Content Management Systems CMS Software | Articles | News @import "../layout.css"; Content Management Central Your source for CMS News, Articles, Resources and Providers Content Management Software Articles Content Management Chaos by Cindy Rockwell 2005-09-01 Why knowledge base technologies and content management solutions fail is not necessarily in the technology, but a lack of understanding of ease of use to manage them. Here are some things to consider if you are looking at buying a CMS or Knowledgebase system: Is the software too expensive for what you are trying to accomplish? Days of the do all technologies are gone, people do not need or want erroneous feature sets that do nothing but make the product more complicated and harder to use. Requires too much customization? Don't buy a system that can't be up and implemented in days 'vs' weeks. Again, what is the business problem and every bell and whistle is not necessary to achieve your desired and cost-effective outcome. Not flexible enough? Is there an ability for a non-technical user to build web-based content pages in minutes, not hours, days or even weeks? Can it grow dynamically? Most content & knowledge solutions require a full-time editor. That may be fine, but remember, they grow tired and move onto the next project or initiative. Find a company that lets your content grow dynamically, such as email, and build on that with controlled editorial staff from various parts of your organization. Too complex? The KISS motto is always one I stand-by here (Keep It Simple Stupid). Most of us are busy and deploying something too complicated doesn't create usability. A CMS or KB solution be easy to use, easy to train and collaborative so knowledge and intellectual capital of your organization is easily shared. Content Management roll-outs require coordination across diverse departments and roles in most companies. Keys to a successful implementation: Create a manageable team. A small, yet diverse team, can build the initial content portal very effectively and with CMS systems like CustomerVision

, content can grow dynamically through email or other means of collaboration that take place. Tackle a manageable set of requirements. To get rolling, don't try implementing all facets of your organization at once. Take a department or team every week and add to the system. Build what is required. Many times companies have too big of a requirements list, some of which are not necessary in solving the business problem. Make sure you have a disciplined team that can help you decide what features are really a requirement and which are nice to haves and may never be used in the real world. Integrate design with your content. Spend the right amount of time, building good content with graphics, examples and easy to read articles of information. Categorize information appropriately. Give time and thought into topical areas of content. Don't allow yourself to use how your current paper or online manual is laid-out today. Layout how you would go after finding a particular piece of information, then ask your neighbor, then ask another. This helps create a usable content management system. Buy before your business changes. Don't spend years evaluating good technology, your business is evolving more rapidly than this. Any good technology in this space should be flexible an easy to implement within days. Resolving your content management needs coupled with others expectations may now be your biggest challenge, but these are a few good points to look at and evaluate against as your begin your voyage for a Content Management System that meets your needs. Remember CMS is not a silver bullet, but they can help you begin to capitalize on your companies intellectual capital and offer it up to a much broader audienceEnter Body Text Here Identifying the Right Implementation Partner by Janus Boye 2005-09-01 Many organizations invest tremendous time and resources undertaking a thorough analysis to identify and select the right CMS. Unfortunately the same due diligence rarely happens when an implementation partner is selected -- even though implementation costs typically exceed licensing fees by orders of magnitude, and a rational buyer would assign their attention accordingly. Too often a vendor choice is made and only then an implementation partner gets involved. This tendency makes CMS projects unnecessarily risky. Even with the ideal system, many things can and will go wrong during the implementation that follows, and your ability to overcome those obstacles will depend on the quality of your relationship with the implementation team. With a less-than-ideal system, a project can fail, but much could be done to avoid this, if more care is given to selecting the right implementation team with the right experience, skills, and inter-organizational chemistry. Even before selecting a software vendor it is important to assess the following key issues: What is the scope and planned duration of the project? Who will be responsible for project management (internal/external)? What is the realistic availability and relevant experience level of our internal IT resources? What are the evaluation criteria to select an implementation partner? The last question is crucial, but oftentimes very hard to answer. There are many ways to structure an implementation. Many types of partners Today it is estimated that more than 1,000 vendors world-wide claim to offer a CMS (more than 700 can be found in DMOZ alone). The professional services marketplace, while not formally measured, is surely larger by several orders of magnitude. In other words, the market for implementation firms is an even worse jungle than the CMS market. I divide implementation partners into 5 high-level categories: Management consultancies vary greatly in size from Big 5 companies to much smaller. But generally they focus on executive level management consulting, with CMS being only one of many topics addressed. These companies lead with strategic analysis and not technology pitches at first. This is useful for clients still trying to work through strategic rationales. Typically the consultancy's level of IT understanding will be fairly high-level and Web content management may be treated as a step-child to what they consider larger and more important topics such as ERP, Compliance, and CRM. This does not mean that a management consultancy will not take on the CMS project that their strategist recommended to client executives. In fact, they often aggressively seek high-margin implementation work -- although they may quietly outsource it to another firm or contingent contractors. System integrators or "SIs," also vary greatly in size, but they all focus on the implementation of the system, including development and integration. A trusted SI partner will ideally already know and possibly has implemented your other IT systems, and should understand the "big picture" of your technical architecture. However, their level of content management understanding may not be a strong point, and like management consulting firms, they may outsource some specialized skills and serve as a general contractor. Boutiques are small and focused consulting shops. Some are vendor-neutral, but for good and practical reasons, most can boast true competency in only a handful of CMS products. Some work exclusively on strategy and requirements; others are more technically-oriented and are essentially small, CMS-specialized SIs. If you have already settled on a tool, they can often bring in generalized CMS expertise as well as specific product expertise, but may not be as skilled in integrating the solution with your other business systems, and they may have less capacity to staff up for very large projects. Vendor PSO means consultants from the vendor’s professional services organization. From the top vendors, these consultants will be expensive and the best ones often hard to get on a project. Before signing a contract for services work, check that experienced consultants are assigned to your project and no matter the size of your engagement, do not blindly assume that you will be treated as a “key account” during the implementation phase. Consultants from the vendor usually (but not always) know the system well, but can be incented to "stand up" an implementation quickly and leave, pending re-assignment to a fire fighting mission somewhere else in the world. Although some fine analysts can be found in these ranks, most vendor PSO consultants tend to be workaday developers -- more expert in their company's product than content management more generally. Your In-house IT organization is likely to be at least part of the implementation picture one way or another, although they may not have the specific skills and available resources to drive it. Using internal IT resources can become very similar to outsourcing, particularly if the IT organization is not particularly close to the CMS or Web team and incremental IT costs must be charged back internally. On the other hand, in more intimate settings where IT knows the business very well, they can smooth over many rough bumps in a CMS implementation and provide a useful layer of translation with any outside partners. When working with internal developers, it is essential that they receive proper training, but also ensure that any resources are blocked off for the project and not subject to other major internal projects fighting for attention. We are still in the early days of the CMS market, but in many ways the market is growing up. Most of the partners that you will be in touch with, from Big 5, to small local integrator, will by now have more than a few projects under their belt. Properly managed and applied each of the above can add tremendous value to your project. So the question is… Which one? To find out which type would fit a project best, start off with a realistic evaluation the amount of internal resources -- developer, PM, analyst, QA, etc. -- that will be dedicated to the project, as well as the experience level and desired roles that your colleagues will fill. For a company that has a large IT organization and wishes to use some of these resources to develop templates, write code, customize, and integrate, it might very much make sense to find a local expert in the selected system, and then focus on building the relevant IT skills internally. But it pays to be brutally honest here. If your company does not have much experience as an organization with the impact and changes brought by introducing a CMS, consider enlisting a management consulting company or boutique consultancy to assist with content management strategy and jump starting an internal center of excellence. Alternatively, you may have a large, multi-skilled IT organization, but they are presently pre-occupied with major data-driven projects (e.g., ERP and CRM) or regulatory compliance efforts. In this case, you might want to outsource to a skilled and experienced systems integrator who would be able to execute. You might still want to take on project management, but then have the rest be done by partners. The ecosystem: CMS vendor and implementation partner The relationship between services firm and software vendor can be a complex one, but it forms an important axis for your project. Most CMS vendors do seek to work with outside partners -- mainly since these provide them with extended and cheap project delivery capabilities as well as a channel for new customers. Be aware that many partners receive commission or fees from the vendor when licenses are sold (see, for example, Matthew Clapp's experience at a Big 5 firm

). This may not necessarily be a bad thing for the project, but surely good to know to better understand the reasoning and motivation driving their choices. It is important for the success of the project that the vendor and implementation partner(s) can work together, and also ideally have proven experience in doing so. Both vendor and partner play a key role in the project outcome, and there are many examples of detrimental conflicts between them. Remember that the vendor's financial agenda is to sell licenses. This may drive the vendor to recommend a new partner, or at least try to sell vendor PSO, consequently taking billable hours from the partner. The local partner will often keep a powerful hand, particularly within countries without direct vendor representation -- where language, culture and local relationships become important. As the customer, be sure to maintain relationships with both companies. Do not let vendor contact only happen through the partner, even if the vendor is a foreign company and the partner is a local one. Direct channels to the vendor can be very beneficial. In case of major problems it can be handy to know whom to contact for escalation, but good vendor relations will also generally result in the customer being a known name inside the vendor organization, with all the benefits that come from this (e.g impact on roadmap, visits/contact with executive management, and so forth). In many cases the customer acquires a CMS and then lets the local partner take care of the rest. Two of the typical problems that come from removing the vendor from the project include: Best practices are not followed

; the partner might go off in a direction and customize the CMS without following established best practices. As a result future upgrades may become difficult or even impossible The blame game

; it becomes too easy for the partner to blame problems on the CMS and try to use this tactic to sell more hours. Involving the vendor can provide a more balanced picture. Conversely, you should understand that the vendor has interests here too. After working with one sales manager or country manager (a "bear hunter") during the sales process, you will likely be handed off to a key account manager (a "farmer") once a contract is signed. The bear hunter typically only wants to sell licenses -- as much as possible in a given quarter -- and in fact is often not compensated on professional services work, and therefore may have a complicated relationship with his or her own PSO. The farmer, by contrast, may be incented to introduce vendor consultants into projects, possibly to expose the customer to additional software modules. When this happens, the blame game can escalate. Notice that neither the hunter nor farmer is typically incented financially to introduce a 3

rd

-party implementation partner to an existing deal, so if that's in your best interest, you may need to push for it. Choreographing multiple parties Multiple firms can become involved fairly quickly, even in a mid-sized project. Consider that you might have selected Interwoven's Teamsite product, but your current SI has no CMS experience, let alone Teamsite skills. You could then turn to a great Interwoven boutique, but they have never integrated the CMS with the other systems that you require, so you quite reasonably want to involve senior staff from your trusted SI. Together with training and other background support from Interwoven's PSO, you are now working with 4 suppliers. In these cases, someone has to choreograph it all very carefully. You should assume, for example, that conflicts will occur, in particular since there is an inherent tension between the vendor's common perception of problems as resolvable with more software and the implementation team's viewpoint that hurdles can be overcome with more labor. In some cases, this coordination role can be outsourced to a trusted 3

rd party, but the important thing to remember is that -- on large projects -- you will have to deal with it one way or another, even if you make a single partner accountable for the success of the overall effort. What to look for in implementation partners The process for selecting one or more partners is often based on evaluation criteria, similar to the vendor selection process. Some of the more meaningful criteria to use are: Quality and Experience

. Does the implementation partner have references in the same industry as yours? Experience with companies of similar size and complexity? Happy references that use the same vendor tools? Take the time to invest in the same series of reference calls, customer visits, and prototyping that you would undertake in selecting the tool itself. Certification

. Is your system integrator partner a certified partner of the vendor? Will any of the certified resources be allocated to the project? Are they certified on the same version of the CMS that the project plans to use? Company focus

. What is the focus of the partner? Do they take content management as seriously as you do? Chemistry

. CMS projects take time, create change, and inevitably lead to frustrations little and large. At the end of the day, people are the most important factor. Can you work effectively with the implementation team? How do you know? Have you met them? Size

. Does your partner have the size to support a project of your scope? Do you want a partner with offices around the world, an internationally renowned partner, or a regional/local partner? Are you a big fish or small fry to them? Trust

. Have you worked with the implementation company before? How well do they know your business objectives and cultural /organizational quirks? Too often the implementation side of CMS projects are underestimated. Partners are supposed to be the trusted advisor, but for many, content management remains a new discipline. Ensure to have somebody experienced involved. Spending a little more time evaluating the right partner(s) will mean a large difference for your project outcome. Content Management: Wise Investment for Business Prosperity by Alex Polonski 2005-08-27 The time when a website was just a simple set of HTML pages has gone by. It?s true, just five or seven years ago simple websites developed with HTML and JavaScript were usual. Nobody thought there could be another option. However, year by year, Internet becomes a place where companies can interact with their clients, can develop online showrooms and online shops, can announce the latest news, and even make market researches. A new era of dynamic web development has come. Preconditions Dynamic web development, in other words, server-side programming, is a newest stage in development of modern websites, platforms that integrate such roles as representative, entertaining, interactive, communicative etc. When you talk about a dynamic website, you always have in mind that it is developed with J2EE, PHP, .NET, or other programming language. The cornerstone here is that the website is programmed. However, any usual WWW-user doesn’t bother himself with technologies. He really appreciate if he can perform complicated activity or develop a complex solution with the use of the mouse only. Visualization that Microsoft has introduced has become an issue that average PC user would never reject. So we have come to a contradiction. An average Internet user that would like to have a website is no longer satisfied with facilities HTML and JavaScript provide. Meanwhile, there are not so many people that would learn at least PHP in order to develop a website. Moreover, they even won’t be satisfied if someone else will make programming but the site management would require programming knowledge too. So here we come to ‘visualization’. Visualization => CMS As an answer for the requirement for visualization of the whole process of web development and website maintenance, web content management systems (CMS) were developed. The cornerstone here is that with the use of CMS one shouldn’t be a programmer as well to develop a dynamic website. There is a graphical shell where an average user with only a mouse and simple logic can develop a website of any complexity and enhance it with such interactive tools as forums, polls, feedback forms, automatic menus, protected areas etc. Although, some systems require to know at list basis of HTML and PHP, there is a big set of CMSs that provide a user with a perfect visualization of the whole process from design development up to website maintenance. It becomes possible because of the structure of any managed with CMS website. It consists of such elements as: 1. Design templates (it’s an HTML version of website’s design along with proper code for interactive elements). 2. Adjustable modules (those are independent programs (polls, forums, newslines etc.) integrated into the CMS; they have their own graphical interface for adjustment). 3. Content (it’s the texts and graphics individual for each particular page). Through variation of those three elements with the CMS’s graphical shell any average user can develop a dynamic website in several simple steps. There is a good article about it at the Xitex WebContent M1 website: webcontent-m1.com/m1/en/product/develop_dynamic_website Who can benefit Although there are several thousands of different content management systems, the market is still growing. And it will be growing as long as people develop new websites. The solutions that are currently present vary from freebies to systems with the cost of up to several thousands of U.S. Dollars. They are either simple, or too complicated. They are either for SMEs or for huge corporations. They can be used for the website management only, or they can be enhanced with facilities to serve as workflow and document repository systems. Whatever CMS it will be, it will be beneficial for both parties: 1. Customer that needs a dynamic website. 2. Web Development Company that develops this website. The reason for that benefit is common – when you use CMS for web development the operational costs for both development and maintenance are reduced drastically. That’s mainly because you should just adjust several preprogrammed modules that are already ready to be used. Then you make the layout and put those modules wherever they are to be. No programming – no additional expenses. That’s obvious, the most of websites have common functionality. So the most of websites can be developed with a proper content management system. That is why, whether you are a company that is looking to a long life of its website, hence, its permanent maintenance, or you are a web development company that takes care about its customers’ satisfaction the investments in a content management technology should be your first step to reap the most beneficial result of your activities. 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