There’s a Chinese proverb that states something to the effect of, “If you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other.” I think that’s a good conceptual framework through which to analyze content management needs. Content management rhetoric drips of promises of “marketing empowerment”, implying that changing anything on a site through CMS is as easy as rekeying text, and this is the rationale for CMS existence.
Unfortunately, the reality doesn’t often answer the promise. Rekeying text may be one of the steps involved in making a content edit through a CMS, but the promise fails to address the flexibility limitations of an object oriented data model, the complexity associated with a multi tiered, role based workflow of approvals, and the CMS interface complexity that tends to grow in indirect proportion to functional capability.
Bolin Digital’s president, Dane Hartzell, cites surveys he took part in during his participation in the eBusiness Executive council comprised of interactive directors for many of the largest consumer brands in North America. When asked if they would recommend their current CMS, whether they be home grown solutions, enterprise level big-players, or otherwise, 0% said they would.
How can each be so dissatisfied across the myriad of solution providers, technology platforms, and broad ranging internal support/administration capabilities? I personally believe the answer lies within the failure to acknowledge specific needs of each interactive property, and match the solution to that need. If XYZ corporation has entered a license agreement with a big player CMS, even short lived marketing properties are expected to sit atop that CMS. High fidelity design and highly interaction oriented web applications tend not to play well with CMS solutions. At the other end of the spectrum, if I were developing an online property whose purpose was provide access to tens of thousands of content pages, each with shared components, I sure as hell wouldn’t want the entire site hard coded and static (no CMS), especially if there were tiered regulatory approvals required prior to publish.
CMS needs often find their way into a project requirements checklist as a single decision point- does the property need a CMS, or doesn’t it? How can we better scale the solution to the actual lifespan of the property, the dynamic realities of its existence, the needs of the folks who manage it, and a long list of other considerations? And in the case of simple web applications, how can we simplify management as much as possible?
We don’t claim that our content admin tool (we don’t refer to it as a CMS) is the end-all, be-all, as we don’t believe there is such a solution. The point being the solution is scalable, and we will tend toward starting simple. Marketers need to weigh the CMS needs of a web app on a case by case basis. On a continuum of simple (think WordPress, Drupal, Joomla) to complex (Microsoft, Oracle/Stellent ECM), know that if you pick up one end of the stick, you pick up the other. A long list of functional features tends to come along with complexity, lack of flexibility once implemented, high cost, training, and ongoing support. Whether you’re an agency, an IT manager, or a client side marketer, are you scaling your content management approach appropriately?
