brother Bigfoot it appears that the CMS myth is alive and well and my job as a mythbuster if far from over. Last week I spoke to a standing room only crowd about the CMS Myth for a Software Association of Oregon event. The presentation was followed by a lively Q&A session with several of the attendees staying after to share their personal CMS horror stories. To give you a quick sampling of the type of things I heard:

A company forced to use a CMS because the wife of the CEO worked for that company.
People still confused on how CMS products are classified, got the question is a wiki a CMS?
A large organization implemented the same CMS twice. The first time was a pilot that took off to well and failed due to 'CMS urban sprawl' The second time cooler heads won out and they then spent almost two years planning to roll it correctly.

It is events like these that help keep us energized on our mission to educate anyone willing to listen about the the real world challenge organizations might face in implementing a CMS, help them in having realistic expectations and hopefully putting them on the path to CMS enlightment.

I want thank the SAO and Stan Davis of Straight-On Internet Consulting LLC for putting on a first class event and giving me an opportunity to get up on my soapbox.

Life After the Redesign with CMS

2008-08-11T09:26:00Z

We wrote an article last month about what happens after your big website redesign project wraps up. Large interactive initiatives can take so much effort there is often nothing left in the tank for the more meaningful ongoing work.

This is especially relevant to web content management projects where success is likely defined by how your end users adopt the tools and manage the site moving forward. A common problem highlighted in the article involves decentralizing your content authoring to people that don't have the time, motivation or support to manage the content in the first place.

It's a relevant read for anyone going through a large redesign project.

Continue reading Life After the Redesign

Vote for The CMS Myth at SXSW

2008-08-08T14:40:00Z

After attending SXSW for the past two years, we decided to toss our Mythbuster cap in the ring for a speaking spot. The session is titled "The CMS Myth: Making Web Content Management Work." It will follow many of the themes discussed on this blog. Primarily, looking at the gap between the expectations of web content management and the reality of the implementations and aftermath. I can't think of a more perfect venue that SXSW to drive conversation around this topic.

Here's where we need your help. The SXSW Panel Picker invites the community to vote on the sessions they would like to see. If you like the idea of our session and think it would make for a good topic at SXSW, please take a few seconds and vote for it (5 stars of course!). Take a look at some of the others as well - there are some intriguing sessions proposed! Hope to see you in Austin.

Vote for the CMS Myth at SXSW

A Good CMS Salesperson will….

2008-08-07T17:45:00Z

Being a CMS vendor salesperson can be a tough gig. Content management extends far beyond just selling software (or a hosted service) and the sales process can become long and complex. The sales representative needs to meet with multiple stakeholders, discuss business and marketing requirements and deal with outside partners carrying their own agendas.

Add in a monthly quota and a pressure-driven sales organization and it can get messy for prospects and vendors alike.

So, what makes a good CMS salesperson? We’ve compiled our wish list of qualities that vendors should strive for and prospects should expect.

A Good CMS Salesperson Will….

Understand that the software (or service) they are selling only addresses a fraction of the content management problem for prospects
Spend the first half of the meeting simply listening to the prospect’s business requirements and ask informed questions that go beyond licensing requirements
Properly set expectations on what a full implementation entails including strategy, design, development, content migration and deployment
Be genuinely interested in seeing the prospect succeed with CMS
Prepare a customized demo that addresses specific prospect needs
Meet with top partners and professional service groups to understand all aspects of the development process
Apply appropriate timeline-driven pressure and incentives to close the deal but not force the prospect into a rushed last-minute, month-ending purchase
Know the competitors’ solutions as well as their own
Offer valid points of competitive differentiation rather than blanket statements to sew fear and uncertainty
Stop frequently during the demo to answer questions and check in with the prospect
Introduce a solution partner early in the discussion if the prospect needs additional guidance and outside help
Proactively connect prospects with customers that have tackled similar challenges
Know what their CMS does not do well
Check back with customers after the sale and implementation
Be willing to recognize when their CMS is not a good fit and have the strength to walk away from the deal

That’s a tall order, but the best CMS salespeople we’ve met have some or all of these qualities. What do you look for from a vendor representative?

Does Size Matter with CMS Vendors?

2008-08-06T13:30:00Z

With all the factors to consider when selecting a CMS, how much should the size of the CMS vendor matter? If you are considering open source options, does it matter how large a community supports it? In this Mythbuster’s opinion, CMS vendor size really does matter. There are some relevant questions you should ask yourself and your vendors prior to the final decision.

Can I get the support I need when I need it?
Can the company offer the professional services we might need for implementation?
Can the company offer the regular training I need on an ongoing basis so you can continue to add content contributors.
Is the vendor committed to providing ongoing thought leadership and best practices?
Are the online forums, portals and support areas active or a ghost town?
Does the vendor have a deep enough partner network with good regional options?
Is there a healthy and active developer community around the product?

With the diversity of the CMS vendors, there are certainly plenty of smaller companies with solid offerings. In some cases a strong partner network can even compensate for lack of size on the vendor’s part. But depending on the needs of your organization, the footprint of the CMS vendor can have real ramifications on the ongoing success of your implementation. There are simply economies of scale that larger vendors can offer around support, training, education, thought leadership and community support.

At a recent CMS conference panel, a CEO of a large CMS vender said, "Don't focus on product, focus on service. Any of the top vendors on the CMS Watch list can get the job done technically but can they take care of you post sale?" As the CMS market continues to mature and the feature gaps between products close, a crucial measure of CMS products will be the service offerings, company viability and community support.

We’re not saying don’t consider smaller vendors, but we do recommend going in with your eyes wide open and asking the right questions up front.

The Content Building Blocks of Web Content Management

2008-07-22T17:16:00Z

Planning a content management driven website requires a rigorous look at the underlying content. Proper planning in the early phases of the project can ensure a content architecture that is flexible and scales with your website. This can also significantly reduce the complexity of the implementation by identifying the common elements that can be reused.

Let’s look at some of the essential content building blocks.

Web Pages: While we’ve certainly moved to dynamic content delivery, most sites still require a traditional site map with individual pages defined. This is where most CMS content planning starts (and sometimes ends). It’s a critical part of planning, but just the tip of the iceberg.
Templates & Layouts: Each page needs a defined template and layout. It’s important to standardize the templates and layouts and map them back to individual page types. This makes the deployment easier, provides consistency in the user experience and allows for a more scalable architecture. There will always be those one-off pages that need custom designs, but they should be just that – one offs.
Content Objects: The most critical part of the content planning is modeling your content into what we call content objects. A content object is best defined as a piece of content that has a set structure. Common objects include news releases or events. Defining the attributes and meta data of these objects will increase reuse and provide more flexibility in how they are delivered.
Unstructured Content: Content that can’t be organized into objects fall into the unstructured bucket. This is content that would typically be managed directly in a WYSIWYG editor. There’s nothing wrong with having unstructured content, but you do lose a certain amount of flexibility in how it gets repurposed and managed. What’s important is looking for unstructured content that should be structured. Getting it right the first time makes all the difference.
Widgets: There’s a lot of talk about widgets these days. For the purpose of CMS planning, we’re defining widgets as discrete pieces of functionality delivered on individual pages. Widgets typically require some custom programming. They may include a sidebar element that pulls the top three related news stories, or one that pulls a featured white paper. A typical website has dozens of them. By defining all the widgets you can re-use them across the site and make them available to other content owners. No need to reinvent the wheel.
Applications: Most sites have specific needs that require custom application development or third party integration. There are in-depth functional and technical considerations involved here, but for the sake of our content architecture it’s important to identify them all and understand how they will fit into the site and CMS. In addition to custom application development, this also includes third party tools and services such as analytics, search and CRM.
Forms: While every CMS handles form management differently, it’s important to define all of the form types and field attributes. Even smaller websites can have dozens of forms. Standardizing them can eliminate the sprawl and provide sanity down the road.
Media Assets: Media includes items such as images, videos and flash assets. These typically get managed in a central media library, but will need to be clearly defined and categorized so the content authors can find and use them.
Taxonomy & Meta Data: A taxonomy is a classification system that provides a standard way of organizing, defining and relating content across your site. They can range from extremely simple to very complex depending on the website and organization. However, it’s a business-critical part of the CMS planning to get right. A good taxonomy properly integrated with the CMS can create a site that scales and provides a more relevant user experience for end users.

While there’s a lot to discuss within each of these building blocks, taking the time to understand the different types is half the battle.

Are there other building blocks that you think are critical for CMS planning? Leave a comment.

CMS Myth at Alfresco Road Show

2008-06-27T04:05:00Z

Today I attended the Alfreso road show here in Dallas. This was a small (about 40 people) half day presentation intended to show off Alfresco and how it has been implemented at a number of larger clients. Alfresco and their partners did a great job presenting and answering any and all questions.

The one case study that stood out for me was a community site built for the search engine company Endeca. The solution put in place was a mix of Alfresco, Liferay Portal, Liferay Forums, Wordpress, Endeca search (how could they use anything else really) and Red Hat directory server. The interesting thing is that WordPress, Liferay and Alfresco can all be placed into the CMS category, but here they all are working together in one site.

This case study really represented for me the challenge that will be facing organizations trying to find just one system that will meet all their content publishing needs as the CMS market continues to evolve.

Go Beyond Feature List When Seeking CMS

2008-06-19T22:50:00Z

Here at the CMS Myth we make a point to climb our soapbox and espouse a pragmatic approach to dealing with the content management issue (Here’s a quick hit: CMS is a software tool; content management is a discipline – recognize the difference!)

So it was refreshing at Web Content 2008 in Chicago this week to hear advice, cut from the same Myth cloth, provided in generous portions to the web, content, marketing and tech pros all trying to crack a similar nut.

Among the preachers: Jarrod Gingras, analyst at CMS Watch, whose comments on how to craft an RFP ring true. Among his points: De-prioritize the feature checkbox. Vendors typically provide “no real explanation in a checkbox about what went into meeting that requirement,” he says.

Instead of crafting an exhaustive checklist of features, write the story of how things run today with your website processes. Construct a complete and colorful narrative about who does what, when and how inside your organization to make stuff happen online, in all its ugly glory. What’s the current process to get information published? Who touches it along the way? Why do things get bogged down? Name names. Provide the painful details. Tell the story.

From that approach emerges the picture of what’s not working and what a CMS vendor needs to solve. Instead of a vendor firing a feature list back at you, demand vital details of how they would help you improve things, following along with your narrative.

Pragmatic advice is always good. To which we would add one more bit for any organization that gets its news, as it were, from the RFP document: Pick up the phone and have a clear conversation with a vendor or service provider about what you’re seeking. Thirty-minutes on the phone will do wonders to clear the fog from a 100 page RFP.

Does it Matter Which CMS Product You Choose?

2008-06-19T08:10:00Z

After a half-hour of softball questions to five vendors in the State of WCM session at Gilbane, moderator Tony White decided to use the vendors own logic against them.

Moments before, the vendors had conceeded that one could likely succeed with any one of their products. They contended that planning and requirements had more to do with success than specific product features.

By that logic, Tony asked if indeed it even mattered what CMS product a customer selects in the first place?

It was an absurd and interesting question all in one for a fragmented industry that fails to clearly articulate key product differentiation. It also took the vendors off autopilot for a bit.

Yogesh Gupta, President and CEO of FatWire clearly stated that of course it matters. He then flipped the tables and said in fact it was Fatwire who is careful in which customers it selects. "I can't have unhappy customers," he said.

I would have loved to have seen a follow up for each vendor to give an example of where they are not a good fit for customers (beyond the obvious infrastructure reasons).

Vignette CIO David Graham restated the importance of internal preparation and ensuring a cultural fit. I wish he would have elaborated on what cultural fit means. I've found in our own consulting that there are a host of intangibles around culture that are hard to quantify, but can make or break an implementation (plotting a future myth post on this).

Tony was able to sneak in another jab in saying customers complained that the "products are different but the messaging is the same." Hard to disagree looking at the 50+ vendors exhibiting all with similar signage.

CrownPeak CEO Jim Howard drew distinction between open source and commercial products. He praised open source on one hand while saying CrownPeak's business has been partly driven by replacing failed open source deployments. "Commercial products thrive on complexity" Jim contends . They cater to customers looking for that shinny object.

Sitecore USA President Bjarne Hansen said of course vendor selection matters - if not for the infrastructure alone. Folks running Java likely won't want a .NET CMS and vice versa. Can't disagree there.

The conversation was pretty much dwindling at this point and Tony cut in once again to suggest perhaps it's a moot point since ‘you'll never finish your CMS implementation anyway' - they go on forever.

On that cheery note - it was time for lunch. Good stuff.

Content Marketing: Become the Media

2008-06-18T20:20:00Z

It’s the Web 2.0 Era where transparency and ‘non-selling’ rules the day – call it the era of ‘Un-marketing’ – so what’s a marketer to do? For more and more successful companies, killing them with content (good content!) is the answer.

Today at Web Content 2008 here in Chicago, Joe Pulizzi at Junta 42 (prior profession: B2B/trade publishing) provided a call-to-arms to marketers to get on the “content marketing” bandwagon, or risk getting left behind by the competition.

The marketing recipe of the past was: create brand awareness, use mass media, interrupt your customer, repeat. Not anymore.

OK, so what is content marketing?

It may be easier to tell you what it isn’t. It’s NOT sending more product messages into the market. It’s not hitting customers over the head with how great your product or service is. It IS communicating directly with fresh, relevant content that creates a conversation and provides value to your customers --- information that will help them do their jobs or live their lives better, or content that informs them of what’s happening in their industry.

Says Pulizzi, “You are a media company whether you know it or not. Think like a publisher. You are all publishers.”

This content can take all sorts of forms:
• Blog
• White Papers
• eBooks
• Case studies
• Content microsites
• Digital magazines
• Community forums
• Podcasts
• Video portals
But really, who’s doing it right on the web?

www.WillitBlend.com: Blendtec (yes, they make blenders) built this site to humorously answer the question “Will it blend?” – they throw all kinds of items into the hopper (say, an iPhone), flip the switch, and put the video up on their site. The content is compelling enough to drive up sales 500% in 18 months.

www.HomeMadeSimple.com: It may look like a ‘home’ site (kitchen, décor, living, etc) but it’s run by consumer products giant P&G. Great content has attracted more than a million opt-in subscribers – a community that P&G has turned into a primary customer research channel.

www.MillerWelds.com: B2B welding supplier Miller owns the welding publishing channel and the largest online community of welders thanks to this self-developed website.

Gilbane SF: Let the Games Begin

2008-06-18T18:00:00Z

Gilbane San Franscisco if off and running and the CMS Myth will be there to cover the action. I'm speaking tomorrow morning on CMS Success Strategies. Until then, i'll be taking in the sessions, navigating the vendor hall and loading up on the free energy bars (nice touch!). Have any questions you want me to pose to a specific vendor or consultant? Let me know - there is a gaggle of em here including many of their top dogs.

CMS Myth Making Stops in Chicago, San Francisco

2008-06-07T05:47:00Z

Call it the CMS Myth Road Trip to welcome summer and spread the gospel of CMS strategy while we’re at it.

During the week of June 16, two ‘MythBusters’ from this blog will take the Myth cross-country to large gatherings of corporate content managers, e-marketing professionals, site managers, and others.

For some, CMS is a dirty word; for others, it’s a saving grace. Regardless of which side of the equation you’re on, you can catch Jeff Cram on the WCM Strategies for Success panel at the Gilbane Conference on Content Management in San Francisco (Thursday, June 19, 8:30 am). Jeff’s focus: how to avoid CMS debacles.

The day before, on June 18 at 10:15 am at the (sold-out!) Web Content 2008 Conference at the UBS Center in Chicago, I’ll speak to web pros on the core themes of this blog in a session called The CMS Myth: Why Web Content Management Projects Fail and What You Can Do About It.

We haven’t yet divined why the organizers of Chicago’s Web Content 2008 decided to overlap with Gilbane San Francisco. But it goes without saying: if you’re planning to hit either of these events, let us know.

Powering Corporate Content, Collaboration and Community with CMS

2008-05-24T03:43:00Z

Fellow CMS MythBuster Jeff Cram and I recently spoke to the Boston KM Forum, an energetic group of about 50 corporate knowledge managers from around New England. These are the folks in the trenches who make corporate content and data easily accessible for business advantage.

Our topic: How the Enterprise Communications division of Siemens AG has embraced a global knowledge management (KM) portal delivering content, collaboration and community to thousands of Siemens employees worldwide. Oh, and how a mid-market CMS (Sitecore) sits at the center of it all. ISITE Design architected, designed and developed the portal, called BeFirst (“Be first in the market….”). We also employed the Google Search Appliance and some .NET programming.

The portal has caught fire inside Siemens by elevating the traditional search/find/retrieve model to a flexible, innovative platform to connect peers globally, create ad hoc communities; publish blogs; rate document usefulness (the best ones bubble up to the surface); support tagging, taxonomy, faceted search and more. (Read a great recap of our presentation right here.)

While we were there, it dawned on us: what were a couple of CMS-minded guys doing talking to a room full of experts in the quasi-academic discipline of knowledge management? These people live, eat and breathe strategies for indexing, tagging, archiving and searching knowledge assets inside law firms and biotech companies.

This environment wasn’t always a natural fit for CMS, which used to play more at the fringes of KM, outside the inner circle of purpose-built applications that organize and categorize corporate knowledge. Not too long ago CMS, for lack of a better phrase, knew its place in the world.

Flash forward to 2008, and there are legitimate reasons to discuss CMS and KM in the same sentence. Enterprise desires for flexible, accessible, social-networking driven intranets and portals have been met by the evolving capabilities of traditional CMS systems. Knowing a market opportunity when they see one, vendors scramble to add Web 2.0 (i.e. people-centric) features to their offerings (a smart strategy now that upstart widget makers and web 2.0 enablers are nibbling at their heels).

Sticking to the theme of the CMS Myth, we should note that the Siemens BeFirst portal, for all of the technology behind it, would not have achieved business success without organizational buy-in – without staff in dozens of offices embracing the new paradigm for accessing knowledge assets and connecting with each other to achieve greater success.

The lesson for content technology buyers is that CMS vendors should have a growing story to tell as they evolve and expand their capabilities, resulting in new options and new opportunities. CMS vendors have largely moved past traditional CM into document management and now social networking apps. Beyond that, integrated marketing suites; measurement and analytics tools; robust search and other tools give CMS an added relevance. All of which gives you the opportunity to inject CMS into new and unexpected places… and say things like, “Hello, knowledge management.”

Shifting from Content Management to Content Delivery

2008-05-22T18:09:00Z

Delivering great web experiences has always been the end goal of implementing a web content management system. CMS vendors, however, have historically only gotten you part of the way there.

As vendors look to differentiate and provide more value, they are scurrying to deliver more ‘out of the box’ tools to deliver content and better overall user experiences. It’s important for the savvy web professional implementing content management to separate the features of content management from content delivery when approaching a vendor selection and implementation. Let’s clearly distinguish the two camps.

Content Management features are the meat and potatoes of CMS and what customers have traditionally evaluated vendors upon. This includes features such as content repository, library services, workflow, WYSIWYG editors, meta data, image management, site replication, taxonomy, URL aliasing, user security and overall technical architecture.
Content Delivery includes everything you do with that content on your website to deliver great user experiences. This typically includes features such as dynamic templates, scheduled content, site search and multilingual controls.

The Next Generation of Content Delivery

Buckle your seatbelts, because the world of content delivery is moving forward at light speed. Much of the product innovation and customer demand is driven from the increase in online marketing and the pressure to deliver more results through the web channel. Here are several types of content delivery features that can now be commonly included with a CMS platform.

Multivariate Testing: Testing tools enable marketers to create dynamic landing pages and automatically test different combinations of content and images. This helps drive toward closed-loop optimization and the ability to rapidly determine the content that will drive the best results. The level of sophistication among CMS vendors can vary greatly – from simple landing page management to integrated testing suites.
Social Media & Community: It’s no surprise that CMS vendors have jumped into the social media scene with two feet. Tools like forums, wikis, rss, tagging, blogs and user generated content are finding their way into CMS feature lists. Some vendors have even shifted gears to position their entire offering as a ‘community platform.’ On the flip side, pure-play community platforms are emerging and backing into traditional CMS.
Behavioral and Content Targeting: We all remember the rise and fall of personalization. Those expensive portals of the past have been replaced by leaner and meaner technology that profiles users based on attributes such as onsite behavior, search keywords, referring site and geography. Content can then be targeted and sites can (in theory) get smarter the more they learn about users and their behavior. Still in its infancy, content targeting is a true differentiator for the CMS platform that can get it right (or acquire the right technology).
Rich Media & AJAX: We’ve definitely moved beyond static pages and content management vendors are getting more adept at providing video management and delivery tools and out of the box AJAX-driven widgets.
Packaged Applications: In some cases, we’re also seeing content management vendors start to package up some common applications such as calendars, membership application, intranet tools and more. This is more common with vendors that are developing products around verticals.

Best of Breed vs. Integrated

With CMS feature sets expanding and the lines blurring between different platforms, acquiring content delivery tools bundled with CMS is both an opportunity and a risk for organizations.

The right tools can greatly reduce development costs and speed up time to market. However, just because a CMS vendor has a specific feature does not mean it is best of breed or right for your organization. In fact, more often than not, we’ve found these new features are usually far from enterprise class and are quick add-ons to support a new customer demand or market shift. They can often leave you with an inflexible and inferior tool that can’t scale to meet your needs.

In some cases the benefit of an integrated tool set may trump having the best possible technology. In other situations, finding an open CMS that can easily integrate with off the shelf tools is a much better fit. The savvy CMS decision maker will look behind the marketing hype and take a holistic look at their web operations and user experience needs to determine how all the pieces need to fit together.

Leave a comment and let us know how are you dealing with content delivery and what you expect from your CMS.