Do you Have the Right CMS?
Here are some challenges your organization may currently be facing with its current CMS:
- You probably have too many of them
- Your CMS may be lacking the functionality you need to accomplish key business goals
- If you have more than one, they may not be capable of sharing content or data with each other.
- It may not integrate with other vital systems, including CRM, commerce, and marketing systems.
- It may not meet some or all of today’s stringent security standards.
- It may not be easy to maintain or update.
- File formats may be proprietary, making content repurposing and syndication difficult.
- It may require IT intervention for content updates.
- Especially if you have more than one, they may be built on a variety of technologies, requiring a team with many different skills—or many teams with different skills.
- Your current CMS is not cloud-based.
You may need to consider upgrading your CMS if you are agreeing with this list.
Today’s CMS Must “Manage, Measure, and Engage”
The CMS must offer content creation tools that are easy to use and powerful, as well as tools to administer workflows, work groups, and site security. The CMS must deliver metrics and analytics that indicate digital success and offer controls to create great digital experiences. Additionally, the CMS must be able to create and manage marketing campaigns and provide a multilingual, global experience.
The CMS must offer the controls to create great digital experiences and blaze a trail to the consumer with great content, offer the tools to create and manage a marketing campaign, and provide the capability for a multilingual, global experience.
Blazing a Trail to the Consumer with Great Content
The belief that “content is king” means that producing high-quality content is more important than anything else in order to be successful online. This content must be valuable, engaging, convenient, and easy to share. Since consumers today have high standards and limited time, they are choosy about how they spend their time online.
Instead of trying to sell to consumers, businesses should focus on informing, educating, and entertaining them. Consumers also want to be able to share this content easily with their own networks.
The four hallmarks of great content include:
- Value: Solid, unbiased information that provides value.
- Engagement: The presentation of your content must be engaging—entertaining if appropriate.
- Convenience: If consumers start reading or viewing something on their smartphone, they’ll want to pick up right where they left off if they choose to switch to using their tablet. And, of course, everything needs to be intuitive and easy to use.
- Sharing: People want to share their experience and the great content they encounter—from great technical documents, to recipes, to cute cat photos, fantasy sports, video games, or “second screen” experiences.
CMSs have advanced rapidly and significantly, and consumer expectations have progressed at a similar pace. For example, thanks to companies such as Amazon and Netflix, personalization has become a requirement for modern digital experiences.
The things you make personal have to fit the situation. For example, if you sold someone a backpack, but you don’t know if they bought it for themselves or for somebody else, it makes it hard to give them good service later.
If your content management system doesn’t provide the tools and solutions you need to personalized experiences, you may not be able to meet the public’s expectations for digital experiences.
Nowadays, even stores which have a physical location are working on making their experience more digital. For example, Princess Cruises has integrated a digital experience into their live experience, following the lead of stores like Apple and Burberry. Princess Cruises used open source Drupal to connect the crew with the passengers and make it possible to do things like plan your shipboard time, connect with other passengers, and find events and venues, all from your smartphone or through digital signage throughout the 18-ship fleet.
Different industries are finding a need for a centralized platform that can offer powerful content management capabilities. Companies such as music and entertainment businesses, sports leagues, automakers, high tech companies, and publishers are making the switch in order to better serve their audience and meet consumer demands.
Citizens are being empowered by local, state, and national governments to participate directly using open source CMS technology. This technology is being used by BART in San Francisco, MTA in New York, the State of Georgia, and the government of Australia.
Many businesses are now using cloud-based CMS systems to help them transform and become more efficient.
It’s important that your content management system is able to present a great digital experience in multiple languages to reach a global audience. It’s also crucial that it integrates with any required marketing and CRM systems. If you have dozens or even hundreds of sites and campaigns, being able to quickly and easily add a new site or launch a new campaign from a central dashboard without IT help is essential to executing your strategy efficiently and being able to track the results.
Selecting a CMS Vendor
Picking the best CMS vendor is a tricky process, but you can do it by being strategic and asking the right questions. In the next section, we’ll go over some of the key ways that vendors differ from each other, which will help you figure out which one will work best for your business.
1. Recognize These Four Key WCM Pillars
Seth Gottlieb, a 20-year veteran of the web content management industry and former CTO for global offerings at Lionbridge (he’s now a software development manager for Alexa at Amazon) gave us information in 2018 that Web CMS buyers must still remember. It includes his four key pillars of a web content management selection process:
- Support: This may be limited to basic product patches and may include services like hosting, user mentoring, strategic guidance, or even web development.
- Vision: “The way the vendor sees the market and the role of the product will determine the product roadmap. If the customer and the vendor are aligned, then desirable features will continually be added and the product will grow with the customer. If they are not, then the new features will probably be unwanted and clutter the product,” says Gottlieb.
- Community: Look at your existing customer community for vision and for references from people or organizations who have similar challenges and goals.
- Stability and focus: If you have an “overly large emphasis on growth,” it may suggest an exit strategy that may leave you stranded. “In case of large enterprise software vendors, make sure that this product is core to their overall strategy,” Gottlieb says.
2. Validate the Need for CMS in First Place
Cathy McKnight, VP strategy and consulting for The Content Advisory, the consulting & education group of the Content Marketing Institute, believes that the proliferation of marketing technology (martech) and its crossover capabilities warrants the need for a new CMS.
Ask questions such as:
- Do we have a technology problem or is there something else going on?
- Could we solve our problem by fixing our content, assets, and/or adjusting our processes?
- Could/should we update, rather than replace, our existing technology?
“Selecting, implementing, and migrating to new technology can take a company up to two years,” said McKnight. “After that, the challenge of user adoption and training begins. So it’s important to make sure that new tech is needed before taking on the project.”
3. Build a Shortlist of Potential Winners
You should select a content management system that supports your requirements and is easy to use. However, it can be time-consuming to evaluate Web CMS software for functionality and usability. You don’t want to waste time getting intimate with the wrong product.
Here’s how to get started:
- Filter for relevant technologies.
- Filter for your budget.
- Filter for business functionality.
- Consider the proximity of your partners.
When you’re ready to build your short list of CMS contenders, you’ll want to consider a few factors. What factors do you want to consider when you’re ready to build your short list of CMS contenders?
4. Think Holistically About Content Operations
When talking about Content Management Systems, Jeff Cram from PK Global stated that in the past it was much simpler for content managers to view it as one singular technology purchase that would cover all aspects of managing and publishing website content.
Organizations should take a step back and evaluate their content operations process before rushing to adopt new content platforms.
Many of the areas that need improvement in order to make the process of collaboration and creation smoother are often ignored by CMS vendors. According to Cram, often times, the roles of digital asset management and content marketing platforms are beginning to overlap with that of a traditional CMS. This means that most organizations will need multiple content solutions to satisfy their needs. However, it’s important to note that the content strategy should be guiding the choice of technology, and not the other way around. Making the wrong technology choice for the task at hand can lead to problems down the road.
5. Lean Heavily on Usage Scenarios
To find the best fit for your organization, you need to dig deep into your requirements, but don’t rely entirely on spreadsheets for this.
While spreadsheets are good for naming features, they don’t provide enough guidance to understanding how these products might work with specific users and content that your organization needs to manage. Usage scenarios raise interesting questions that help fill this gap.
A scenario is a short story that describes a user’s interaction with the system to achieve a business objective. A scenario encapsulates many specific requirements and gives them greater meaning and context.
These are the four attributes of an effective scenario:
- It is written with specific users in mind.
- It addresses an important and commonly executed task.
- It references the content that you intend to manage.
- It is open-ended enough to expose the difference in product design and approach.
Scenarios are important in the selection process.
Related Article: Selecting a CMS: Developing Usage Scenarios
6. Don’t Abuse Your Features Matrix
If you’ve ever had to evaluate an enterprise software platform, then you probably know about the requirements matrix. A requirements matrix is a list of capabilities — or requirements — that a given product must have to meet your needs, typically in the form of a spreadsheet.
The different capabilities are listed in the first column on the left side of the document. The different products that are being evaluated are listed across the top of the document. In the body of the document, you can note whether or not requirements are met or you can score each product for fitness in the respective area.
Examples of requirements in a typical Web CMS features matrix include:
- Strong separation of content & presentation.
- Flexible content type definitions.
- Back office support for Mac & Windows.
- Version history with rollback.
- Mobile authoring & approvals.
- Strong multi-lingual support.
- Mobile content delivery.
- Integration with product X.
Even though some people tell you to get rid of the requirements matrix, we believe that it can still be useful. There are some methods of using it that make it a helpful tool in the long run.
7. Don’t Be Distracted by Shiny Things
According to Warholic, features such as headless CMS capabilities, personalization and omnichannel experiences are popular these days, but companies should be realistic about their maturity and where these features fit into their roadmap.
He asked if we had the resources and process to keep up with content creation and curation needs of personalization, and if we had the strategy to define goals and KPIs to measure against. He said that just because everyone is talking about headless CMS, doesn’t mean that is the right choice for our company.
If you don’t have a team of developers who can create dynamic user experiences across channels, a headless CMS may not be the right choice.
According to him, getting sidetracked by appealing things can end up being more detrimental than beneficial. He went on to say that a CMS project that accomplishes its goals is primarily due to a solid base and staying true to the basics.
8. Evaluate Usability, not Curb Appeal
It is advised that you allow 3 to 6 months for the CMS selection process, although this may not be the case for everyone. It is important to involve key stakeholders in the decision early on. Those who will be using the CMS system on a regular basis should be assesing its usability objectively, rather than its appeal.
In addition to department heads and key project managers, consider including:
- Developers, architects
- Designers
- Marketing team and other content creators
- Analytics, metrics experts
- Agency partners
- Administrators
- Trainers, documentation staff
- Other key staff within your organization
You may want to consult with analysts from firms such as Forrester, Gartner, Digital Clarity Group, Real Story Group, etc. to get a wider perspective on your options.
examination Download trial installations of software and review them using the same criteria. Engage your partners in the process as well. Their expertise and knowledge of your business will provide additional perspective.
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