One on One with David Aponovich of CMS Myth

David Aponovich is a CMS Strategist at ISITE Design [1], a national CMS and web strategy consultancy, and blogger at the CMS Myth [2]. He has also worked as a marketing director for a web content management software vendor. David focuses on the gap between vendor speak and customer adoption, as well as the cultural and process implications of CMS that are so often overlooked. We asked him about the gap between hype and the reality of implementing a web CMS.

FCM: You run a blog called CMS Myth. What in your view is the biggest myth about CMSs?

DA: The defining myth revolves around a mistaken belief that a web content management system is a silver bullet or magic pill--it’s not. CMS has an unbelievably high failure rate. It’s frightening, really, because it’s not getting any better and the role of CMS inside the organization is only getting more strategic. Our goal with the CMS Myth is to be the voice of reason in helping organizations succeed with web content management.

CMS is a great technology tool. But you need a well-planned web strategy with clearly defined marketing and communications objectives to achieve success. While many people understand this, it unfortunately is still just getting lip service when it comes down to the actual implementations.

FCM: Vendor hype aside, what is a CMS actually well suited to do?

DA: We really believe that a web CMS is the glue that binds together all the pieces of your web business and marketing strategy. It’s hard to overstate its role--it’s that important. CMS manages and delivers the content that drives the majority of your digital experiences.

The role of a CMS is changing and vendors are in somewhat of a land grab trying to own more and more of the pie. We’re seeing integrated CMS suites evolving to support site management, visitor engagement, social networking, personalization, testing and measurement.

Second, and as important, CMS sits smack dab in the middle of your overall web ecosystem. It brokers dialog and data between other business-critical systems like Salesforce.com CRM, ecommerce and email marketing systems, all the while it is feeding and automating websites, microsites, intranets and extranets to support marketing campaigns, lead gen, sales and customer engagement.

FCM: How can customers cut through the hype to get a system that best suits their needs?

DA: Great question, because the answer is elusive to so many organizations, whether they are looking for their first CMS or seeking to re-platform and replace a legacy CMS. There are literally hundreds of platforms and you could spend a year or more parsing through feature lists, demos and trials without reaching an "a-ha!" moment where you hit upon the perfect CMS. We say, stop the check-box madness! There likely is no perfect answer.

The question organizations need to ask, is what SHOULD the CMS do? We’re seeing a lot of CMS vendors develop add-on features that are far from best of breed. The best CMS can't be measured by the number of features, but most selection processes overemphasize features and underestimate how these features fit.

Vendors try to make it black and white in the sales process, but the reality is that you can succeed with any number of systems. Our core belief is that there are not good or bad content management systems. But there are ones that offer a better or worse fit for each organization. We’ve actually identified six fit factors [3] that anyone can use when evaluating web content management systems.

FCM: What is the single biggest stumbling block that prevents successful CMS implementation?

DA: Failing to make strategic website planning a true business priority before you leap into CMS mode. Realistically, the focus should be on achieving overall website success; CMS is a vehicle to help get you there. Yet most folks still insist on starting with the technology selection.

It’s a cart-before-the-horse thing. CMS projects rarely happen in a vacuum. A business trigger might cause someone to shout "CMS!" They're getting beat competitively, the site is outdated, they’re re-branding the company or launching a new product, it takes too much time to launch a new microsite--but in reality you need to consider a ton of other factors before CMS enters the picture.

If it sounds like a lot of work, it’s because it is! This goes beyond CMS to running an effective web channel. How you are staffed? What is your content strategy? How are you planning your user experience? How are you training and supporting end users? How will you measure and maintain the site post launch?

Writing a check to your CMS vendor is the tip of the iceberg. We spend a lot of time talking organizations OUT of CMS because there are simply more important things to get in place first.

FCM: CMS vendors have been embracing Enterprise 2.0. Do you see this as genuine or more hype around a new trend?

DA: The movement to social applications is not a trend, it’s a paradigm shift that every organization needs to address. It’s a different way of doing business.

This is a genuine opportunity for businesses to rally around to get more efficient, share knowledge and information, automate processes and generally use information to drive a more effective business operation. The trend is real, driven by concepts and habits coming out of the consumer web, like Facebook, where sharing knowledge across an organization, making information and documents easier to find; creating peer networking groups; prioritizing useful information based on human ratings, all offer real chance for business improvement.

CMS can play a big role, whether it’s a platform trying to provide an all-in-one solution or more likely paired with enterprise search tools, portals, and other technologies. Perfect case in point: We created for a large global B2B client an Enterprise 2.0 platform that connects 2,000 sales and marketing staff in 80 countries to everything they need to perform at a high level: corporate sales and marketing assets; user-generated assets; a rating system to bubble up to the top “what works”; ad-hoc peer communities; multi-faceted search; and more. All the effort of these global producers located across the globe is concentrated in this one location, powered by CMS.