CMS Selection – it’s like reading ‘War and Peace’!
by Joel Shapiro
April 18, 2012
Tags: cms, CMS selection, web content management
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Are you looking to choose a CMS and getting a flashback to reading ‘War and Peace’? You are not alone! Just like ‘War and Peace’, choosing a CMS is long, with many characters and many names – quite a struggle!
Marianne Kolodiy of the UK financial organization Yorkshire Building Society has been through both the CMS Selection process and has also read ‘War and Peace’ – she is well positioned to share valuable lessons to make your CMS Selection less painful than it has to be.
War and Peace of the CMS Selection
The CMS selection process begins with gathering business requirements, building a business case and writing an RFP. The first challenge lies in differentiating key needs from nice-to-haves, and keeping the number of requirements below one bazillion – one of the top 10 CMS selection mistakes to avoid according to James Robertson of Step Two Designs and others.
The next step is researching the CMS marketplace (you may have noticed there are quite a few options out there, e.g. see the Wikipedia CMS listing!), identifying key players, understanding their history and future potential, and getting to know industry analysts and experts (Forrester, Real Story Group, J. Boye) who’ve been there and done that.
Then there’s reading and evaluating vendors’ responses – War and Peace! – followed by skillfully rehearsed and slick vendor demonstration. Somewhere within reach there are also CMS implementation partners who keep your both feet firmly on the ground.
Then there’s an interesting part. Negotiations. If there were any doubts over how the licensing and pricing of CMS systems works, these are now multiplied many times over.
Then, finally, there’s a moment of peace. Or is it a moment of truth?
Learn more about CMS selection
Does selecting a CMS have to be like reading ‘War and Peace’? Join us in Philadelphia to find out! We have a full 1-day Web Content Management Conference track on Thursday May 10th. You can also get the real story on selecting digital marketing and web tools and learn mistakes to avoid when writing an RFP.