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Business 2.0: Are you overpaying for content management?
Short answer. No. Neither do I overpay for application server. Slightly longer answer. I use Zope.
Here’s what I think about the article and the subject in general.
The article rightly says that using high-end systems like Vignette is not the solution. What’s more, the more expensive the CMS, the crappier the URLs.
Another quote that I really agree with 100% is “Nothing works out of the box, period”. Out-of-the-box software is a myth smart companies need to figure out if they want to stay smart.
“It takes an organization a long time to duplicate the bells and whistles that are available in an off-the-shelf product,” says Ann Rockley, president of Toronto-based content management consultancy the Rockley Group. That is true, but who said your requirement is to duplicate the bells and whistles? Your requirement, most of the time is to make solid and agile engine, wheels and steering and let the users drive. Then add bells and whistles over time. This is especially true in the web world because today’s bells and whistles are annoyances tomorrow. So, it is really stupid to reproduce endless value additions - another name for bells and whistles.
Fourth, make sure that business managers, not IT, are in control of the CMS project. It’s the business side that understands how content is produced and what kinds of processes really work -- aspects that are critical to a successful deployment. "If you have an IT department that's simply automating bad business processes, you can see why it gets very costly," says Scott Abel, a content-management strategist for Nims Associates, an IT consulting firm in Indiana. Business managers can also stick up for the needs of the nontechnical staff who will actually be using the system to create content. "Usability for the nontechnical users is critical," Jupiter’s Berk says. In other words, you need to keep it simple for the sake of the editorial staff.
Absolutely!. You don’t need IT to push down software on people’s throats.
If you’re going to drop a few hundred thousand dollars on a critical piece of your business infrastructure, you should be 100 percent certain it’s what you want.
Not entirely. This is a mentality that dooms these projects right from the start. First, assume that you have few thousand dollars and not few hundred thousand dollars. Get or make a low end system that people can use within a month. Monitor how it goes for another month. Evaluate how hard it is going to get the system to meet what people identified as short comings and good-to-have while they used it. Then see how you can actually implement those. This approach will save you time and money. Remember, web users are often an impatient lot. They don’t want to keep waiting for months for your analysis, then your presentations and finally that costs too much and needs too much of training. Users want tangible, lasting and agile systems.
Babu,
Good to see another Malayali's website so well written and full of useful information. I might want to talk to you more about your experience in Zope. Thank you for your down-to-earth approach towards evaluating software products where a lot of people fleece folks with money for nothing; lots of times, just simple stuff is just good enough.
Hem Ramachandran