Thus far, web content management has been an industry obsessed with technology and with an agenda set by vendors. While the rest of the world focus on getting their projects to run smoothly or quite simply on surviving the current financial climate, WCM vendors are generally doing very well financially. Perhaps customers should explore ways of tying payments to actual project success?

Perhaps we need to look beyond the day-to-day issues and rethink web content management entirely if we are to make progress?

My 2 fellow session speakers and I have agreed to use #fixwcm as our Twitter hashtag to prepare for the conference session and you can see a tweet from the discussion below:

My co-presenter, Jon Marks from LBi has already shared his thoughts: Let’s #fixwcm Before The Wheels Come Off

Whether you can make it to Aarhus or not, I invite you to participate in the discussion, either by tweeting or posting a comment a below. If you have the time, we’ll be showing a live stream from Twitter at the session on Wednesday at 10:30 – 12:00 Danish time (GMT+1).

While listening to his experiences with implementing an effective global web governance structure in a federated organisation, I started wondering whether other organisations might also benefit from merging their Web and CRM teams?

Adding CRM to the web mix sounds is an very attractive proposition. Both are about talking to customers and both are enabled by technology. It would be really great if it could translate into the following organisational benefits:

• More emphasis on using measurement to guide Web decisions
• Moves focus from technology to marketing, sales and client-facing challenges
• Make the Web team think more about audiences, segments, ownership and messages

I know a few CRM Managers and I am fairly confident that most of them would hesitate to accept adding Web to their list of responsibilities. Compared to CRM, the Web in general enjoys much less management support. From the perspective of the usual Web Manager, many would probably also object to adding CRM to their list of ongoing headaches, as this might be seen as moving the Web team more in the direction of IT. In addition most Web Managers find their team understaffed, so why volunteer to manage yet another massive system?

Another practical issue the fact that most Web Managers don’t know much about CRM and vice versa. There are exceptions of course, but these are few and far between. Also, beyond UK-based Graham Oakes, you can’t find many experts that combine these 2 areas.

I’ve previously advocated that you should merge your Web and Intranet teams, to make better use of skills in the combined team and work together in solving challenges that often overlap. Web and CRM commonly fit under the Sales & Marketing banner. If either is owned by IT, that’s probably a bad sign.

Sometimes you need different catalysts to make lasting organisational improvements. What are your thoughts about merging Web and CRM teams?

Thanks to Graham Oakes for valuable input.

So far, I have come up with 9 common pitfalls:

1. Speaking “web” – instead of speaking a language that management can relate to
2. Trying to solve too much at once – instead of dividing your strategy work into manageable phases
3. Not involving stakeholders – and realizing too late that you are lacking necessary input and buy-in
4. No user documentation – which could lead to you pursuing the wrong objectives
5. Poorly defined success criteria – having no meaningful way of knowing if you’re making a difference
6. Becoming operational too soon – focusing on technology before defining goals
7. Not becoming operational at all – creating a strategy that’s too abstract to leave the desk drawer
8. Not addressing your audience properly – writing boring documents that no-one reads
9. Wasting your efforts – when a strategy is not what will solve your problems

I will be presenting on these pitfalls (and how to avoid them) next Wednesday at our Aarhus 2009 conference on the web strategy track. Joining me on the track are Bob Boiko and Martin White – internationally renowned experts on strategy and governance – and some great case studies from Cambridge University Hospitals, EUMETSAT and the National Trust UK who will discuss the ups and downs of their strategy projects.

Have I missed any important pitfalls? What dangers would you avoid to stay clear off? I’m still missing one to make it 10, so feel free to make suggestions.

When I asked other attendees what they considered the most useful potential of SharePoint 2010, answers ranged from improvements in areas such as taxonomy and folksonomy, to social computing features, Visual Studio, SharePoint Designer, search, document management and mobility services. Had I spoken to others, they might well have cited other features.

While SharePoint 2010 may still not be best of breed in any of these areas, despite the improvements, it is strong for the simple reason that it covers such a wide suite.  Though it is still early days, the demos at the conference seemed to more than indicate that the product has moved up a level or two.

Nonetheless, in some respects I can’t help but having a déjà-vu:

• First, let’s not forget SharePoint’s track record: MOSS 2007 promised a lot, too. Many people were delighted at the prospect of empowering business users with Excel services, Business Data Catalogue (renamed Business Connectivity Services in the 2010 version), offline synchronisation with Groove (renamed SharePoint Workspace), to name but a few. However, it turned out that migration was a pain, system integrators were too unfamiliar with the product, support of end-users took its toll and basic features were often not well worked out. Therefore it is common that project teams have ended up spending their time getting the basic things in order as well as doing business specific customisations – they simply haven’t gotten around to leveraging the advanced features of MOSS 2007 yet.
• Second, SharePoint project managers have had to realise that MOSS 2007 is a highly complex product. In our communities of practice, members often talk about the need to get in-depth knowledge of the platform, its concepts and logic, even if you are on the business side. In this respect, SharePoint 2010 has not gotten easier due to the sky-high ambitions of Microsoft.

If you are already running SharePoint in your organisation, I strongly recommend that:

• you allow yourself plenty of time for analysis and testing when the public beta is released in November as well as when the final version comes out next year.
• you don’t underestimate the time needed for familiarisation with SharePoint 2010 at all levels: some terms have changed as I mentioned above and many new options and concepts have been introduced. Be ready to question your system integrator.
• you consider whether you want to be first mover on upgrading (think: early mover disadvantage)
  

SharePoint as a product has certainly matured its feature set but remember that the Devil’s in the detail – a key question is: to what extent can SharePoint 2010 deliver on its promise come implementation day?

At this early stage, I have not been able to get in touch with SharePoint 2010 pilot customers who have had real life experiences with the platform, although I repeatedly asked Microsoft whether they could help me out. If you have such experiences, please don’t hesitate to contact me – I would love to learn more.

1. Organisations, in the private as well as public sectors, need to take Facebook much more seriously
2. Individuals, job seekers as well as those in secure life-time jobs, need to think about Facebook as more than their private and personal social network

Allow me to explain. Thus far, the main discussion has been around privacy, photos and whether you should invite your manager as a friend. Today, a more relevant discussion would be: Why are you not using the incredible potential of the 2nd most popular website in the world? According to web research company Alexa, Google is the only site with more traffic.

Many companies are already using Facebook for a variety of purposes. The below screenshot shows a Facebook page, used by drug maker Merck to alert fans about job opportunities.

Merck Careers on Facebook – 494 fans as of October 18, 2009. Not too bad for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies

In the current climate it does seem easier to attract talent, but Facebook can also be used for much more. In our community of practice, some have adopted it for connecting with citizens or customers in a more direct way than traditional means by asking for feedback, building loyalty, offering discounts and much more.

On an individual level, you may enjoy how Facebook can keep you up-to-date on your “friends” and former girlfriends. It is your decision how to make the best of Facebook, but why not also use your network to ask questions, get feedback on your work challenges and engage the “wisdom of the crowd”?

To me, Facebook is not about revealing confidential insights or being less selective about my small circle of friends. Facebook is an important network with a potential far beyond the intranet and perhaps even bigger than our website. Why not take it seriously?

As always, I would be very interested in hearing your examples or any best practices.

NB: Feel free to connect with my personal profile on Facebook or our relatively new company pages. We’re still beginning to take Facebook more seriously ourselves.

In our report, Best Practices for Selecting a CMS, we define a PoC in this way and argue that allowing 1 or 2 days should be enough:

A proof of concept is the stage in the process at which you invite a selected vendor to demonstrate the validity of the concept they have outlined in their proposal. Up to this point in the process, most has been on paper. Now it is time to see things in action. This is also an ideal opportunity to meet the vendor team and verify whether the chemistry is right.

Here are some other definitions of a web content management PoC to show that the term can be used in different ways:

• CMS Watch (from the Web CMS Report): “(…) ask your list of vendor finalists to come in to your shop, install their packages on your hardware, and develop some sample templates and workflows that make sense to your team. (…) Note that, whether the proofs can be done concurrently, a proof-of-concept step could add a month or more to your selection cycle.”
• Jed Cawthorne (industry-expert and past J. Boye conference speaker in his feedback when ‘beta testing’ our report): “… neither a one or even a two day visit is what I would refer to as a “Proof of Concept”. (…) I would consider a PoC to be something like what we got involved in at [Organisation]. We got [Vendor] to come in and build a portal environment for us, we went on some training courses and we evaluated it for 3 months (we paid for all this of course!) after which the [Organisation] decision was to not go down the portal route – that to me is a true Proof of Concept.”
• Seth Gottlieb (vendor-neutral analyst in the article POC, Prototype, or Pilot? When and Why): “A Proof of Concept is a small exercise to test a discrete design idea or assumption.”

The PoC is an important step in the selection phase. Nevertheless, it is our opinion that you shouldn’t spend too much time on it. You simply need to find out whether the system and the implementation team live up to your main requirements.

The process outlined by Jed resembles what we refer to as a scoping exercise – which is the next step. A scoping exercise usually takes 1-4 weeks and is carried out before the actual full-blown implementation with one vendor only. This vendor will have been carefully selected on the basis of their answers to the request for proposal and the (short) PoC. As a buyer you pay for the scoping exercise. One important advantage of going through this phase is that it is still possible to pull the plug if the vendor doesn’t meet your expectations. This reduces the risks involved significantly.

This is a reminder that as a buyer, you have to work with – and stick to – a strict and transparent terminology when engaging vendors. They might not define the concepts in the same way you do, so in order to avoid misunderstandings, you should provide a short, concise glossary of the terms you use.

Thanks to @adambindslev, @cmswatch, @jedpc, @markmorrell, @sigurdmagnusson & sggottlieb for valuable input.

e-Spirit did not make it oton the J. Boye Web CMS Shortlist 2009 as more than 90% of their revenue is still from the home market. Still, e-Spirit is rapidly approaching 100 employees and is planning a North American launch in 2010. According to Robert Bredlau, Director of International Business Development at e-Spirit, most of the recent hires are in sales and marketing and only a few in engineering and support. To customers, this might translate to hungry sales people willing to give discounts, but don’t expect a leap in product development from the new hires.

In September, e-Spirit CEO Jörn Bodemann publicly commented that former strong local competitor RedDot might be riding into the sunset and that Vignette customers also face uncertainty after the acquisition by OpenText. I’ll add that an additional local opportunity for e-Spirit is the recent management shake-up at CoreMedia, another German CMS vendor, which seemed to have caused CoreMedia to lose momentum.

It may be a question of style whether you like a vendor that publicly points fingers at their competitors and uses the old tactic of  spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD). e-Spirit has been known as a conservative German company closely guarding their secrets and prospective buyers will find that e-Spirit may have changed their marketing tactics, but remain tightly-lipped about their financial numbers. e-Spirit may or may not be doing financially, so do inquire about their financial viability.

Usability has not been a key strength for e-Spirit, which showed a very technical demo at the 2008 Web Idol. A major new version with many user interface improvements is due out later this month. e-Spirit plan demo it as their 2009 Web Idol pitch. As with any major new release, we advice that you do a thorough test before implementation.

If you are considering e-Spirit, you might want to also take a closer look at Day Software and FatWire, which share a similar Java-based architecture. e-Spirit also often competes with open source alternatives, in particular Typo3, which is widely adopted in Germany.

Do you think e-Spirit will be successful in gaining further market share in the German market? Is there room for yet another European vendor in North America or will it simply become a distraction for e-Spirit?

Aarhus University selected their existing CMS (a local system called SIAB) back in 2003 and did their homework before deciding upon Typo3. They did several interviews with other universities to learn about their experiences. Aarhus University also looked beyond the CMS and carefully considered the system integrators as they needed help for the implementation. The main criteria for selection was the long term prospect for the CMS coupled with scalability, as the Typo3 solution will gradually accommodate all faculties and departments over the coming two years.

According to the publicly available project plan (in Danish), the project team has since been busy planning the migration. AU seem determined to build their own skills and have graciously shared a detailed report from their visit to the 2009 Typo3 conference, which was held in Frankfurt in September. The conference attracted more than 350 people from 30 countries. To quote from the update:

The mantra for future development of TYPO3 is “strong defaults – expert options” – a slogan we fully support.

I’ve previously compared Typo3 to a solid German car, which resulted in many constructive comments; partly because it publicly asked about the future of Typo3. It seems to me that Typo3 is growing in popularity and has a very strong foothold in higher education in the German-speaking market. When the upcoming version 5 hits the market it will be with a brand new interface. As usual, only time will tell how smooth the experience will be for contributors and how painless the upgrade experience will be for existing customers.

While open source systems are generally popular among higher education, there is still no clear market leader. To share some individual examples, King’s College in London uses Microsoft SharePoint, New York University uses Day Software and the University of Southern Denmark uses Sitecore – so no clear trends here. You can meet all the institutions on our higher education track in Aarhus in November.

Full disclosure: Aarhus University is a member of the J. Boye Community of Practice. J. Boye was involved in the CMS selection at Aarhus University

Not a week goes by when I don’t discover several new vendors, be it CMS, portal, wiki, search or whatever. Many of these have actually been around for a while, have a reasonable amount of employees and a long list of references.

You may not find the lesser known vendors at trade shows or in the analyst reports, but several of our community of practice members rely on vendors which are relatively unknown on a global scale. Often these smaller players are not only viable alternatives to the global leaders, but are also better equipped to meet local requirements. And they also tend to come with a significantly lower price tag.

No matter which vendor you are considering, well-known or unknown, a key recommendation from our recent research into selecting a CMS, is that you avoid a scoring methodology. Comparing Autonomy to a local Austrian vendor will never be an apples-to-apples comparison and the vendors are likely use many fancy industry buzzwords. Look beyond the marketing by staying focused on your own requirements and evaluation criteria.

If you are concerned about risk and think that the local vendor may not be as safe a choice as say IBM, Microsoft or Oracle, I recommend that you connect with peers and learn about their experiences with vendors. Which ones do they favour? Which ones do they avoid? You can also post your question on the J. Boye LinkedIn group, which is a free forum exclusively for practitioners.

Rather than spending too much time researching the marketplace and listening to sales pitch after sales pitch, my advice is that you insist on real dialogue from the outset. Take control of the agenda and tell the vendor clearly what you expect. Also, listening skills on both sides of the table is key!

I talked to Kristina Halvorson, author of the recently published book Content Strategy for the Web, on why so many websites and intranets suffer from poor content.

Kristina has identified two key issues:

• Process: In web projects, we spend a lot of time and energy on determining business objectives and user goals, creating strategy and designing the functional requirements. But somehow we always scramble to prepare the actual content just before launch. We don’t plan for content.
• Perception: We think that creating good content is basically copy writing, that it is about sitting down and writing text. But in fact, content is complicated. Often you are dealing with several parties that have to review the content in the first place. Then there is the issue of metadata, formatting, and technical restrictions.

What is missing in most organisations, Kristina says, is editorial oversight. Think of the publishing industry, where content is considered a product. They employ executive editors to coordinate all the input from the different writers. Compare that then to your typical setup with a decentralized network of web editors in most organisations. There will of course be a person coordinating efforts, but that person also has to do daily maintenance, drive the new design, implement the new CMS, manage vendors and many other tasks. In the end, no one has the overall responsibility for the content itself.

In her book, Kristina argues the need for content strategy if we are to deliver better websites. She defines content strategy as planning for the creation, the delivery and the governance of useful, usable content.

You can meet Kristina at our conference for online professionals in November where she will share her method for creating a content strategy as well as steps you can take right away to deliver a better website or intranet.

Do you have anyone looking after your content? Really?